A Fundamental Study into the Use of Different Ferrous Ores on Melt Characteristics of Sinter

Steelmakers are becoming more motivated to use iron ore resources with a wider range of grades and mineral types that were previously considered unsuitable or uneconomical for sintering. In this respect, specific issues which now require further investigation and understanding include the sintering of ores with a) overall higher gangue content, b) elements that cause problems in the steel manufacturing operations, and/or c) distinctive sintering performance compared with traditional hematite-rich iron ores. Laboratory-based investigation of the sintering performance and the behaviour of gangue impurities during sintering is an important step towards the successful utilisation of these resources in steelmaking. To explore the feasibility of small-scale sintering pot testing, a ‘millipot’ facility (diameter of 53 mm and height of 400 mm) was established and used to examine the sintering performance of iron ores and other non-traditional ferrous materials. The sintering performance of a millipot was examined across a range of operational conditions (coke rate and suction pressure) and compared with an industrial sinter strand operation. Tablet tests were also performed to assist in the design of the millipot experiments and identify conditions for achieving mineral composition similar to the industrial sinter. For the millipot experiments, the materials used need to be compacted to increase the bulk density, and a higher coke rate is required to compensate the high heat loss caused by wall effects. A higher suction pressure is also necessary to maintain an oxidising atmosphere in the sinter bed. As expected, it was not possible to completely eliminate the wall effect, which results in more primary hematite at edges of the sintered column. Heavier compacting at the periphery of the column can minimise the wall effect. The sintered material from the centre of column simulates industrial sinter reasonably well. As such, millipot provides a practical technique to evaluate the sintering process and material performance at laboratory scale, helping to bridge the gap between tablet sintering and large scale pot sintering, or full scale plant trials. The results of millipot testing can be used for designing larger scale experiments or commercial sintering trials..

Inter-Organizational Service Delivery in Chinese Hospital Industry: A Social Exchange Perspective

This article develops and tests a conceptual framework to shed light on relationship benefits and the inter-organizational patient referral process between Chinese hospitals. Based on a sample of 175 dyadic pairs of responses, the study empirically tests for reciprocal behaviors in inter-organizational service delivery process. Chinese hospitals can be divided into low and high level categories, and their benefits in the cooperation are different. The results indicated that performance improvement and knowledge acquisition as the benefits of low level hospitals positively influence their willingness of providing upstream patient referrals to their partner, and market development as the benefits of high level hospitals positively influences their willingness of providing downstream patient referrals to their partner. Thus, the realization of each party’s benefits has a significant effect on the success of inter-organizational healthcare delivery. Some implications are provided for practitioners, academics, governments as well as the public

Nonlinear vibration of hypoid gear with backlash

Due to the machining errors, alignment error, wear, tear and time varying stiffness of hypoid teeth, the vibration of hypoid gears is inevitably produced in the course of working, and its vibration and noise is the main sources of vibration and noise in the automobile transmission. Study on nonlinear vibration and noise of the hypoid gear pair, and investigating on reducing its vibration and noise are of great significance. Firstly, a simplified nonlinear vibration model of the hypoid gears of main reducer, with considering the time-varying teeth stiffness and teeth surface friction damping, was established. Then, a numerical simulation method was employed to simulate different gear backlash effects on the hypoid gear vibration behaviors caused by the gear worn, and effects on the gear non-linear vibration from different work speeds of gear and different loading torques were investigated. In order to help to explain the non-linear vibration phenomenon of the hypoid gears, the 2-D phase plane diagram and the 3-D trajectory were employed. Lastly, the bench test was carried out to verify the simulation results on vibration of hypoid gears with backlash

Ethyl 3-bromo-1-(3-chloro-2-pyrid­yl)-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazole-5-carboxyl­ate

The title compound, C11H11BrClN3O2, contains two mol­ecules in the asymmetric unit in which the dihedral angles between the pyrazole and pyridine rings are 30.0 (2) and 22.3 (2)°

(E)-2-[(4-Chloro-1,3-dimethyl-1H-pyrazol-5-yl)methyl­eneamino]benzamide

In the title compound, C13H13ClN4O, the dihedral angle between the aromatic rings is 33.47 (9)° and an intra­molecular N—H⋯N hydrogen bond generates an S(6) ring. In the crystal, inversion dimers linked by pairs of N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds occur, resulting in R 2 2(8) loops

2-(3-Methyl-2-nitro­phen­yl)-4,5-dihydro-1,3-oxazole

In the title compound, C10H10N2O3, an inter­mediate in the synthesis of anthranilamide insecticides, all the non-H atoms except the nitro-group O atom lie on a crystallographic mirror plane. The H atoms of the methyl group are disordered over two sets of sites with equal occupancies. In the crystal structure, C—H⋯N links lead to chains of mol­ecules propagating in [100]

Subsea DC collection grid with high power security for offshore renewables

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant number EP/K006428/1]; and the European Regional Development Fund [grant number LUPS/ERDF/2010/4/1/0164].Peer reviewedPostprin

A graph-cut approach to image segmentation using an affinity graph based on l0−sparse representation of features

International audienceWe propose a graph-cut based image segmentation method by constructing an affinity graph using l0 sparse representation. Computing first oversegmented images, we associate with all segments, that we call superpixels, a collection of features. We find the sparse representation of each set of features over the dictionary of all features by solving a l0-minimization problem. Then, the connection information between superpixels is encoded as the non-zero representation coefficients, and the affinity of connected superpixels is derived by the corresponding representation error. This provides a l0 affinity graph that has interesting properties of long range and sparsity, and a suitable graph cut yields a segmentation. Experimental results on the BSD database demonstrate that our method provides perfectly semantic regions even with a constant segmentation number, but also that very competitive quantitative results are achieved