Acoustic emission activity from the two main types of small multi-cylinder diesel engine fuel injection systems

Effective fuel injector operation and efficient combustion are two of the most critical aspects when Diesel engine performance, efficiency and reliability are considered. Indeed, it is widely acknowledged that fuel injection equipment faults lead to increased fuel consumption, reduced power, greater levels of exhaust emissions and even unexpected engine failure. Previous investigations have identified fuel injector related acoustic emission activity as being caused by mechanisms such as fuel line pressure build-up; fuel flow through injector nozzles, injector needle opening and closing impacts and premixed combustion related pulses. Few of these investigations however, have attempted to categorise the close association and interrelation that exists between fuel injection equipment function and the acoustic emission generating mechanisms. Consequently, a significant amount of ambiguity remains in the interpretation and categorisation of injector related AE activity with respect to the functional characteristics of specific fuel injection equipment. The investigation presented addresses this ambiguity by detailing a study in which AE signals were recorded and analysed from two different Diesel engines employing the two commonly encountered yet fundamentally different types of fuel injection equipment. Results from tests in which faults were induced into fuel injector nozzles from both indirect-injection and direct-injection engines show that functional differences between the main types of fuel injection equipment results in acoustic emission activity which can be specifically related to the type of fuel injection equipment used.

Combustion enhancement in a scramjet engine using oxygen enrichment and porous fuel injection

This paper reports on the experimental testing of oxygen-enriched porous fuel injection in a scramjet engine. Fuel was injected via inlet mounted, oxide-based ceramic matrix composite (CMC) injectors on both flow path surfaces that covered a total of 9.2 % of the intake surface area. All experiments were performed at an enthalpy of 3.93−4.25±3.2% MJ kg−1, flight Mach number 9.2–9.6 and an equivalence ratio of 0.493±3%. At this condition, the engine was shown to be on the verge of achieving appreciable combustion. Oxygen was then added to the fuel prior to injection such that two distinct enrichment levels were achieved. Combustion was found to increase, by as much as 40 % in terms of combustion-induced pressure rise, over the fuel-only case with increasing oxygen enrichment. Further, the onset of combustion was found to move upstream with increasing levels of oxygen enrichment. Thrust, both uninstalled and specific, and specific impulse were found to be improved with oxygen enrichment. Enhanced fuel–air mixing due to the pre-mixing of oxygen with the fuel together with the porous fuel injection are believed to be the main contributors to the observed enhanced performance of the tested engine.

Book Review: "Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy by Vicki Mayer", Duke University Press, 2012

Vicki Mayer’s book is unusual in that, despite its title, it is not about television producers at all, or at least not in the sense that scholars and the television industry itself have traditionally understood the role. Rather than referring to those in creative, managerial or financial control, or those with substantial intellectual input into a program, Mayer uses the term in a deliberately broad sense to mean, essentially, anyone ‘whose labor, however small, contributes to [television] production’ (179).

Creative industries and the wider economy

Researchers have argued that the creative industries have significant effects on the wider economy, with early agendas focused on urban regeneration, job creation, and economic value-added. Later work extended to new firm creation, the growth of new markets, and regional clustering and development. This chapter reviews the evolution of thinking on classifying the creative industries as a ‘sector’, or group of sectors, and outlines contributions on economic ‘spillovers’ regarding knowledge, innovation, and graduate talent. Work on creative clusters has highlighted the widespread adoption of forms of organization and contracting developed in such clusters. Later work by the authors has contributed a ‘creative trident’ model, and shifted focus to employment and the position of creative workers in the economy, showing that there are more creatives working outside the creative industries than within them. The chapter reflects on the specific role of design and the relationship between the creative industries and innovation.

