In-plane and out-of-plane elastodynamics of thin rings and seals

Thin curved rings used mostly as seals, including in internal combustion engines undergo complex elastodynamic behavior when subjected to a combination of normal radial loading and tangential shear with friction. In turn, their complex modal behavior often results in loss of sealing, increased friction, and power loss. This paper presents a new finite difference approach to determine the response of thin incomplete circular rings. Two interchangeable approaches are presented; one embedding mass and stiffness components in a unified frequency-dependent matrix, and the other making use of equivalent mass and stiffness matrices for the ring structure. The versatility of the developed finite difference formulation can also allow for efficient modification to account for multiple dynamically changing ring support locations around its structure. Very good agreement is observed between the numerical predictions and experimental measurements, particularly with new precision noncontact measurements using laser Doppler vibrometry. The influence of geometric parameters on the frequency response of a high performance motorsport engine’s piston compression ring demonstrates the degree of importance of various geometrical parameters on ring dynamic response

Combined experimental and flexible multibody dynamic investigation of high energy impact-induced driveline vibration

Lightly damped non-linear dynamic driveline components are subjected to excitation with rapid application of clutch and/or throttle. Modern thin-walled driveshaft tubes respond with a plethora of structural-acoustic modes under such impulsive conditions, which are onomatopoeically referred to as clonk in the vehicle industry. The underlying mechanisms for the occurrence of this phenomenon are investigated, using combined experimentation and flexible multibody dynamics under impulsive impact conditions. The coincidence of high frequency structural modes, coupled with acoustic response is highlighted for the broad-band spectral response of the hollow driveshaft tubes. The cyclic relationship of clonk with the shuffle response of the driveline system is also established for transient decay of the clonk phenomenon. In particular, the multibody model is used to ascertain the effect of vehicle laden state on the propensity of driveline clonk, an approach no hitherto reported in literature

Cellulose microfibrils as a pore former in electroless co-deposited anodes for solid oxide fuel cells.

A study was conducted to investigate the feasibility of Cellulose Microfibrils (CMF) as a pore former in the manufacture of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) anodes using Electroless Co-Deposition (ECD). Previous work into the use of ECD to produce SOFC anodes has found that the lack of porosity has restricted the maximum power density of the cell. Cellulose Microfibrils’ unique combination of properties and morphologies should produce the required microstructure for SOFC’s electrodes. Cellulose Microfibrils were evaluated as a pore former by their inclusion (using various bath loadings) in the production of ECD anodes. The anodes produced were then evaluated using a Scanning Electron Microscope, Mercury Porosimetry and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy. The results showed that an anode produced with a 10 g/l of a 1% solution of CMF as pore former, improved the open circuit voltage, maximum power density by reducing the overall resistance of the cell

An Association of Cancer Physicians' strategy for improving services and outcomes for cancer patients.

The Association of Cancer Physicians in the United Kingdom has developed a strategy to improve outcomes for cancer patients and identified the goals and commitments of the Association and its members.The ACP is very grateful to all of its members who have expressed views on the development of the strategy and to the sponsors of our workshops and publications, especially Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer SupportThis is the final version of the article. It was first available from Cancer Intelligence via http://dx.doi.org/10.3332/ecancer.2016.60

A (cautionary) tale of two texts

In this presentation, we reflect on our experiences working on two contrasting manuscripts in an institutional environment where TEI has little uptake. In particular, we explore some of the challenges and tradeoffs we encountered creating digital editions with only limited institutional support for sustainable Digital Humanities research software infrastructure and training. The first manuscript we worked with is a handwritten German text (BL) of some 100,000 words, to which we added a transcript, notes, facsimiles, and a translation. We used the TEI to encode people, places, bibliographical references, and fictional characters. This was published online using TEI Publisher Web Components and required the team (DR, RT) to create a virtual machine, build a Django interface, provision a IIIF server, provision storage for images, and maintain the site over time, all of which incurs significant technical debt and requires specialised skills. The second manuscript (NT) comprises 8,000 words of ethnographic notes from Vanuatu in 1914. An HTML version built by NT presents the text and images of the manuscript originals, sometimes up to eleven different page images corresponding to the same text, with decisions required to arrive at a consensus document. It is housed on a site controlled by NT, and is picked up by the Internet Archive. It requires no maintenance and has no dependencies, and NT was able to build the site himself. How can we scope projects, understand the workload implications, and manage the expectations of academics who become excited after seeing completed TEI projects and want to apply the technology in their work? What kind of ongoing support is required to keep a site like this going? While some institutions have TEI support services that can guarantee ongoing access to encoded texts, what is the best strategy for an academic who does not have access to local TEI support services that can guarantee ongoing access to encoded texts

