Numerical Investigation of the FSI Characteristics in a Tubular Pump

Flow condition was simulated in a shaft tubular pump by using the Shear-Stress Transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model with high quality structured grids in design condition. Corresponding structural vibration characteristics were then analyzed based on two-way coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) method. Fluid results showed that flow in the outlet flow passage was a combination of the axial flow and circumferential rotation motion. Time and frequency domain analysis of pressure pulsation of typical measure points indicated that larger pulsation amplitudes appeared in the tip of the blades and the main vibration source was the pressure pulsation induced by rotation of the blades. The fluid pulsation amplitudes decreased gradually along the flow direction, which can be ascribed to the function of fixed guide vane. Structural analysis of the blades in both pressure and suction side indicated that significant stress concentration was formed at the blade and hub connection near the leading edge. Maximum effective stress of the blades varied periodically, so prevention measures of the fatigue of blades should be taken. This research can provide important reference for the design of the tubular pump

Quality evaluation of mycelial Antrodia camphorata using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with diode array detector and mass spectrometry (DAD-MS)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Antrodia camphorata </it>(AC) is an important fungus native to Taiwanese forested regions. Scientific studies have demonstrated that extracts of AC possess a variety of pharmacological functions. This study aims to identify the full profile fingerprint of nucleosides and nucleobases in mycelial AC and to assess the quality of two commercial mycelial AC products.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>High-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detector and mass spectrometry was employed to identify the major components in mycelial AC. The chemical separation was carried out using a gradient program on a reverse phase Alltima C₁₈AQ analytical column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) with the mobile phase consisting of deionized water and methanol.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Ten nucleosides and nucleobases, two maleimide derivatives, and a sterol were identified as the major constituents in mycelial AC. These groups of chemical compounds constitute the first chromatographic fingerprint as an index for quality assessment of this medicinal fungus.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study provides the first chromatographic fingerprint to assess the quality of mycelial AC.</p

The effect of heat treatment and impact angle on the erosion behavior of nickel-tungsten carbide cold spray coating using response surface methodology

This study elucidates the performance of cold-sprayed tungsten carbide-nickel coating against solid particle impingement erosion using alumina (corundum) particles. After the coating fabrication, part of the specimens followed two different annealing heat treatment cycles with peak temperatures of 600 °C and 800 °C. The coatings were examined in terms of microstructure in the as-sprayed (AS) and the two heat-treated conditions (HT1, HT2). Subsequently, the erosion tests were carried out using design of experiments with two control factors and two replicate measurements in each case. The effect of the heat treatment on the mass loss of the coatings was investigated at the three levels (AS, HT1, HT2), as well as the impact angle of the erodents (30°, 60°, 90°). Finally, the response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to analyze and optimize the results, building the mathematical models that relate the significant variables and their interactions to the output response (mass loss) for each coating condition. The obtained results demonstrated that erosion minimization was achieved when the coating was heat treated at 600 °C and the angle was 90°

Investigation of the Effect of Low-Temperature Annealing and Impact Angle on the Erosion Performance of Nickel-Tungsten Carbide Cold Spray Coating Using Design of Experiments

This study investigates the solid particle erosion performance of cold sprayed tungsten carbide-nickel coatings using alumina particles as erodent material. After coating fabrication, specimens were annealed in an electric furnace at a temperature of 600 °C for 1 hour. The coatings were examined in terms of microhardness and microstructure in the as-sprayed (AS) and annealed (AN) conditions. Subsequently, the erosion tests were carried out using a General Full Factorial Design with two control factors and two replicates for each experimental run. The effect of the annealing on the erosion behavior of the coating was investigated at the two levels (AS and AN conditions), along with the impact angle of the erodents at three levels (30°, 60°, 90°). Finally, two regression models that relate the impact angle to the mass loss were separately obtained for the two cold spray coatings

Stability studies of ZnO and AlN thin film acoustic wave devices in acid and alkali harsh environments

