Computational Methods in Engineering

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In electric arc furnace steelmaking units, the essential parameters are reducing price, increasing production and decreasing environmental pollution. Electric arc furnaces are the largest users of electric energy in industry. The most important techniques that can be used to reduce the electric energy consumption in electric arc furnaces are scrap preheating, stirring, use of burners and hot charge and foamy slag. Between these methods, the use of foamy slag is the most useful and economical factor. Foamy slag can reduce the amount of energy, electrodes, refractory consumption, and tap to tap time while it also increases productivity. In this study, method of production and optimum conditions for foamy slag in a 200-ton electric arc furnace were investigated. The use of foamy slag in this research can reduce the electric energy consumption from 670 to 580 kwh/t and the melting time from 130 to 115 min. and that the electric power input can be increased. It also shows that with foamy slag, the optimum amount of FeO in slag is 20-24 percent and the optimum basicity is 2-2.2. Keywords: electric arc furnace, energy, DRI, foamy slag

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In this paper, the application of evaporative cooling for refrigeration cycle to reduce power consumption in hot climates is emphasized. Experimental and analytical investigations were performed in order to specify the effect of evaporative cooling condenser instead of the commonly used air cooling condenser in window-air-conditioners. Evaporative condenser can reject more heat, thereby preventing the reduction of cooling capacity and increasing power consumption of window-air-conditioners during very hot seasons. Two designs were developed for evaporative condensers. In the direct injection design, water is injected on the condenser coil directly while in the media pad design, water is injected on the media pad installed before the condenser. Thermodynamic properties of the systems after modification were measured and compared with the ordinary situation. Analysis of the results show that using these methods, the coefficient of performance increases by about 25% and power consumption decreases by about 13%. It is also anticipated that further modifications in these designs may yield better results

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With progress in radar systems, a number of methods have been developed for signal processing and detection in radars. A number of modern radar signal processing methods use time-frequency transforms, especially the wavelet transform (WT) which is a well-known linear transform. The interference canceling is one of the most important applications of the wavelet transform. In Ad-hoc detection methods, the interference is firstly canceled and then a simple detector, like an energy detector, is used. Therefore, we have used wavelet-based approaches to cancel the interference and then an energy detector has been employed. In this paper, it is shown that in practical cases where the performance of matched filter or near-matched filter is degraded, wavelet-based methods are more efficient. Also, we have shown that for cases where targets with slow radial velocity or one close to blind velocity are removed by the MTI filter, wavelet-based denoising has a better performance.

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Forced hydraulic jump in a horizontal stilling basin with one and two continuous sills at the downstream end of an ogee standard weir was investigated. Experiments were completed on sills of five different heights which were fixed at two different distances from the toe of the weir. The main characteristics of the jump such as the sequent depth ratio, relative roller length, and relative energy loss were analysed. Based on the momentum equation and using an experimental coefficient, a method was adopted to predict the sequent depth ratio. Using the results of the experiments, an analytical expression was developed for the prediction of the relative roller length. These methods agree well with the writers, and other investigators, experiments. The results of experiments on one and two prolonged sills showed that by increasing the height of the sill or shortering the distance of the sill from the toe of the weir, the reduction of the sequent depth and also the roller length obtains, but the energy loss increases

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Energy absorber systems like metallic dampers for controlling the structural vibrations due to earthquake have witnessed considerable development in the past few decades. Also there are some studies on the energy absorption of thin-walled tubes due to impact load. Thin-walled tubes have a large deformation capacity and are suitable energy absorbers in the structure during an earthquake provided that a suitable inelastic buckling mode obtains. This paper deals with the study of energy dissipation in accordion thin-walled tubes and their behavior due to axial cyclic loads. For this purpose, experimental and analytical studies have been performed. Experimental studies were conducted on specimens available in the market by dynamic tension and compression actuator. Analytical studies are based on finite element methods and nonlinear inelastic dynamic analysis. These studies are focused on the effects of mechanical and geometrical parameters of these tubes like shape, thickness, diameter, length and material type of tube on the amount of energy dissipation and axial stiffness. The results show that accordion thin-walled tubes exhibit satisfactory energy absorption behavior and that proper selection of the parameters yields the optimum design of this metallic damper.

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There is a demand for reduced power consumption in the vapor compression refrigeration cycle. Coefficient of performance of window-air conditioners considerably decreases and power consumption increases under very hot conditions. These problems have encouragecl studies aimed at improving the performance of window-air-conditioners by enhancing the heat transfer rate in the condenser. In this article, a new design for application of evaporative cooling in the condenser of window-air conditioners is introduced and experimentally investigated. In this design, two pads equipped with a water injection system are located on both sides of the air-conditioner to cool down the air flow passing over the condenser. The experimental results showed that thermodynamic characteristics of the system considerably improved while power consumption decreased by about 15% and the coefficient of performance increased by about 55%.

