Climbing ring robot for inspection of offshore wind turbines

A rapid expansion of wind turbine farms for sustainable electric power production is planned in Europe by 2020. At least in the UK, these will largely be located offshore to meet growing concerns about the visual intrusiveness and noise generation producedby onshore based farms. The necessary structural integrity inspection of offshore wind turbine blades poses tremendous problems of access, danger to human operatives and costs in the event of blades having to be taken out of service and transported on shore forschedules inspections. For these reasons robotic in-situ blade inspection of offshore wind turbines has been proposed and micro/nano focus computed axial X ray tomography (MNCAT) has been identified as the optimal if not the only solution for identification of safety critical defects in the thickest blade sections. The weight of such an inspection system is very high, typically 200kg and typical cross sectional scanner dimensions of 1 m × 2 m to encircle as blade, clearly involve very high destabilizing moments to be countered by the deployment robot. The solution is a climbing ring robot completely encircling a turbine tower, typically 3 meter in diameter, to provide the necessary adhesion forces and anti-destabilizing force moments. Because of the size and thus development costs of such a huge robot the optimal design path is to prototype a small scale model. First results on such a model are described and from its performance the load carrying capabilities of a full scale version can be computed and the scale model can then berefined by 'reverse engineering' to guarantee that a full scale construction is able tomeet requirements. The key design innovation is that the adhesive forces between the robot and climbing surface a provided entirely by mechanical means rather than by usingthe usual methods of vacuum suction or magnetic force, making the system much cheaper andeasier to manipulate. Furthermore the design is entirely modular. Copyright © 2008 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd

Total Integrated Robotic Structural Inspection for Enhanced Aircraft Life and Safety

Aircraft life can be extended, safety standards and passenger confidence enhanced, and structural inspection costs dramatically reduced, by establishing at major airports specialised ‘Total Inspection Centres’ that would be open 24 hours a day. Aircraft would be flown to these centres. Here every relevant type of Non Destructive Testing (NDT) sensor would be deployed by multi-axis robots moving on Cartesian gantries to cover the wing, fuselage, tail and rudder. Each inspection would produce a defect map of 100% of the aircraft surface. This is very unreliable if done manually because of operator fatigue. A gantry robotic system has the advantage that very heavy NDT sensors such as X-ray tubes and SQUID magnetometers can be deployed in addition to all the more common sensors such as ultrasonic and Eddy current probe arrays. Acoustic emission monitoring of an entire airframe can be achieved with robotic scanning without the need for a vast and expensive array of sensors. This would be most useful for fuselage pressure testing. At present NDT of aircraft is carried out in many relatively small units attached to individual airports that cannot possibly afford the whole range of NDT equipment and robotic deployment facilities. A specialised centre can do so and in addition achieve complete data fusion of the results from different sensors

The Centre for Automated and Robotic Non-Destructive Testing

The Centre was established in 1992 to research and develop inspection robots and NDT techniques to [1,2]: • Bring automation to the NDT task to eliminate errors caused by human operators due to fatigue on jobs that require a great deal of inspection in difficult environmental conditions. • Improve defect detection by using the ability of robotics to improve sensor probe positioning accuracy and repeatability and use the programmable flexibility of robots to optimally deploy a wide variety of sensor probes and inspection techniques. • Reduce the cost of performing the inspection by using wall climbing and mobile robots that provide access to test sites that are remotely located on large structures and/or in hazardous environments and hence not easily accessible to humans. • Reduce costs substantially by performing in-service NDT with robotic deployment of sensor probes thereby eliminating outage costs and production losses. • Reducing capital equipment costs by developing compact multi-function inspection robots that can flexibly perform a variety of different NDT tasks on different sites. Thus the robots should be readily transportable between different sites, be able to move over floors, change surfaces and climb walls, ceilings and other structures of variable curvature whilst carrying a payload of NDT sensors that can scan test surfaces by deployment with multi-axis arms

Obesity a risk factor for severe COVID-19 infection: multiple potential mechanisms

No abstract available

Do the pleiotropic effects of statins in the vasculature predict a role in inflammatory diseases?