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices based on piezoelectric thin-films such as ZnO and AlN are widely used in sensing, microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip applications. However, for many of these applications, the SAW devices will inevitably be used in acid or alkali harsh environments, which may cause their early failures. In this work, we investigated the behavior and degradation mechanisms of thin film based SAW devices in acid and alkali harsh environments. Results show that under the acid and alkali attacks, chemical reaction and corrosion of ZnO devices are very fast (usually within 45 s). During the corrosion, the crystalline orientation of the ZnO film is not changed, but its grain defects are significantly increased and the grain sizes are decreased. The velocity of ZnO-based SAW devices is decreased due to the formation of porous structures induced by the chemical reactions. Whereas an AlN thin-film based SAW device does not perform well in acid–alkali conditions, it might be able to maintain a normal performance without obvious degradation for more than ten hours in acid or alkali solutions. This work could provide guidance for the applications of both ZnO or AlN-based SAW devices in acid/alkali harsh environments

Subgraph adaptive structure-aware graph contrastive learning

Graph contrastive learning (GCL) has been subject to more attention and been widely applied to numerous graph learning tasks such as node classification and link prediction. Although it has achieved great success and even performed better than supervised methods in some tasks, most of them depend on node-level comparison, while ignoring the rich semantic information contained in graph topology, especially for social networks. However, a higher-level comparison requires subgraph construction and encoding, which remain unsolved. To address this problem, we propose a subgraph adaptive structure-aware graph contrastive learning method (PASCAL) in this work, which is a subgraph-level GCL method. In PASCAL, we construct subgraphs by merging all motifs that contain the target node. Then we encode them on the basis of motif number distribution to capture the rich information hidden in subgraphs. By incorporating motif information, PASCAL can capture richer semantic information hidden in local structures compared with other GCL methods. Extensive experiments on six benchmark datasets show that PASCAL outperforms state-of-art graph contrastive learning and supervised methods in most cases

Stereoselective alkoxycarbonylation of unactivated C(sp^3)–H bonds with alkyl chloroformates via Pd(II)/Pd(IV) catalysis

Several examples on Pd-catalysed carbonylation of methyl C(sp^3)–H bonds with gaseous CO via Pd(II)/Pd(0) catalysis have been reported. However, methylene C(sp^3)–H carbonylation remains a great challenge, largely due to the lack of reactivity of C–H bonds and the difficulty in CO migratory insertion. Herein, we report the stereoselective alkoxycarbonylation of both methyl and methylene C(sp^3)–H bonds with alkyl chloroformates through a Pd(II)/Pd(IV) catalytic cycle. A broad range of aliphatic carboxamides and alkyl chloroformates are compatible with this protocol. In addition, this process is scalable and the directing group could be easily removed under mild conditions with complete retention of configuration

Plant buffering against the high-light stress-induced accumulation of CsGA2ox8 transcripts via alternative splicing to finely tune gibberellin levels and maintain hypocotyl elongation

Ajuts: this study was supported by The National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFD1000300), the International Postdoctoral Exchange Fellowship Program from the China Postdoctoral Council (20170053), the Technology System Construction of Modern Agricultural Industry of Shanghai (19Z113040008), and the Presidential Foundation of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (BZ201901).In plants, alternative splicing (AS) is markedly induced in response to environmental stresses, but it is unclear why plants generate multiple transcripts under stress conditions. In this study, RNA-seq was performed to identify AS events in cucumber seedlings grown under different light intensities. We identified a novel transcript of the gibberellin (GA)-deactivating enzyme Gibberellin 2-beta-dioxygenase 8 (CsGA2ox8). Compared with canonical CsGA2ox8.1, the CsGA2ox8.2 isoform presented intron retention between the second and third exons. Functional analysis proved that the transcript of CsGA2ox8.1 but not CsGA2ox8.2 played a role in the deactivation of bioactive GAs. Moreover, expression analysis demonstrated that both transcripts were upregulated by increased light intensity, but the expression level of CsGA2ox8.1 increased slowly when the light intensity was >400 µmol·m −2 ·s −1 PPFD (photosynthetic photon flux density), while the CsGA2ox8.2 transcript levels increased rapidly when the light intensity was >200 µmol·m −2 ·s −1 PPFD. Our findings provide evidence that plants might finely tune their GA levels by buffering against the normal transcripts of CsGA2ox8 through AS