Characterising the friction and wear between the piston ring and cylinder liner based on acoustic emission analysis

In this paper, an experimental investigation was carried out to evaluate the friction and wear between the cylinder liner and piston ring using acoustic emission (AE) technology. Based on a typical compression ignition (CI) diesel engine, four types of alternative fuels (Fischer-Tropsch fuel, methanol-diesel, emulsified diesel and standard diesel) were tested under dif-ferent operating conditions. AE signals collected from the cylinder block of the testing en-gine. In the meantime, the AE signals in one engine cycle are further segregated into small segments to eliminate the effects of valve events on friction events of cylinder liner. In this way, the resulted AE signals are consistent with the prediction of hydrodynamic lubrication processes. Test results show that there are clear evidences of high AE deviations between dif-ferent fuels. In particular, the methanol-diesel blended fuel produces higher AE energy, which indicates there are more wear between the piston ring and cylinder liner than using standard diesel. On the other hand, the other two alternative fuels have been found little dif-ferences in AE signal from the normal diesel. This paper has shown that AE analysis is an ef-fective technique for on-line assessment of engine friction and wear, which provides a novel approach to support the development of new engine fuels and new lubricants

An Improved Optimal Slip Ratio Prediction considering Tyre Inflation Pressure Changes

The prediction of optimal slip ratio is crucial to vehicle control systems. Many studies have verified there is a definitive impact of tyre pressure change on the optimal slip ratio. However, the existing method of optimal slip ratio prediction has not taken into account the influence of tyre pressure changes. By introducing a second-order factor, an improved optimal slip ratio prediction considering tyre inflation pressure is proposed in this paper. In order to verify and evaluate the performance of the improved prediction, a cosimulation platform is developed by using MATLAB/Simulink and CarSim software packages, achieving a comprehensive simulation study of vehicle braking performance cooperated with an ABS controller. The simulation results show that the braking distances and braking time under different tyre pressures and initial braking speeds are effectively shortened with the improved prediction of optimal slip ratio. When the tyre pressure is slightly lower than the nominal pressure, the difference of braking performances between original optimal slip ratio and improved optimal slip ratio is the most obvious

Influence of long-waved road roughness on fatigue life of dump truck frame

Asymmetrical long-waved road unevenness can accelerate the fatigue failure of the dump truck frame. Due to the difficulty of the tire damping modelling and the complex pitch motion of balanced suspension, it is hard to reveal the relationship between the parameters of long-waved road and the fatigue life of dump truck frame. Firstly, on the premise of not introducing truncation error, by applying matrix operations, an 11 DOF vibration model of dump truck considering tire damping is established to simulate the dynamic responding loads of frame bearing points. Secondly, the proposed model is validated by comparing the predicted and measured vehicle response and subsequently used to predict the dynamic vehicle loads. Finally, using the simulated responding load-time histories, the paper calculates and analyzes the fatigue life of dump truck under different road profile excitations. The results show that the increase of road amplitude can lead to fatigue weak area expanding to the back part of frame, and logarithmically shorten the fatigue life of frame

The next-to-next-to-leading order soft function for top quark pair production

We present the first calculation of the next-to-next-to-leading order threshold soft function for top quark pair production at hadron colliders, with full velocity dependence of the massive top quarks. Our results are fully analytic, and can be entirely written in terms of generalized polylogarithms. The scale-dependence of our result coincides with the well-known two-loop anomalous dimension matrix including the three-parton correlations, which at the two-loop order only appear when more than one massive partons are involved in the scattering process. In the boosted limit, our result exhibits the expected factorization property of mass logarithms, which leads to a consistent extraction of the soft fragmentation function. The next-to-next-to-leading order soft function obtained in this paper is an important ingredient for threshold resummation at the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures; v2: added references, matches the published versio

Ultracompact high-efficiency polarising beam splitter based on silicon nanobrick arrays

Since the transmission of anisotropic nano-structures is sensitive to the polarisation of an incident beam, a novel polarising beam splitter (PBS) based on silicon nanobrick arrays is proposed. With careful design of such structures, an incident beam with polarisation direction aligned with the long axis of the nanobrick is almost totally reflected (~98.5%), whilst that along the short axis is nearly totally transmitted (~94.3%). More importantly, by simply changing the width of the nanobrick we can shift the peak response wavelength from 1460 nm to 1625 nm, covering S, C and L bands of the fiber telecommunications windows. The silicon nanobrick-based PBS can find applications in many fields which require ultracompactness, high efficiency, and compatibility with semiconductor industry technologies

La política exterior de China

Después de muchos años de tanteos en la oscuridad en busca de un camino a la independencia y emancipación nacionales, incluso no faltaba gente que deseaba prosperar China con el sistema y los conceptos de valor del occidente pero sin salir con la suya, el pueblo chino encontró su salida que le condujo a la victoria marcada por la fundación de la República Popular de China 1949, símbolo del inicio de una nueva era histórica de China en que el pueblo se ha convertido en dueño del país y China, en un miembro en pie de igualdad de la comunidad internacional. Por lo tanto,el pueblo chino aprecia mucho los frutos de su lucha y anhela, igual que los demás pueblos del mundo, el desarrollo y la prosperidad de su patria en medio de una atmósfera de paz internacional. Y el gobierno chino persiste consecuentemente una política exterior de paz e independencia, partiendo de los intereses fundamentales del pueblo chino y de los pueblos del mundo.Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales (IRI