Pleiotropic effects are now described for the 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase inhibitors (or statins) that might have utility in the context of chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease. Here we discuss the pharmacology and established uses of statins and in this context describe potential anti-inflammatory and immune-modulatory effects. An extensive in vitro data set defines roles for statins in modifying endothelial function, particularly with respect to adhesion molecule expression and apoptosis. Broader effects on leukocyte function have now emerged including altered adhesion molecule expression, cytokine and chemokine release and modulation of development of adaptive immune responses via altered MHC class II upregulation. In vivo data in several inflammatory models, including collagen-induced inflammatory arthritis and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, suggest that such effects might have immune-modulatory potential. Finally, a recent clinical trial has demonstrated immunomodulatory effects for statins in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Together with their known vasculoprotective effects, this growing body of evidence provides compelling support for longer-term trials of statin therapy in human disease such as rheumatoid arthritis

Comparison of explosion characteristics of Colombian and Kellingley coal

Coal continues to be one of the main fuels used for generation of energy in the UK. Despite government’s plans to decarbonise the energy sector in order to meet GHG emission targets, co-firing of coal and biomass is attractive due to the low investment required and since gas prices remain high, the consumption of coal is still considerable in power generation. Pulverised coal has been known to pose explosion risks since the 19th century. The objective of the present work was to compare the explosibility of two coal samples used in UK power stations which potentially can be used co-fired with biomass. Both samples of coal were fully characterised for their chemical composition as well as particle size and morphology. The 1m3 ISO explosion vessel was used to determine the explosion characteristics: deflagration index (Kst), maximum explosion pressure (Pmax) and minimum explosible concentration (MEC). Flame speeds were also measured. The remaining residues after explosion were also analysed. The results were compared to the explosion characteristics of other types of coal available in the literature. Despite the very similar composition of both fuels, the reactivity of Colombian coal was much higher, with a Kst value of 129 barms-1 as opposed to 73 barms-1 for Kellingley coal (Fig.1). There was significant difference between these two coals as the surface area of Colombian coal was 5 times higher than that of Kellingley coal. There was little difference in the elemental composition, but Colombian coal contained more volatiles and less ash. Thus the results indicate a strong impact of particle surface area and volatile content on the reactivity of coal

Automated inspection system for NDT of steel plates

The aim of the research project is to automate NDT data acquisition and analysis on large steel plates with an ultrasonic inspection technique that is implemented with robotics instrumentation. The project researches NDT sensor deployment, ultrasonic data acquisition and analysis and intelligent flaw detection. A robotic system has been developed for the inspection of internal imperfections in flat steel plates and produces a map of defective areas. It is a magnetic vehicle with a self-navigating system that carries 16 transducers for ultrasonic testing. The software that has been developed controls the scan trajectory of the vehicle and locates and plots position of the ultrasonic sensors and the presence of any defects at these positions. Internal imperfections in the steel plate are detected by monitoring the backwall echo or the echo associated with an imperfection during the scanning. The system has easy mobility to carry out inspection from site to site and a display and image processing system to analyse and show results of the ultrasonic inspection

Cardiometabolic comorbidities in RA and PsA: lessons learned and future directions

Cardiometabolic comorbidities present a considerable burden for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or psoriatic arthritis (PsA). Both RA and PsA are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). PsA more often exhibits an increased risk of metabolically linked comorbidities such as obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes mellitus and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Although both RA and PsA are characterized by a state of chronic inflammation, the mechanisms that contribute to CVD risk in these conditions might not be identical. In RA, systemic inflammation is thought to directly contribute to CVD risk, whereas in PsA, adiposity is thought to contribute to a notable metabolic phenotype that, in turn, contributes to CVD risk. Hence, appropriate management strategies that consider the increased risk of cardiometabolic comorbidities in patients with inflammatory arthropathy are important. In RA, such strategies should focus on the prediction of CVD risk and its management through targeting chronic inflammation and traditional CVD risk factors. In PsA, management strategies should additionally focus on targeting metabolic components, including weight management, which might not only help improve disease activity in the joints, entheses and skin, but also reduce the risk of metabolic comorbidities and improve the quality of life of patients