Studies on semi-cylindrical solar tunnel dryer for drying wastewater sludge

Drying plays an important process for wastewater sludge management, as it can minimise the volume of wastewater sludge before disposal, and consequently the cost of storage, handling and transport. In this study, the wastewater sludge was dried by using a solar tunnel greenhouse drying system. The performance of the dryer for drying wastewater sludge has been analyzed through no load and full load test. The three full load drying tests recorded that the temperature inside the tunnel dryer fluctuated around 55±5°C; while the no load drying test, the temperature of the drying tunnel maintained within 60±5°C; as compared to the ambient temperature of 30±5°C. The average moisture content of solar dried sludge decreased from 88.69 - 90.84% to 7.78 – 13.30% in the mixing conditions and 14.78 – 19.52% in the non-mixing conditions, in 5 days. The study suggests that the semi-cylindrical solar tunnel dryer of wastewater sludge has given satisfactory results within five days

Geometrically nonlinear isogeometric analysis of laminated composite plates based on higher-order shear deformation theory

In this paper, we present an effectively numerical approach based on isogeometric analysis (IGA) and higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) for geometrically nonlinear analysis of laminated composite plates. The HSDT allows us to approximate displacement field that ensures by itself the realistic shear strain energy part without shear correction factors. IGA utilizing basis functions namely B-splines or non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) enables to satisfy easily the stringent continuity requirement of the HSDT model without any additional variables. The nonlinearity of the plates is formed in the total Lagrange approach based on the von-Karman strain assumptions. Numerous numerical validations for the isotropic, orthotropic, cross-ply and angle-ply laminated plates are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method

Geometrically nonlinear and dynamic analysis of Euler-Bernoulli beams using isogeometric approach

This paper presents a numerical procedure for geometrically nonlinear and dynamic analysis of Euler-Bernoulli beams based on the framework of isogeometric approach. The method utilizes B-spline as the basis functions for both geometric representation and analysis. Only one deflection variable (without rotational degrees of freedom) is used for each control point. It allows us to use few degrees of freedom while retaining high accuracy of solution. Two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of present method