Fire exposed aluminium structures

Material properties and mechanical response models for fire design of steel structures are based on extensive research and experience. Contrarily, the behaviour of aluminium load bearing structures exposed to fire is relatively unexplored. This article gives an overview of physical and mechanical properties at elevated temperature of frequently applied aluminium alloys, found in relevant literature and discusses mechanical response models currently applied for fire exposed aluminium structures. A comparison is made with steel structures exposed to fire

LCF assessment on heat shield components of nuclear fusion experiment "Wendelstein 7-X" by critical plane criteria

Abstract The Wendelstein 7-X modular advanced stellarator has started operations at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany, in 2016. In the first phase, the machine operated restricting the plasma pulses to low power and short lengths. Plans to achieve actively cooled components are scheduled to start in 2020 when the machine will operate in steady-state at full power. FEM simulations for steady-state operations revealed high plastic strains at several locations, for most of all the rigidly supported Plasma Facing Components; therefore, there is the risk of a premature fatigue failure before the end of the scheduled operations of the machine. The aim of this study is to analyse, by means of the commercial code ABAQUS, the behavior of such critical components estimating, eventually, their fatigue life by means of the commercial code fe-safe

Characterisation of the new EpCAM-specific antibody HO-3: implications for trifunctional antibody immunotherapy of cancer

Epithelial cell adhesion molecule EpCAM is a transmembrane glycoprotein that is frequently overexpressed in a variety of carcinomas. This pan-carcinoma antigen has served as the target for a plethora of immunotherapies. Innovative therapeutic approaches include the use of trifunctional antibodies (trAbs) that recruit and activate different types of immune effector cells at the tumour site. The trAb catumaxomab has dual specificity for EpCAM and CD3. In patients with malignant ascites, catumaxomab significantly increased the paracentesis-free interval, corroborating the high efficacy of this therapeutic antibody. Here, we characterised the monoclonal antibody (mAb) HO-3, that is, the EpCAM-binding arm of catumaxomab. Peptide mapping indicated that HO-3 recognises a discontinuous epitope, having three binding sites in the extracellular region of EpCAM. Studies with glycosylation-deficient mutants showed that mAb HO-3 recognised EpCAM independently of its glycosylation status. High-affinity binding was not only detected for mAb HO-3, but also for the monovalent EpCAM-binding arm of catumaxomab with an excellent KD of 5.6 × 10−10 M. Furthermore, trAb catumaxomab was at least a 1000-fold more effective in eliciting the eradication of tumour cells by effector peripheral blood mononuclear cells compared with mAb HO-3. These findings suggest the great therapeutic potential of trAbs and clearly speak in favour of EpCAM-directed cancer immunotherapies

A multi-scale hybrid approach to the modelling and design of a novel micro-channel cooling structure for the W7X divertor

The second operating phase of the W7X stellarator, with an expanded set of plasma-facing components, includes the test of divertor tiles with a continuous heat load reaching 10 MW/ m2. The divertor tiles are cooled by subcooled water. Here a novel cooling concept, based on a network of parallel arrays of micro-channels (MC) with sub-millimetre dimensions, is investigated on a 0.1 m x 0.1 m tile, realizable by Additive Manufacturing. Detailed CFD simulations of the mock-up are performed to check the cooling uniformity using a multi-scale approach, aiming at limiting the dimension of the computational grid without a major loss of accuracy. First, the detailed hydraulic and thermal characterization on a sub-domain with of a small group of MC is performed. Then, the block of MC is substituted with an equivalent porous strip (PS), calibrating the hydraulic and thermal characteristics of the porous medium. The model is verified on an array of MCs or PSs connected to the same manifolds, showing the capability to reproduce the pressure drop and temperature increase with maximum errors of 1.05% and similar to 20% in nominal conditions, respectively. The numerical model of the entire tile equipped with PSs is then reliably adopted to evaluate the thermal-hydraulic performance of the cooling device