Effects of cutting head load on fatigue life of bolter miner cutting arm

In the operation of bolter miners, the cutting arm is an essential and weak part and its fatigue life directly affects its performance. This study aimed to investigate the influence of the cutting head load on the fatigue life of a cutting arm using the DEM-MFBD (Discrete Element Method-Multi Flexible Body Dynamics) bi-directional coupling technique. The EJM340 bolter miner was chosen as the research object, and a three-dimensional solid model of the bolter miner was built using the RecurDyn software. The cutting arm was flexibly modelled, and the tunnel model was built using the EDEM software. The motion parameters of the bolter miner and cutting head load were transferred through the bi-directional coupling interface to obtain the loads and stress parameters during the entire tunnel cutting process. Based on the stress-time variation, the fatigue life of the cutting arm was calculated, the overall damage and crack initiation locations were obtained, and the minimum number of cutting arm cycles was determined. The accuracy of the virtual model is verified through field experiments. The analysis results indicated that the crack emergence location and fatigue life obtained from the simulation were in agreement with the experimental results

Vibration Suppression of Bolter Miner Employing Dynamic Vibration Absorber

The bolter miner is a critical piece of equipment in the rapid set of tunneling equipment, and the load generated during coal cutting may lead to excessive vibration of the equipment and reduce its reliability. In order to reduce the vibration response of the bolter miner, this paper proposes the installation of a dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) inside the cutting arm of the bolter miner. A five-degree-of-freedom dynamics model was developed, and the cutting part was regarded as two rigid bodies flexibly connected by a rotating spring. The model’s accuracy was verified based on the field test results, and the error was within 7%. It was found that the cutting caused the first-order modal vibration, and the DVA was placed in the cavity of the cutting arm to control the modal vibration of this order. To minimize the vibration, a coupled dynamics model between the DVA and bolter miner was developed, and the DVA parameters were optimized. The results showed that the acceleration RMS and peak values of the cutting part were reduced by 12% and 30.1%, respectively; the acceleration RMS and peak values of the main frame were reduced by 6.5% and 17%, respectively, and the fatigue life of the cutting arm was increased by 34.2%

Research on Fault Diagnosis of Rolling Bearings Based on Variational Mode Decomposition Improved by the Niche Genetic Algorithm

Due to the influence of signal-to-noise ratio in the early failure stage of rolling bearings in rotating machinery, it is difficult to effectively extract feature information. Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) has been widely used to decompose vibration signals which can reflect more fault omens. In order to improve the efficiency and accuracy, a method to optimize VMD by using the Niche Genetic Algorithm (NGA) is proposed in this paper. In this method, the optimal Shannon entropy of modal components in a VMD algorithm is taken as the optimization objective, by using the NGA to constantly update and optimize the combination of influencing parameters composed of α and K so as to minimize the local minimum entropy. According to the obtained optimization results, the optimal input parameters of the VMD algorithm were set. The method mentioned is applied to the fault extraction of a simulated signal and a measured signal of a rolling bearing. The decomposition process of the rolling-bearing fault signal was transferred to the variational frame by the NGA-VMD algorithm, and several eigenmode function components were obtained. The energy feature extracted from the modal component containing the main fault information was used as the input vector of a particle swarm optimized support vector machine (PSO-SVM) and used to identify the fault type of the rolling bearing. The analysis results of the simulation signal and measured signal show that: the NGA-VMD algorithm can decompose the vibration signal of a rolling bearing accurately and has a better robust performance and correct recognition rate than the VMD algorithm. It can highlight the local characteristics of the original sample data and reduce the interference of the parameters selected artificially in the VMD algorithm on the processing results, improving the fault-diagnosis efficiency of rolling bearings

Influence of Cross-Shear and Contact Pressure on Wear Mechanisms of PEEK and CFR-PEEK in Total Hip Joint Replacements