La política exterior de China

Después de muchos años de tanteos en la oscuridad en busca de un camino a la independencia y emancipación nacionales, incluso no faltaba gente que deseaba prosperar China con el sistema y los conceptos de valor del occidente pero sin salir con la suya, el pueblo chino encontró su salida que le condujo a la victoria marcada por la fundación de la República Popular de China 1949, símbolo del inicio de una nueva era histórica de China en que el pueblo se ha convertido en dueño del país y China, en un miembro en pie de igualdad de la comunidad internacional. Por lo tanto,el pueblo chino aprecia mucho los frutos de su lucha y anhela, igual que los demás pueblos del mundo, el desarrollo y la prosperidad de su patria en medio de una atmósfera de paz internacional. Y el gobierno chino persiste consecuentemente una política exterior de paz e independencia, partiendo de los intereses fundamentales del pueblo chino y de los pueblos del mundo.Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales (IRI

High quality electron beam generation in a proton-driven hollow plasma wakefield accelerator

Simulations of proton-driven plasma wakefield accelerators have demonstrated substantially higher accelerating gradients compared to conventional accelerators and the viability of accelerating electrons to the energy frontier in a single plasma stage. However, due to the strong intrinsic transverse fields varying both radially and in time, the witness beam quality is still far from suitable for practical application in future colliders. Here we demonstrate efficient acceleration of electrons in proton-driven wakefields in a hollow plasma channel. In this regime, the witness bunch is positioned in the region with a strong accelerating field, free from plasma electrons and ions. We show that the electron beam carrying the charge of about 10% of 1 TeV proton driver charge can be accelerated to 0.6 TeV with preserved normalized emittance in a single channel of 700 m. This high quality and high charge beam may pave the way for the development of future plasma-based energy frontier colliders.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Investigation into the dynamic responses and tribological characteristics of cylinder liners in a IC engine with alternative fuels

Promoted by the realisation of dwindling fossil fuel supplies and their adverse environmental impacts, there more and more types of alternative fuels to fossil diesel have been used and investigated in compression ignition engines. However, the majority of researches on alternative fuels mainly focus on their power performance, efficiency and emission performance, without fully investigating the potential effects on the vibro-acoustic emissions and tribological characteristics of engines caused by their significant differences in physical and chemical properties. Consequently, the impacts of long-term use of alternative fuels on structural failure, lubrication degradation, friction aggravation, overall service life spans and associated maintenance activities of internal combustion (IC) engines have not yet been fully understood. To reduce this gap this thesis focuses on the investigation into the vibration responses of cylinder liners in a diesel engine to accurately characterises the tribological behaviour between the piston rings and cylinders which is one of the most decisive sub-processes that determine engine performance and yet is correlated with the combustion of different fuels. In particular, the investigation was carried out by coupling the hydrodynamic lubrication model with structural vibration effects through a series of extensive numerical simulations and systematic experimental evaluations in order to establish a vibration based technique to monitoring tribological behaviour and thereby accurately assess the influence. Based on the dynamic coupling mechanisms between the combustion characteristics of alternative fuels and the tribological behaviours of cylinder liners, the most significant influences from the fuel burning on tribological behaviour of cylinder liners concerned in this study is a direct and physical approach such as the effect of liner vibrations on cylinder friction process, even though an indirect and chemical but very slow approach such as the deterioration of oil properties by combustion products can happen. To characterise the direct influence a finite element dynamic model was developed and validated for predicting the dynamic responses of cylinder liners to respective excitation sources including the highly nonlinear combustion pressure shocks and subsequent piston slap impacts. The realistic consideration of both the characteristics of structural modes up to 15kHz and nonlinearities of elastic assembly constraints allows obtaining accurate prediction that the combustion shocks cause vibrations in a frequency range around 10kHz with an amplitude order of 0.01μm, whereas the piston slaps in frequency range from 1k to 5kHz with an amplitude order 0.2μm, which gives a clear and quantitative indication of the nonlinear phenomena of liner vibration due to combusting alternative fuels and varying lubrication conditions. In addition, a decomposition analysis of piston side-thrust forces provides more insight of the localized response characteristics corresponding to coupling interactions of combustion force with inertia force of piston assembly. To further investigate the potential influences of structural deformations to tribological behaviours of cylinder assemblies, a new dynamic deformation based lubrication model was developed based on an employment of improved shearing factors in which the effect of inevitable liner vibrations is included to obtain a more realistic lubricating film formation, distribution and tribological behaviours. The simulation studies show that this advancement in modelling oil films predicts that the biodiesel with more intense vibration emissions is able to reduce the friction loss between pistons and liners, whereas the methanol-diesel blend with weakened liner dynamic response may exacerbate the friction loss of IC engines. This finding confirms further that the vibration responses allow a straightforward and in-depth indication of the effect generated by using different fuels. In addition, a further experimental investigation was carried out based on a motoring engine test, in which high frequency sinusoidal vibrations at 25 kHz, 30 kHz and 40 kHz are added to the external surface of the linear. The observable changes in motoring torque verify that proper external vibrations can affect the tribological behaviours between the pistons and liners, including both asperity friction and viscous friction, and resulting in the friction reduction of IC engines. Particularly the 40 kHz vibration at the maximal driving power of the test device can achieve a reduction of 1.79% in the motoring torque. This has demonstrated more on the effectiveness of this vibration based diagnostic method in assessing the influences of alternative fuels upon tribological behaviours of piston ring and cylinder liners. Finally, further researches on the subjects is also proposed in order to complete the vibration based diagnostics in achieving more accurate assessment of engine lubrication conditions and effective friction reduction