Investigation of the effects of the fatty acid profile on fuel properties using a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

The structural features of fatty acids in biodiesel, including degree of unsaturation, percentage of saturated fatty acids and average chain length, influence important fuel properties such as cetane number, iodine value, density, kinematic viscosity, higher heating value and oxidation stability. The composition of fatty acid esters within the fuel should therefore be in the correct ratio to ensure fuel properties are within international biodiesel standards such as ASTM 6751 or EN 14214. This study scrutinises the influence of fatty acid composition and individual fatty acids on fuel properties. Fuel properties were estimated based on published equations, and measured according to standard procedure ASTM D6751 and EN 14214 to confirm the influences of the fatty acid profile. Based on fatty acid profile-derived calculations, the cetane number of the microalgal biodiesel was estimated to be 11.6, but measured 46.5, which emphasises the uncertainty of the method used for cetane number calculation. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), PROMETHEE-GAIA, was used to determine the influence of individual fatty acids on fuel properties in the GAIA plane. Polyunsaturated fatty acids increased the iodine value and had a negative influence on cetane number. Kinematic viscosity was negatively influenced by some long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids such as C20:5 and C22:6 and some of the more common saturated fatty acids C14:0 and C18:0. The positive impact of average chain length on higher heating value was also confirmed in the GAIA plane

Preparing engineering graduates for the knowledge economy through blended delivery of mathematics

Contemporary higher education institutions are making significant efforts to develop cohesive, meaningful and effective learning experiences for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) curricula to prepare graduates for challenges in the modern knowledge economy, thus enhancing their employability (Carnevale et al, 2011). This can inspire innovative redesign of learning experiences embedded in technology-enhanced educational environments and the development of research-informed, pedagogically reliable strategies fostering interactions between various agents of the learning-teaching process. This paper reports on the results of a project aimed at enhancing students’ learning experiences by redesigning a large, first year mathematics unit for Engineering students at a large metropolitan public university. Within the project, the current study investigates the effectiveness of selected, technology-mediated pedagogical approaches used over three semesters. Grounded in user-centred instructional design, the pedagogical approaches explored the opportunities for learning created by designing an environment containing technological, social and educational affordances. A qualitative analysis of mixed-type questionnaires distributed to students indicated important inter-relations between participants’ frames of references of the learning-teaching process and stressed the importance (and difficulty) of creating appropriate functional context. Conclusions drawn from this study may inform instructional design for blended delivery of STEM-focused programs that endeavor to enhance students’ employability by educating work-ready graduates.

Measuring the regional availability of biomass for biofuels and the potential for microalgae

Biomass is an important energy resource for producing bioenergy and growing the global economy whilst minimising greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries, like Australia have a huge amount of biomass with the potential for bioenergy, but non-edible feedstock resources are significantly under-exploited. Hence it is essential to map the availability of these feedstocks to identify the most appropriate bioenergy solution for each region and develop supply chains for biorefineries. Using Australia as a case study,we present the spatial availability and opportunities for second and third generation feedstocks. Considerations included current land use, the presence of existing biomass industries and climatic conditions. Detailed information on the regional availability of biomass was collected from government statistics, technical reports and energy assessments as well as from academic literature. Second generation biofuels have the largest opportunity in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria (NSW, QLD and VIC) and the regions with the highest potential for microalgae are Western Australia and Northern Territory (WA, NT), based on land use opportunity cost and climate. The approach can be used in other countries with a similar climate. More research is needed to overcome key technical and economic hurdles.

Someone else's boom but always our bust: Australia as a derivative economy, implications for regions

This paper examines the socio-economic impact of mineral and agricultural resource extraction on local communities and explores policy options for addressing them. An emphasis on the marketisation of services together with tight fiscal control has reinforced decline in many country communities in Australia and elsewhere. However, the introduction by the European Union of Regional Policy which emphasises ‘smart specialisation’ can enhance greatly the capacity of local people to generate decent livelihoods. For this to have real effect, the innovative state has to enable partnerships between communities, researchers and industry. For countries like Australia, this would be a substantive policy shift.

Regulating ride-sharing in the peer economy

The rise of the peer economy poses complex new regulatory challenges for policy-makers. The peer economy, typified by services like Uber and AirBnB, promises substantial productivity gains through the more efficient use of existing resources and a marked reduction in regulatory overheads. These services are rapidly disrupting existing established markets, but the regulatory trade-offs they present are difficult to evaluate. In this paper, we examine the peer economy through the context of ride-sharing and the ongoing struggle over regulatory legitimacy between the taxi industry and new entrants Uber and Lyft. We first sketch the outlines of ride-sharing as a complex regulatory problem, showing how questions of efficiency are necessarily bound up in questions about levels of service, controls over pricing, and different approaches to setting, upholding, and enforcing standards. We outline the need for data-driven policy to understand the way that algorithmic systems work and what effects these might have in the medium to long term on measures of service quality, safety, labour relations, and equality. Finally, we discuss how the competition for legitimacy is not primarily being fought on utilitarian grounds, but is instead carried out within the context of a heated ideological battle between different conceptions of the role of the state and private firms as regulators. We ultimately argue that the key to understanding these regulatory challenges is to develop better conceptual models of the governance of complex systems by private actors and the available methods the state has of influencing their actions. These struggles are not, as is often thought, struggles between regulated and unregulated systems. The key to understanding these regulatory challenges is to better understand the important regulatory work carried out by powerful, centralised private firms – both the incumbents of existing markets and the disruptive network operators in the peer-economy.

