Improved MLPG_R method for simulating 2D interaction between violent waves and elastic structures

Interaction between violent water waves and structures is of a major concern and one of the important issues that has not been well understood in marine engineering. This paper will present first attempt to extend the Meshless Local Petrov Galerkin method with Rankine source solution (MLPG_R) for studying such interaction, which solves the Navier-stokes equations for water waves and the elastic vibration mequations for structures under wave impact. The MLPG_R method has been applied successfully to modeling various violent water waves and their interaction with rigid structures in our previous publications. To make the method robust for modeling wave elastic-structure interaction (hydroelasticity) problems concerned here, a near-strongly coupled and partitioned procedure is proposed to deal with coupling between violent waves and dynamics of structures. In addition, a novel approach is adopted to estimate pressure gradient when updating velocities and positions of fluid particles, leading to a relatively smoother pressure time history that is crucial for success in simulating problems about wavestructure interaction. The developed method is used to model several cases, covering a range from small wave to violent waves. Numerical results for them are compared with those obtained from other methods and from experiments in literature. Reasonable good agreement between them is achieved

Incompressible SPH method based on Rankine source solution for violent water wave simulation

With wide applications, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method (abbreviated as SPH) has become an important numerical tool for solving complex flows, in particular those with a rapidly moving free surface. For such problems, the incompressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (ISPH) has been shown to yield better and more stable pressure time histories than the traditional SPH by many papers in literature. However, the existing ISPH method directly approximates the second order derivatives of the functions to be solved by using the Poisson equation. The order of accuracy of the method becomes low, especially when particles are distributed in a disorderly manner, which generally happens for modelling violent water waves. This paper introduces a new formulation using the Rankine source solution. In the new approach to the ISPH, the Poisson equation is first transformed into another form that does not include any derivative of the functions to be solved, and as a result, does not need to numerically approximate derivatives. The advantage of the new approach without need of numerical approximation of derivatives is obvious, potentially leading to a more robust numerical method. The newly formulated method is tested by simulating various water waves, and its convergent behaviours are numerically studied in this paper. Its results are compared with experimental data in some cases and reasonably good agreement is achieved. More importantly, numerical results clearly show that the newly developed method does need less number of particles and so less computational costs to achieve the similar level of accuracy, or to produce more accurate results with the same number of particles compared with the traditional SPH and existing ISPH when it is applied to modelling water waves

Recycling graphene from supercapacitor electrodes as reinforcing filler for epoxy resins

A wet shredding process has been developed for recycling graphene from the electrodes of supercapacitors into polymer composites. At first, supercapacitors are cut open to expose the interior graphene based electrodes. The electrodes are heat-treated at 200o C to remove the contained solvent, and the heat treatment temperature can be further increased to remove the polymer binder, which binds the graphene on an aluminium foil current collector. After heat treatment, the electrodes are shredded in an epoxy resin to strip off the graphene and the graphene was subsequently dispersed using a high shear mixer. The dispersed graphene is used directly as reinforcing filler for the epoxy resin. A content of 0.40% (wt) of the recycled graphene resulted in a significant increase in both the tensile strength and elongation at break of the epoxy resin. Removal of the binder increases the reinforcing effect of the recycled graphene. However, a compromise can be made to leave the binder in the recycled graphene in order to avoid secondary pollution

Comparison of different iterative schemes for ISPH based on Rankine source solution

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method has a good adaptability for the simulation of free surface flow problems. There are two forms of SPH. One is weak compressible SPH and the other one is incompressible SPH (ISPH). Compared with the former one, ISPH method performs better in many cases. ISPH based on Rankine source solution can perform better than traditional ISPH, as it can use larger stepping length by avoiding the second order derivative in pressure Poisson equation. However, ISPH_R method needs to solve the sparse linear matrix for pressure Poisson equation, which is one of the most expensive parts during one time stepping calculation. Iterative methods are normally used for solving Poisson equation with large particle numbers. However, there are many iterative methods available and the question for using which one is still open. In this paper, three iterative methods, CGS, Bi-CGstab and GMRES are compared, which are suitable and typical for large unsymmetrical sparse matrix solutions. According to the numerical tests on different cases, still water test, dam breaking, violent tank sloshing, solitary wave slamming, the GMRES method is more efficient than CGS and Bi-CGstab for ISPH method

An efficient and scalable pipeline for epitope tagging in mammalian stem cells using Cas9 ribonucleoprotein

