A Second Law Assessment of Organic Rankine Cycle Depending on Source Temperature

Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) has potential in reducing fossil fuels and relaxing environmental problems. In this work performance analysis of ORC is conducted based on the second law of thermodynamics for recovery of low temperature heat source from 100oC to 140oC using R134a as the working fluid. Effects of system parameters such as turbine inlet pressure or source temperature are theoretically investigated on the exergy destructions (anergies) at various components of the system as well as net work production or exergy efficiency. Results show that the net work or exergy efficiency has a peak with respect to the turbine inlet pressure when the source temperature is low, however, increases monotonically with increasing turbine inlet pressure when the source temperature is high.

Numerical Simulation of Multiple Arrays Arrangement of Micro Hydro Power Turbines

River flow over micro hydro power (MHP) turbines of multiple arrays arrangement is simulated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to obtain the flow characteristics. In this paper, CFD software is used to simulate the water flow over MHP turbines as they are placed in a river. Multiple arrays arrangement of MHP turbines lead to generate large amount of power. In this study, a river model is created and simulated in CFD software to obtain the water flow characteristic. The process then continued by simulating different types of arrays arrangement in the river model. A MHP turbine model consists of a turbine outer body and static propeller blade in it. Five types of arrangements are used which are parallel, series, triangular, square and rhombus with different spacing sizes. The velocity profiles on each MHP turbines are identified at the mouth of each turbine bodies. This study is required to obtain the arrangement with increasing spacing sizes that can produce highest power density through the water flow variation.

Correlation to Predict Thermal Performance According to Working Fluids of Vertical Closed-Loop Pulsating Heat Pipe

The objectives of this paper are to investigate effects of dimensionless numbers on thermal performance of the vertical closed-loop pulsating heat pipe (VCLPHP) and to establish a correlation to predict the thermal performance of the VCLPHP. The CLPHPs were made of long copper capillary tubes with inner diameters of 1.50, 1.78, and 2.16mm and bent into 26 turns. Then, both ends were connected together to form a loop. The evaporator, adiabatic, and condenser sections length were equal to 50 and 150 mm. R123, R141b, acetone, ethanol, and water were chosen as variable working fluids with constant filling ratio of 50% by total volume. Inlet temperature of heating medium and adiabatic section temperature was constantly controlled at 80 and 50oC, respectively. Thermal performance was represented in a term of Kutateladze number (Ku). It can be concluded that when Prandtl number of liquid working fluid (Prl), and Karman number (Ka) increases, thermal performance increases. On contrary, when Bond number (Bo), Jacob number (Ja), and Aspect ratio (Le/Di) increases, thermal performance decreases. Moreover, the correlation to predict more precise thermal performance has been successfully established by analyzing on all dimensionless numbers that have effect on the thermal performance of the VCLPHP.

A Molding Surface Auto-Inspection System

Molding process in IC manufacturing secures chips against the harms done by hot, moisture or other external forces. While a chip was being molded,defects like cracks, dilapidation, or voids may be embedding on the molding surface. The molding surfaces the study poises to treat and the ones on the market, though, differ in the surface where texture similar to defects is everywhere. Manual inspection usually passes over low-contrast cracks or voids; hence an automatic optical inspection system for molding surface is necessary. The proposed system is consisted of a CCD, a coaxial light, a back light as well as a motion control unit. Based on the property of statistical textures of the molding surface, a series of digital image processing and classification procedure is carried out. After training of the parameter associated with above algorithm, result of the experiment suggests that the accuracy rate is up to 93.75%, contributing to the inspection quality of IC molding surface.