Regulating ride-sharing in the peer economy

The rise of the peer economy poses complex new regulatory challenges for policy-makers. The peer economy, typified by services like Uber and AirBnB, promises substantial productivity gains through the more efficient use of existing resources and a marked reduction in regulatory overheads. These services are rapidly disrupting existing established markets, but the regulatory trade-offs they present are difficult to evaluate. In this paper, we examine the peer economy through the context of ride-sharing and the ongoing struggle over regulatory legitimacy between the taxi industry and new entrants Uber and Lyft. We first sketch the outlines of ride-sharing as a complex regulatory problem, showing how questions of efficiency are necessarily bound up in questions about levels of service, controls over pricing, and different approaches to setting, upholding, and enforcing standards. We outline the need for data-driven policy to understand the way that algorithmic systems work and what effects these might have in the medium to long term on measures of service quality, safety, labour relations, and equality. Finally, we discuss how the competition for legitimacy is not primarily being fought on utilitarian grounds, but is instead carried out within the context of a heated ideological battle between different conceptions of the role of the state and private firms as regulators. We ultimately argue that the key to understanding these regulatory challenges is to develop better conceptual models of the governance of complex systems by private actors and the available methods the state has of influencing their actions. These struggles are not, as is often thought, struggles between regulated and unregulated systems. The key to understanding these regulatory challenges is to better understand the important regulatory work carried out by powerful, centralised private firms – both the incumbents of existing markets and the disruptive network operators in the peer-economy.

A Deweyan experience economy for higher education : The case of the Australian Indie 100 Music Event

In this essay we argue that a Deweyan experience economy will best support the higher education (HE) sector in the future, and we draw a contrast between that economy and the sector’s current focus on informational concerns, as expressed by the recent rush to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other mass online informational offerings. We base our argument on current developments in music education and music technology that we see as being preemptive of wider trends. We use examples from a three-year study of online and offline music pedagogies and outline a four-year experiment in developing a pedagogical experience economy to illustrate a theoretical position informed by John Dewey’s theory of experience,Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and capital, and recent work in economic geography on epistemic communities. We argue further that the future of the HE sector is local rather than global, experiential rather than informational, and that therefore a continued informational approach to the future of HE risks undermining the sector.

Divest Harvard: Climate justice, higher education, and fossil fuel divestment

On the 19 November 2014, seven Harvard students — the Harvard Climate Justice Coalition — have brought a legal action against Harvard University to compel it to withdraw its investments from fossil fuel companies. The plaintiffs include the Harvard Climate Justice Coalition; Alice Cherry, a law student; Benjamin Franta, a physics student interested in renewable energy; Sidni Frederick, a student of history and literature; Joseph Hamilton, a law student; Olivia Kivel, a biologist interested in sustainable farming; Talia Rothstein, a student of history and literature; and Kelsey Skaggs, a law student from Alaska interested in climate justice. The Harvard Climate Justice Coalition also bringing the lawsuit as ‘next friend of Plaintiffs Future Generations, individuals not yet born or too young to assert their rights but whose future health, safety, and welfare depends on current efforts to slow the pace of climate change.’ The case of Harvard Climate Justice Coalition v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, is being heard in the Suffolk County Superior Court of Massachusetts. The dispute will be an important precedent on the ongoing policy and legal battles in respect of climate change, education, and fossil fuel divestment.

Fossil free Stanford: Universities, climate ethics, and fossil fuel divestment

There has been an international movement led by 350.org, Bill McKibben, and student groups to encourage schools, universities, and educational institutions to divest their endowments of fossil fuel stocks. The decision of Stanford University on coal divestment should an inspiration for elite universities around the world.