16,123 research outputs found

    A radial mode ultrasonic horn for the inactivation of <i>Escherichia coli</i> K12

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    Tuned cylindrical radial mode ultrasonic horns offer advantages over ultrasonic probes in the design of flow-through devices for bacterial inactivation. This study presents a comparison of the effectiveness of a radial horn and probe in the inactivation of Escherichia coli K12. The radial horn is designed using finite element analysis and the predicted modal parameters are validated using experimental modal analysis. A validated finite element model of the probe is also presented. Visual studies of the cavitation fields produced by the radial horn and probe are carried out using luminol and also backlighting to demonstrate the advantages of radial horns in producing a more focused cavitation field with widely dispersed streamers. Microbiological studies show that, for the same power density, better inactivation of E. coli K12 is achieved using the radial horn and, also, the radial horn offers greater achievable power density resulting in further improvements in bacterial inactivation. The radial horn is shown to be more effective than the probe device and offers opportunities to design in-line flow-through devices for processing applications

    Recurrent flow analysis in spatiotemporally chaotic 2-dimensional Kolmogorov flow

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    Motivated by recent success in the dynamical systems approach to transitional flow, we study the efficiency and effectiveness of extracting simple invariant sets (recurrent flows) directly from chaotic/turbulent flows and the potential of these sets for providing predictions of certain statistics of the flow. Two-dimensional Kolmogorov flow (the 2D Navier-Stokes equations with a sinusoidal body force) is studied both over a square [0, 2{\pi}]2 torus and a rectangular torus extended in the forcing direction. In the former case, an order of magnitude more recurrent flows are found than previously (Chandler & Kerswell 2013) and shown to give improved predictions for the dissipation and energy pdfs of the chaos via periodic orbit theory. Over the extended torus at low forcing amplitudes, some extracted states mimick the statistics of the spatially-localised chaos present surprisingly well recalling the striking finding of Kawahara & Kida (2001) in low-Reynolds-number plane Couette flow. At higher forcing amplitudes, however, success is limited highlighting the increased dimensionality of the chaos and the need for larger data sets. Algorithmic developments to improve the extraction procedure are discussed

    A Note on the Modelling and Interpretation of a Public Goods Game Experiment

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    This paper presents an alternative interpretation of an experimental public goods game dataset, particularly on the understanding of the observed antisocial behaviour phenomenon between subjects of a public goods experiment in different cities around the world. The anonymous nature of contributions and punishments in this experiment are taken into account to interpret results. This is done by analysing dynamic behaviour in terms of mean contributions across societies and their association with antisocial punishment. By taking into account the heterogeneity between the cities in which the public goods experiment has been performed, this analysis show a contrasting interpretation. Instead of one trend across cities, two opposite trends are seen across different cities. In addition, we find that the presence of these trends to have an impact on the role antisocial and prosocial behaviour in public goods games. When accounting for these trends, the antisocial and prosocial behaviour is found to have a significant role in Western societies

    A robust design methodology suitable for application to one-off products

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    Robust design is an activity of fundamental importance when designing large, complex, one-off engineering products. Work is described which is concerned with the application of the theory of design of experiments and stochastic optimization methods to explore and optimize at the concept design stage. The discussion begins with a description of state-of-the-art stochastic techniques and their application to robust design. The content then focuses on a generic methodology which is capable of manipulating design algorithms that can be used to describe a design concept. An example is presented, demonstrating the use of the system for the robust design of a catamaran with respect to seakeeping
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