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In recent years, many different plans have been considered to use the nuclear energy gained from inertial confinement fusion (ICF) as attempts to obtain high energy efficiencies. In conventional ICF methods, a small amount (about mg) of the deuterium–tritium compound is confined in a small spherical chamber of a few millimeters in radius and compressed by laser or heavy ion beams with powers in the order of W. The consequent plasma froming at the center of the chamber is an essential issue for fusion. The hydrodynamical instabilities during the fuel compression process arising in the conventional ICF technique leads to a decline in energy efficiency. The new plans for reducing instabilities involve compression of the fuel chamber in two stages using laser or ion beams. In the first stage, fuel is preheated by laser or ion and in the second phase, relativistic electrons are constructed by -W laser phases in the fuel. This heating method has come to be known as a fast “ignition method”. More recently, cylindrical rather than spherical fuel chambers with magnetic control in the plasma domain have been also considered. In this work, fast ignition method in cylindrical fuel chambers will be investigated and transportation of the relativistic electrons will be calculated using MCNP code and the Fokker–Planck program. Furthermore, the transfer rate of relativistic electron energy to the fuel will be calculated. Our calculations show that the fast ignition method and cylindrical chambers guarantee a higher energy efficiency than the one-step ignition and that it can be considered an appropriate substitute for the current ICF techniques.

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Using Vibro-Impact Nonlinear Energy Sinks (VI NESs) is one of the novel strategies to control structural vibrations and mitigate their seismic response. In this system, a mass is tuned on the structure floor, so that it has a specific distance from an inelastic constraint connected to the floor mass. In case of structure stimulation, the displaced VI NES mass collides with the  inelastic constraint and upon impacts, energy is dissipated. In the present work, VI NES is studied when its parameters, including clearance and stiffness ratio, are simultaneously optimized. Harmony search as a recent meta-heuristic algorithm is efficiently specialized and utilized for the aforementioned continuous optimization problem. The optimized attached VI NES is thus shown to be capable of interacting with the primary structure over a wide range of frequencies. The resulting controlled response is then investigated, in a variety of low and medium rise steel moment frames, via nonlinear dynamic time history analyses. Capability of the VI NES to dissipate siesmic input energy of earthquakes and their capabilitiy in reducing response of srtructures effectively, through vibro-impacts between the energy sink’s mass and the floor mass, is discussed by extracting several performance indices and the corresponding Fourier spectra. Results of the numerical simulations done on some structural model examples reveal that the optimized VI NES has caused successive redistribution of energy from low-frequency high-amplitude vibration modes to high-frequency low-amplitude modes, bringing about the desired attenuation of the structural responses.

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The stored deformation energy in the dislocation structures in a polycrystalline metal can provide a sufficient  driving force to move grain boundaries during annealing. In this paper, a thermodynamically-consistent three-dimensional, finite-strain and dislocation density-based crystal viscoplasticity constitutive theory has been developed to describe the distribution of stored energy and dislocation density in a polycrystalline metal. The developed constitutive equations have been numerically implemented into the Abaqus finite element package via writing a user material subroutine. The simulations have been performed using both the simple Taylor model and the full micromechanical finite element model. The theory and its numerical implementation are then verified using the available data in literature regarding the physical experiments of the single crystal aluminum. As an application of the developed constitutive model, the relationship between the stored energy and the strain induced grain boundary migration in aluminum polycrystals has been investigated by the Taylor model and also, the full finite element model. The obtained numerical results indicated that the Taylor model could not precisely simulate the distribution of the stored deformation energy within the polycrystalline microstructure; consequently, the strain induced grain boundary migration.  This is due to the fact that the strain induced grain boundary migration in a plastically deformed polycrystalline microstructure is principally dependent on the spatial distribution of the stored deformation energy rather than the overall stored energy value.

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One of the new methods for powering low power electronic devices is the use of mechanical energies due to vibrations. In this method, the piezoelectric material is employed for converting the mechanical energy of vibration into the electrical energy. The advantage of this method is needlessness of using the battery charging system. In this paper, the functionally graded (FG) cantilever with the piezoelectric layer is considered as energy harvester system. The mathematical model of the system is constructed and the governing equation for electromechanical coupling is presented. Then the effects of the system parameters on the generated power is studied. Finally, by considering uncertainties in energy harvester parameters, the effect of uncertainties on the produced energy is investigated by Monte-Carlo simulation method for the first time. The results show that although the amount of generated power in the first natural frequency is higher than the other frequencies, but around the first natural frequency, the effect of uncertainties is increased and thus, the reliability of the energy harvester will be decreased.

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According to the declining trend of fossil fuel resources and the need to use renewable energies, appropriate research should be conducted for technical and functional studies in this regard. Therefore, in this research, a tubular PEM fuel  cell as a suitable energy source with three-dimensional geometry has been numerically simulated and investigated. For a comprehensive study, the equations of continuity, momentum, energy, stress-strain, and fluid-solid-heat interaction at steady state are defined, coupled together, and then solved by a finite element numerical code. Assuming the cell voltage changes from 0.95 to 0.4 volts, the passage of compressible fuel and air through the channels and porous media of the electrode and catalyst, and also about 6 degrees increase in the average cell temperature, causes approximately 35 nm displacement in different parts. These displacements, due to fluid-solid-heat interactions, cause thermal and mechanical stresses. The maximum stress is about 3500 kN/m²  in the electrolyte due to its displacement limit (average displacement 12.8 nm). Then the relation of voltage variation with current density, stress, fuel flow rate, displacement and fuel cell temperature was shown. Also the results showed that the assumption of fluid-solid-heat interaction reduces the fuel cell power density by about 3%. Finally, the effect of different parameters such as fuel and air channel radius, electronic and ionic conductivity were investigated. For example, at a voltage of 0.4 volt, 20 percent reduction in the radius of air or fuel channels, or 100 percent increase in the electron or ionic conductivity, increases the electrical current density by about 2.17, 0.05, 3.69, and 40 percent, respectively.