Thermal Performance of an Air Heating Storing System

Owing to the lack of synchronization between the solar energy availability and the heat demands in a specific application, the energy storing sub-system is necessary to maintain the continuity of thermal process. The present work is dealing with an active solar heating storing system in which an air solar collector is connected to storing unit where this energy is distributed and provided to the heated space in a controlled manner. The solar collector is a box type absorber where the air flows between a number of vanes attached between the collector absorber and the bottom plate. This design can improve the efficiency due to increasing the heat transfer area exposed to the flowing air, as well as the heat conduction through the metal vanes from the top absorbing surface. The storing unit is a packed bed type where the air is coming from the air collector and circulated through the bed in order to add/remove the energy through the charging / discharging processes, respectively. The major advantage of the packed bed storage is its high degree of thermal stratification. Numerical solution of the packed bed energy storage is considered through dividing the bed into a number of equal segments for the bed particles and solved the energy equation for each segment depending on the neighbor ones. The studied design and performance parameters in the developed simulation model including, particle size, void fraction, etc. The final results showed that the collector efficiency was fluctuated between 55%-61% in winter season (January) under the climatic conditions of Misurata in Libya. Maximum temperature of 52ºC is attained at the top of the bed while the lower one is 25ºC at the end of the charging process of hot air into the bed. This distribution can satisfy the required load for the most house heating in Libya.

Construct the Fur Input Mixed Model with Activity-Based Benefit Assessment Approach of Leather Industry

Leather industry is the most important traditional industry to provide the leather products in the world for thousand years. The fierce global competitive environment and common awareness of global carbon reduction make livestock supply quantities falling, salt and wet blue leather material reduces and the price skyrockets significantly. Exchange rate fluctuation led sales revenue decreasing which due to the differences of export exchanges and compresses the overall profitability of leather industry. This paper applies activity-based benefit assessment approach to build up fitness fur input mixed model, fur is Wet Blue, which concerned with four key factors: the output rate of wet blue, unit cost of wet blue, yield rate and grade level of Wet Blue to achieve the low cost strategy under given unit price of leather product condition of the company. The research findings indicate that applying this model may improve the input cost structure, decrease numbers of leather product inventories and to raise the competitive advantages of the enterprise in the future.

The Guideline of Overall Competitive Advantage Promotion with Key Success Paths

It is a critical time to upgrade technology and increase value added with manufacturing skills developing and management strategies that will highly satisfy the customers need in the precision machinery global market. In recent years, the supply side, each precision machinery manufacturers in each country are facing the pressures of price reducing from the demand side voices that pushes the high-end precision machinery manufacturers adopts low-cost and high-quality strategy to retrieve the market. Because of the trend of the global market, the manufacturers must take price reducing strategies and upgrade technology of low-end machinery for differentiations to consolidate the market.By using six key success factors (KSFs), customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, customer service, product design, product effectiveness and machine structure quality are causal conditions to explore the impact of competitive advantage of the enterprise, such as overall profitability and product pricing power. This research uses key success paths (KSPs) approach and f/s QCA software to explore various combinations of causal relationships, so as to fully understand the performance level of KSFs and business objectives in order to achieve competitive advantage. In this study, the combination of a causal relationships, are called Key Success Paths (KSPs). The key success paths guide the enterprise to achieve the specific outcomes of business. The findings of this study indicate that there are thirteen KSPs to achieve the overall profitability, sixteen KSPs to achieve the product pricing power and seventeen KSPs to achieve both overall profitability and pricing power of the enterprise. The KSPs provide the directions of resources integration and allocation, improve utilization efficiency of limited resources to realize the continuous vision of the enterprise.

Design and Fabrication of an Electrostatically Actuated Parallel-Plate Mirror by 3D-Printer

In this paper, design and fabrication of an actuated parallel-plate mirror based on a 3D-printer is described. The mirror and electrode layers are fabricated separately and assembled thereafter. The alignment is performed by dowel pin-hole pairs fabricated on the respective layers. The electrodes are formed on the surface of the electrode layer by Au ion sputtering using a suitable mask, which is also fabricated by a 3D-printer.For grounding the mirror layer, except the contact area with the electrode paths, all the surface is Au ion sputtered. 3D-printers are widely used for creating 3D models or mock-ups. The authors have recently proposed that these models can perform electromechanical functions such as actuators by suitably masking them followed by metallization process. Since the smallest possible fabrication size is in the order of sub-millimeters, these electromechanical devices are named by the authors as SMEMS (Sub-Milli Electro-Mechanical Systems) devices. The proposed mirror described in this paper which consists of parallel-plate electrostatic actuators is also one type of SMEMS devices. In addition, SMEMS is totally environment-clean compared to MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) fabrication processes because any hazardous chemicals or gases are utilized.