AbstractCRISPR/Cas9 can be used for precise genetic knock-in of epitope tags into endogenous genes, simplifying experimental analysis of protein function. However, Cas9-assisted epitope tagging in primary mammalian cell cultures is often inefficient and reliant on plasmid-based selection strategies. Here we demonstrate improved knock-in efficiencies of diverse tags (V5, 3XFLAG, Myc, HA) using co-delivery of Cas9 protein pre-complexed with two-part synthetic modified RNAs (annealed crRNA:tracrRNA) and single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotide (ssODN) repair templates. Knock-in efficiencies of ~5-30%, were achieved without selection in embryonic stem (ES) cells, neural stem (NS) cells, and brain tumour-derived stem cells. Biallelic-tagged clonal lines were readily derived and used to define Olig2 chromatin-bound interacting partners. Using our novel web-based design tool, we established a 96-well format pipeline that enabled V5-tagging of sixty different transcription factors. This efficient, selection-free and scalable epitope tagging pipeline enables systematic surveys of protein expression levels, subcellular localization, and interactors across diverse mammalian stem cells.</jats:p

A review on approaches to solving Poisson’s equation in projection-based meshless methods for modelling strongly nonlinear water waves

Three meshless methods, including incompressible smooth particle hydrodynamic (ISPH), moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) and meshless local Petrov–Galerkin method based on Rankine source solution (MLPG_R) methods, are often employed to model nonlinear or violent water waves and their interaction with marine structures. They are all based on the projection procedure, in which solving Poisson’s equation about pressure at each time step is a major task. There are three different approaches to solving Poisson’s equation, i.e. (1) discretizing Laplacian directly by approximating the second-order derivatives, (2) transferring Poisson’s equation into a weak form containing only gradient of pressure and (3) transferring Poisson’s equation into a weak form that does not contain any derivatives of functions to be solved. The first approach is often adopted in ISPH and MPS, while the third one is implemented by the MLPG_R method. This paper attempts to review the most popular, though not all, approaches available in literature for solving the equation

The effect of graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles on the processing of epoxy/glass fiber composites using resin infusion

In this paper, the effects of graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles on glass fiber composite processing by incorporating them into epoxy resin were investigated. GO was synthesized from graphite powder and was mixed with epoxy resin. Three different GO contents of 0.05, 0.1, and 0.2 wt% were used. Epoxy/GO samples were tested for rheology and cure kinetics to evaluate the effects of GO content on important resin infusion processing parameters. The results show that adding GO to neat epoxy resin increased the viscosity and affected the resin cure reaction by reducing the resin gel time. After that, glass fiber composites were prepared using the resin infusion process. Samples with 0.2 wt% GO result in very slow resin infiltration time with premature resin gelation. A 30 % increase in flexural strength and a 21 % increase in flexural modulus are manifested by adding GO as the secondary reinforcement to glass fiber composites

Synergistic toughening of composite fibres by self-alignment of reduced graphene oxide and carbon nanotubes

The extraordinary properties of graphene and carbon nanotubes motivate the development of methods for their use in producing continuous, strong, tough fibres. Previous work has shown that the toughness of the carbon nanotube-reinforced polymer fibres exceeds that of previously known materials. Here we show that further increased toughness results from combining carbon nanotubes and reduced graphene oxide flakes in solution-spun polymer fibres. The gravimetric toughness approaches 1,000 J g−1, far exceeding spider dragline silk (165 J g−1) and Kevlar (78 J g−1). This toughness enhancement is consistent with the observed formation of an interconnected network of partially aligned reduced graphene oxide flakes and carbon nanotubes during solution spinning, which act to deflect cracks and allow energy-consuming polymer deformation. Toughness is sensitive to the volume ratio of the reduced graphene oxide flakes to the carbon nanotubes in the spinning solution and the degree of graphene oxidation. The hybrid fibres were sewable and weavable, and could be shaped into high-modulus helical springs

An overview of burst, buckling, durability and corrosion analysis of lightweight FRP composite pipes and their applicability

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The main aim of this review article was to address the performance of filament wound fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composite pipes and their critical properties, such as burst, buckling, durability and corrosion. The importance of process parameters concerning merits and demerits of the manufacturing methods was discussed for the better-quality performance. Burst analysis revealed that the winding angle of ±55° was observed to be optimum with minimum failure mechanisms, such as matrix cracking, whitening, leakage and fracture. The reduction of buckling effect was reported in case of lower hoop stress value in the hoop to axial stress ratio against axial, compression and torsion. A significant improvement in energy absorption was observed in the hybrid composite pipes with the effect of thermal treatment. However, the varying winding angle in FRP pipe fabrication was reported as an influencing factor affecting all the aforementioned properties. Almost 90% of the reviewed studies was done using E-glass/epoxy materials for the composite pipe production. By overcoming associated limitations, such as replacing synthetic materials, designing new material combinations and cost-benefit analysis, the production cost of the lightweight FRP composite pipes can be decreased for the real-time applications.Peer reviewe