Tribodynamics of the Piston Compression Ring Conjunction

Tribodynamics of the piston compression ring conjunctio

Effect of cylinder de-activation on the tribological performance of compression ring conjunction

The paper presents transient thermal-mixed-hydrodynamics of piston compression ring-cylinder liner conjunction for a 4-cylinder 4-stroke gasoline engine during a part of the New European Drive Cycle (NEDC). Analyses are carried out with and without cylinder de-activation (CDA) technology in order to investigate its effect upon the generated tribological conditions. In particular, the effect of CDA upon frictional power loss is studied. The predictions show that overall power losses in the piston-ring cylinder system worsen by as much as 10% because of the increased combustion pressures and liner temperatures in the active cylinders of an engine operating under CDA. This finding shows the down-side of this progressively employed technology, which otherwise is effective in terms of combustion efficiency with additional benefits for operation of catalytic converters. The expounded approach has not hitherto been reported in literature

A 2D hydrodynamic solver of the Reynolds equation for the piston ring-liner conjunction

It is essential for the automotive industry to improve efficiency and mitigate frictional losses. About 20-25% of frictional losses arise in the piston ring pack-liner assembly. As a result, reduction of piston ring friction has the potential of improving efficiency, fuel consumption and emissions

Elastodynamics of the Compression Ring for Evaluation of Ring-Liner Conformance

The piston ring pack accounts for a disproportionate amount of the total engine losses (up to 25% of parasitic, with the compression ring accountingfor approximately 5% of engine losses)[1], especially when considering the size of the component. Certain challenges posed by a low carbon future, coupled with the multitude of vehicles currently utilizing the internal combustion engine andtheexpected global increase in vehicle demand,motivates engineers toimprove engine efficiency. The paper aims to investigatethe effectof piston ring packdynamicson the frictional losses. Theringdynamic behaviour determinesthe contact in terms of ring-liner conformability, applied load and kinematics. These are used as key input parameters intribological models which predict contact pressure distribution,film thicknessand generated friction

Genome-wide association analysis of more than 120,000 individuals identifies 15 new susceptibility loci for breast cancer.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and large-scale replication studies have identified common variants in 79 loci associated with breast cancer, explaining ∼14% of the familial risk of the disease. To identify new susceptibility loci, we performed a meta-analysis of 11 GWAS, comprising 15,748 breast cancer cases and 18,084 controls together with 46,785 cases and 42,892 controls from 41 studies genotyped on a 211,155-marker custom array (iCOGS). Analyses were restricted to women of European ancestry. We generated genotypes for more than 11 million SNPs by imputation using the 1000 Genomes Project reference panel, and we identified 15 new loci associated with breast cancer at P < 5 × 10(-8). Combining association analysis with ChIP-seq chromatin binding data in mammary cell lines and ChIA-PET chromatin interaction data from ENCODE, we identified likely target genes in two regions: SETBP1 at 18q12.3 and RNF115 and PDZK1 at 1q21.1. One association appears to be driven by an amino acid substitution encoded in EXO1.BCAC is funded by Cancer Research UK (C1287/A10118, C1287/A12014) and by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement 223175 (HEALTH-F2-2009-223175) (COGS). Meetings of the BCAC have been funded by the European Union COST programme (BM0606). Genotyping on the iCOGS array was funded by the European Union (HEALTH-F2-2009-223175), Cancer Research UK (C1287/A10710, C8197/A16565), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for the CIHR Team in Familial Risks of Breast Cancer program and the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade of Quebec, grant PSR-SIIRI-701. Combination of the GWAS data was supported in part by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Cancer Post-Cancer GWAS initiative, grant 1 U19 CA148065-01 (DRIVE, part of the GAME-ON initiative). For a full description of funding and acknowledgments, see the Supplementary Note.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from NPG via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.324