Morphology Feature of Nanostructure Bainitic Steel after Tempering Treatment

The microstructure characterization of tempered nanocrystalline bainitic steel is investigated in the present study. It is found that two types of plastic relaxation, dislocation debris and nanotwin, occurs in the displacive transformation due to relatively low transformation temperature and high carbon content. Because most carbon atoms trap in the dislocation, high dislocation density can be sustained during the tempering process. More carbides only can be found in the high tempered temperature due to intense recovery progression.

On the Thermal Behavior of the Slab in a Reheating Furnace with Radiation

A mathematical heat transfer model for the prediction of transient heating of the slab in a direct-fired walking beam type reheating furnace has been developed by considering the nongray thermal radiation with given furnace environments. The furnace is modeled as radiating nongray medium with carbon dioxide and water with five-zoned gas temperature and the furnace wall is considered as a constant temperature lower than furnace gas one. The slabs are moving with constant velocity depending on the residence time through the non-firing, charging, preheating, heating, and final soaking zones. Radiative heat flux obtained by considering the radiative heat exchange inside the furnace as well as convective one from the surrounding hot gases are introduced as boundary condition of the transient heat conduction within the slab. After validating thermal radiation model adopted in this work, thermal fields in both model and real reheating furnace are investigated in terms of radiative heat flux in the furnace and temperature inside the slab. The results show that the slab in the furnace can be more heated with higher slab emissivity and residence time.

Preliminary Study on Analysis of Pinching Motion Actuated by Electro-Active Polymers

Hand exoskeletons have been developed in order to assist daily activities for disabled and elder people. A figure exoskeleton was developed using ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) actuators, and the performance of it was evaluated in this study. In order to study dynamic performance of a finger dummy performing pinching motion, force generating characteristics of an IPMC actuator and pinching motion of a thumb and index finger dummy actuated by IMPC actuators were analyzed. The blocking force of 1.54 N was achieved under 4 V of DC. A thumb and index finger dummy, which has one degree of freedom at the proximal joint of each figure, was manufactured by a three dimensional rapid prototyping. Each figure was actuated by an IPMC actuator, and the maximum fingertip force was 1.18 N. Pinching motion of a dummy was analyzed by two video cameras in vertical top and horizontal left end view planes. A figure dummy powered by IPMC actuators could perform flexion and extension motion of an index figure and a thumb.

Forecasting Optimal Production Program Using Profitability Optimization by Genetic Algorithm and Neural Network

In our business field today, one of the most important issues for any enterprises is cost minimization and profit maximization. Second issue is how to develop a strong and capable model that is able to give us desired forecasting of these two issues. Many researches deal with these issues using different methods. In this study, we developed a model for multi-criteria production program optimization, integrated with Artificial Neural Network. The prediction of the production cost and profit per unit of a product, dealing with two obverse functions at same time can be extremely difficult, especially if there is a great amount of conflict information about production parameters. Feed-Forward Neural Networks are suitable for generalization, which means that the network will generate a proper output as a result to input it has never seen. Therefore, with small set of examples the network will adjust its weight coefficients so the input will generate a proper output. This essential characteristic is of the most important abilities enabling this network to be used in variety of problems spreading from engineering to finance etc. From our results as we will see later, Feed-Forward Neural Networks has a strong ability and capability to map inputs into desired outputs.

Analysis of the Theoretical Values of Several Characteristic Parameters of Surface Topography in Rotational Turning

In addition to the increase of the material removal rate or surface rate, or the improvement of the surface quality, which are the main aims of the development of manufacturing technology, a growing number of other manufacturing requirements have appeared in the machining of workpiece surfaces. Among these it is becoming increasingly dominant to generate a surface topography in finishing operations which meets more closely the needs of operational requirements. These include the examination of the surface periodicity and/or ensuring that the twist-structure values are within the limits (or even preventing its occurrence) in specified cases such as on the sealing surfaces of rotating shafts or on the inside working surfaces of needle roller bearings. In the view of the measurement the twist has different parameters from surface roughness, which must be determined for the machining procedures. Therefore in this paper the alteration of the theoretical values of the parameters determining twist structure are studied as a function of the kinematic properties.

Performance Evaluation of GPS \ INS Main Integration Approach

This paper introduces a comparative study between the main GPS\INS coupling schemes, this will include the loosely coupled and tightly coupled configurations, several types of situations and operational conditions, in which the data fusion process is done using Kalman filtering. This will include the importance of sensors calibration as well as the alignment of the strap down inertial navigation system. The limitations of the inertial navigation systems are investigated.

