Comparative study of wall shear stress at the ascending aorta for different mechanical heart valve prostheses

An experimental study is reported which investigates the wall shear stress (WSS) distribution in a transparent model of the human aorta comparing a bileaflet mechanical heart valve (BMHV) with a trileaflet mechanical heart valve (TMHV) in physiological pulsatile flow. Elastic micro-pillar WSS sensors, calibrated by micro-Particle-Image-Velocimetry measurement, are applied to the wall along the ascending aorta. Peak WSS values are observed almost twice in BMHV compared to TMHV. Flow field analyses illuminate that these peaks are linked to the jet-like flows generated in the valves interacting with the aortic wall. Not only the magnitude but also the impact regions are specific for the different valve designs. The side-orifice jets generated by BMHV travel along the aortic wall in the ascending aorta and cause a whole range impact, while the jets generated by TMHV impact further downstream in the ascending aortic generating less severe WSS

Volumetric Calibration Refinement using masked back projection and image correlation superposition

This paper deals with a new, reconstruction based, approach of refining a volumetric calibration. The technique is based on a 2D cross-correlation between particle images on the sensor plane with a planar back projection from a tomographic reconstruction in the same sensor plane to determine potential disparities between the initial camera calibration and the measurement. Additive superposition of the correlation maps from different sets or particle images allows reducing the influence of noise and ghost particles such that the systematic errors in the calibration can be corrected. The different sections describe the theory, the principle processing steps and the convergence of the procedure. Furthermore, the concept is proven by simulating the entire process of the measurement chain, with the help of a synthetic comparison. The results show that disparities of over 9 pixels could be corrected to an average of below 0.1 pixels during the refinement steps. Finally, the technique demonstrates it´s potential to measured data, where the numbers of outliers in the raw results are reduced after the volumetric calibration refinement

Measurements of wall-shear stress fields on the piston crown in an IC engine flow using fluorescent labelled micro-pillar imaging

The measurement of wall shear-stress along the crown of a moving piston is accomplished with an array of hair-like, flexible micro-pillar sensors (MPS) in an internal combustion (IC) engine during intake flow conditions. The MPS are wall-clamped flexible micro-cylinders of 20micron diameter made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) positioned on the surface of a transparent planar piston crown and protruding into the boundary layer flow above the piston at a height of 390micron. Their tips are labelled with fluorophores and are illuminated with a scanning laser-sheet system that follows the piston motion in synchronous manner. The flow-induced deflection is recorded through the transparent piston crown from below with a compact shaft-mounted high-speed camera recording the fluorescent re-emitted light from the pillar tips and using the fact of optical wave-guide features of the transparent micro-pillars. The experiments were performed in a transparent 4-valve engine setup (1.6 liter Prince 2, N13B16) during the intake phase. In order to improve the temporal resolution, the running speed of the engine was scaled down using water as working liquid. A static and dynamic sensor-calibration enabled the precise measurements of the wall-shear stress distribution with the sensor array. Due to spatial resolution limits of current available compact high-speed camera the recorded region along the piston was limited to 4x2 mm2 with 8x4 pillars in full view. The recordings at 300fps show the WSS fluctuations induced by the valve-jet / piston-wall interaction in the beginning of the intake with strong wall-normal motion forming critical points in the WSS field such as saddles, nodes and foci. Over the intake cycle > CA 80° these fluctuations die out and flow is transformed into wall-parallel coherent motion prescribed by the formation of the tumble

The multi-scale nature of Wall shear stress fluctuations in turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection

Measurements of wall shear-stress fluctuations on very long timescales ($\ge$ 1900 free-fall time units) are reported for turbulent Rayleigh-Benard (RB) convection in air at the heated bottom plate of a RB cell, 2.5 m in diameter and 2.5 m in height. The novel sensor simultaneously captures the fluctuations of the magnitude and the direction of the wall shear stress vector $\boldsymbol{\tau}(t)$ with high resolution in the slow air currents. The results show the persistence of a tumble-type structure, which is in a bi-stable state as it oscillates regularly about a mean orientation at a timescale that compares with the typical eddy turnover time. The mean orientation can persist almost hundreds of eddy turnovers, until a re-orientation of this structure in form of a slow precession sets in, while a critical weakening of the mean wall shear stress magnitude - respectively the mean wind - is observed. The amplitudes of turbulent fluctuations in the streamwise wall shear-stress $\tau_x$ along mean wind direction reveal a highly skewed Weibull distribution, while the fluctuations happening on larger time scales follow a symmetric Gaussian distribution. Extreme events such as local flow reversals with negative $\tau_x$ are recovered as rare events and correlate with a rapid angular twist of the wall shear-stress vector. Those events - linked to critical points in the skin friction field - correlate with the coincidence of signals at the tails in both probability distributions

Selective immigration policies, migrants' education and welfare at origin

Destination countries are progressively shifting towards selective immigration policies. These can effectively increase migrants' average education even if one allows for endogenous schooling decisions and education policies at origin. Still, more selective immigration policies reduce social welfare at origin.international migration; selective immigration policies; education policies; social welfare

Real time visualization and analysis of sensory hair arrays using fast image processing and proper orthogonal decomposition

This paper presents an approach both to receiving multiple sensor data from a flow in real time and to analyzing these data in order to characterize the flow condition and, if necessary, control the flow. In order to obtain the data, an optical micro-pillar array acting as distributed wall-shear sensor was developed and interrogated optically with an LDM (long distance microscope). Together, the micro-pillar array and the LDM form a channeling optics, which allows magnified imaging of larger numbers of individual pillars simultaneously. The sensor was tested in a turbulent wall shear stress field under varying conditions (Reynolds number). A frame rate of 3000 fps was used since the higher the temporal resolution is, the more specific flow control strategies might be applied later in realistic application. However, the temporal high resolution would lead to a vast amount of data, which is difficult to analyze in real time. Therefore, a fast image processing algorithm is developed, which detects the tip deflections of the pillars and vectorizes the wall-shear stress field online. The extracted data fields are then broken down into equidistant and overlapping windows in order to guarantee fast POD (proper orthogonal decomposition) modes calculation. The POD is applied to each of these windows and the extracted modes are compared, summarized and collected in a library. Finally, this library is again applied to the flow but under different conditions in order to identify the state of the current flow in real time

Transition of a vortex ring measured by 3D scanning Tomo-PIV

A vortex ring with piston-based Reynolds number Rep=4650 is studied experimentally by means of time-resolved scanning tomographic PIV. The present measurement technique provides the so-called 4D flow field, thus enables revealing the vortex ring’s transition from laminar to turbulent. The evolution of the ring torus as well as the generation of secondary vortex filaments in transition are first observed through 3D visualization. Analysis on the quantities of the vortex ring, such as circulation and vorticity components, defines the three evolution phases, namely laminar, transition and turbulent. The ring median plane is also examined to provide further insights on flow structure exhibited in transition. The axial vorticity component and radial velocity component are studied respectively and they are found to be organized in a multi-layer concentric-ring pattern. Spectrum analysis on the radial velocity component along the ring core and inner ring where secondary vortical activity happens reveals the dominate wavenumber in transition and broad band of wavenumbers in turbulent phase