With the increasing market demand for artificial hip joints, total hip joint replacement has gradually become an effective means of treating a series of hip joint diseases. In order to improve the service life of artificial hip joints, some new artificial hip joint materials, including polyetheretherketone (PEEK) and carbon fiber reinforced polyetheretherketone (CFR-PEEK), have been developed. In this paper, pin-on-plate wear tests under different cross-shear ratios and contact pressures were carried out to study the wear mechanism and worn surface topography of PEEK and CFR-PEEK. The experimental results showed that the wear of PEEK was associated with cross-shear, while CFR-PEEK was not. When the cross-shear ratio was 0.039 and contact pressure was 3.18 MPa, PEEK had poor wear resistance and its wear factor was about eight times that of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE). The wear resistance of CFR-PEEK had a significant advantage, since its wear factor was about 30% of that of PEEK. The wear factors of PEEK and CFR-PEEK increased as the contact pressure increased. The arithmetic average of the height amplitude of the surface, Sa, also increased gradually according to the topography of the worn surface. The wear mechanisms of PEEK and CFR-PEEK were scratching, plough cutting, and abrasion Since CFR-PEEK had good wear resistance and insensitivity to cross-shear motion, it is suitable for making artificial hip joints under low contact pressure condition

In situ photoluminescence probe to study the melting behavior of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene)

In situ photoluminescence (PL) measurements for regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (rr-P3HT) at various annealing temperatures were performed. When the annealing temperature is above $230\ ^{\circ}\text{C}$ , the PL spectra exhibit two significant changes: a sudden increase of integrated intensity and the appearance of a grand new peak at higher energy. According to the corresponding absorbance spectra, it was found that these changes in PL spectra are originated from the torsional defects in the P3HT backbone introduced by melting transition. Furthermore, the variation trend of the new peak to whole PL emission intensity ratio almost overlaps with the endothermic peak in the Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) thermogram. It gives direct evidence that the intensity ratio can be used as a semi-quantitative probe to the melting degree of P3HT. Then, the P3HT melting behavior in a blend of P3HT and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) was analyzed using this probe. The results proved that the introduction of PCBM into P3HT does not simply make P3HT melt at a lower temperature, but rather make it have a binary eutectic melting behavior. So, these findings can provide an in situ and damage-free method to study the melting process of P3HT

Molecular epidemiology of Enterocytozoon bieneusi from foxes and raccoon dogs in the Henan and Hebei provinces in China

Abstract Background Enterocytozoon bieneusi is a zoonotic pathogen widely distributed in animals and humans. It can cause diarrhea and even death in immunocompromised hosts. Approximately 800 internal transcribed spacer (ITS) genotypes have been identified in E. bieneusi. Farmed foxes and raccoon dogs are closely associated to humans and might be the reservoir of E. bieneusi which is known to have zoonotic potential. However, there are only a few studies about E. bieneusi genotype identification and epidemiological survey in foxes and raccoon dogs in Henan and Hebei province. Thus, the present study investigated the infection rates and genotypes of E. bieneusi in farmed foxes and raccoon dogs in the Henan and Hebei provinces. Result A total of 704 and 884 fecal specimens were collected from foxes and raccoon dogs, respectively. Nested PCR was conducted based on ITS of ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and then multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was conducted to analyze the genotypes. The result showed that infection rates of E. bieneusi in foxes and raccoon dogs were 18.32% and 5.54%, respectively. Ten E. bieneusi genotypes with zoonotic potential (NCF2, NCF3, D, EbpC, CHN-DC1, SCF2, CHN-F1, Type IV, BEB4, and BEB6) were identified in foxes and raccoon dogs. Totally 178 ITS-positive DNA specimens were identified from foxes and raccoon dogs and these specimens were then subjected to MLST analysis. In the MLST analysis, 12, 2, 7 and 8 genotypes were identified in at the mini-/ micro-satellite loci MS1, MS3, MS4 and MS7, respectively. A total of 14 multilocus genotypes were generated using ClustalX 2.1 software. Overall, the present study evaluated the infection of E. bieneusi in foxes and raccoon dogs in the Henan and Hebei province, and investigated the zoonotic potential of the E. bieneusi in foxes and raccoon dogs. Conclusions These findings expand the geographic distribution information of E. bieneusi’ host in China and was helpful in preventing against the infection of E. bieneusi with zoonotic potential in foxes and raccoon dogs

Additional file 1 of Molecular epidemiology of Enterocytozoon bieneusi from foxes and raccoon dogs in the Henan and Hebei provinces in China

Supplementary Table S1: Names of the farms where the samples were collecte