Flow and Heat Transfer over a Shrinking Sheet: A Stability Analysis

The characteristics of fluid flow and heat transfer over a permeable shrinking sheet is studied. The governing partial differential equations are transformed into a set of ordinary differential equations, which are then solved numerically using MATLAB routine boundary value problem solver bvp4c. Numerical results show that dual solutions are possible for a certain range of the suction parameter. A stability analysis is performed to determine which solution is linearly stable and physically realizable.

A Systematic Approach for Identifying Turning Center Capabilities with Vertical Machining Center in Milling Operation

Conventional machining is a form of subtractive manufacturing, in which a collection of material-working processes utilizing power-driven machine tools are used to remove undesired material to achieve a desired geometry. This paper presents an approach for comparison between turning center and vertical machining center by optimization of cutting parameters at cylindrical workpieces leading to minimum surface roughness by using taguchi methodology. Aluminum alloy was taken to conduct experiments due to its unique high strength-weight ratio that is maintained at elevated temperatures and their exceptional corrosion resistance. During testing, the effects of the cutting parameters on the surface roughness were investigated. Additionally, by using taguchi methodology for each of the cutting parameters (spindle speed, depth of cut, insert diameter, and feed rate) minimum surface roughness for the process of turn-milling was determined according to the cutting parameters. A confirmation experiment demonstrates the effectiveness of taguchi method.

Oblique Wing: Future Generation Transonic Aircraft

The demand for efficient transonic transport has been growing every day and may turn out to be the most pressed innovation in coming years. Oblique wing configuration was proposed as an alternative to conventional wing configuration for supersonic and transonic passenger aircraft due to its aerodynamic advantages. This paper re-demonstrates the aerodynamic advantages of oblique wing configuration using open source CFD code. The aerodynamic data were generated using Panel Method. Results show that Oblique Wing concept with elliptical wing planform offers a significant reduction in drag at transonic and supersonic speeds and approximately twice the lift distribution compared to conventional operating aircrafts. The paper also presents a preliminary conceptual aircraft sizing which can be used for further experimental analysis.

Adjustment and Compensation Techniques for the Rotary Axes of Five-axis CNC Machine Tools

Five-axis computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools (three linear and two rotary axes) are ideally suited to the fabrication of complex work pieces, such as dies, turbo blades, and cams. The locations of the axis average line and centerline of the rotary axes strongly influence the performance of these machines; however, techniques to compensate for eccentric error in the rotary axes remain weak. This paper proposes optical (Non-Bar) techniques capable of calibrating five-axis CNC machine tools and compensating for eccentric error in the rotary axes. This approach employs the measurement path in ISO/CD 10791-6 to determine the eccentric error in two rotary axes, for which compensatory measures can be implemented. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed techniques can improve the performance of various five-axis CNC machine tools by more than 90%. Finally, a result of the cutting test using a B-type five-axis CNC machine tool confirmed to the usefulness of this proposed compensation technique.

Large Eddy Simulation of Flow Separation Control over a NACA2415 Airfoil

This study involves a numerical simulation of the flow around a NACA2415 airfoil, with a 15°angle of attack, and flow separation control using a rod, It reposes inputting a cylindrical rod upstream of the leading edge in order to accelerate the transition of the boundary layer by interaction between the rod wake and the boundary layer. The viscous, non-stationary flow is simulated using ANSYS FLUENT 13. Our results showed a substantial modification in the flow behavior and a maximum drag reduction of 51%.

Identifying Unknown Dynamic Forces Applied on Two Dimensional Frames

A time domain approach is used in this paper to identify unknown dynamic forces applied on two dimensional frames using the measured dynamic structural responses for a sub-structure in the two dimensional frame. In this paper a sub-structure finite element model with short length of measurement from only three or four accelerometers is required, and an iterative least-square algorithm is used to identify the unknown dynamic force applied on the structure. Validity of the method is demonstrated with numerical examples using noise-free and noise-contaminated structural responses. Both harmonic and impulsive forces are studied. The results show that the proposed approach can identify unknown dynamic forces within very limited iterations with high accuracy and shows its robustness even noise- polluted dynamic response measurements are utilized.