ALGAE PROLIFERATION ON SUBSTRATES IMMERSED IN BIOLOGICALLY TREATED SEWAGE

Due fast biomass production, high affinity for N and P and possibilities to CO2 sequestration microalgae are currently in the spotlight, especially in renewable energy technologies sector. The majority of studies focus their attention on microalgae cultivation with respect to biomass production. Fuel produced from algal biomass can contribute to reducing consumption of conventional fossil fuels and be a remedy for a rising energy crisis and global warming induced by air pollution. Some authors opt for possibilities of using sewage as a nutrient medium in algae cultivation. Other scientists go one step further and present concepts to introduce microalgal systems as an integral part of wastewater treatment plants. High costs of different microalgal harvesting methods caused introduction of the idea of algae immobilization in a form of periphyton on artificial substrates. In the present study the attention has focused on possibilities of using waste materials as substrates to proliferation of periphyton in biologically treated sewage that contained certain amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus

Mechanics of Corrugated and Composite Materials

The main aim of this Special Issue in Materials was to collect interesting and innovative works on the mechanics of corrugated and composite materials [...

Influence of Analog and Digital Crease Lines on Mechanical Parameters of Corrugated Board and Packaging

When producing packaging from corrugated board, material weakening often occurs both during the die-cutting process and during printing. While the analog lamination and/or printing processes that degrade material can be easily replaced with a digital approach, the die-cutting process remains overwhelmingly analog. Recently, new innovative technologies have emerged that have begun to replace or at least supplement old techniques. This paper presents the results of laboratory tests on corrugated board and packaging made using both analog and digital technologies. Cardboard samples with digital and analog creases are subject to various mechanical tests, which allows for an assessment of the impact of creases on the mechanical properties of the cardboard itself, as well as on the behavior of the packaging. It is proven that digital technology is not only more repeatable, but also weakens the structure of corrugated board to a much lesser extent than analog. An updated numerical model of boxes in compression tests is also discussed. The effect of the crushing of the material in the vicinity of the crease lines in the packaging arising during the analog and digital finishing processes is taken into account. The obtained enhanced computer simulation results closely reflect the experimental observations, which prove that the correct numerical analysis of corrugated cardboard packaging should be performed with the model taking into account the crushing

Parametric Optimization of Thin-Walled 3D Beams with Perforation Based on Homogenization and Soft Computing

The production of thin-walled beams with various cross-sections is increasingly automated and digitized. This allows producing complicated cross-section shapes with a very high precision. Thus, a new opportunity has appeared to optimize these types of products. The optimized parameters are not only the lengths of the individual sections of the cross section, but also the bending angles and openings along the beam length. The simultaneous maximization of the compressive, bending and shear stiffness as well as the minimization of the production cost or the weight of the element makes the problem a multi-criteria issue. The paper proposes a complete procedure for optimizing various open sections of thin-walled beam with different openings along its length. The procedure is based on the developed algorithms for traditional and soft computing optimization as well as the original numerical homogenization method. Although the work uses the finite element method (FEM), no computational stress analyses are required, i.e., solving the system of equations, except for building a full stiffness matrix of the optimized element. The shell-to-beam homogenization procedure used is based on equivalence strain energy between the full 3D representative volume element (RVE) and its beam representation. The proposed procedure allows for quick optimization of any open sections of thin-walled beams in a few simple steps. The procedure can be easily implemented in any development environment, for instance in MATLAB, as it was done in this paper

Shell-to-Beam Numerical Homogenization of 3D Thin-Walled Perforated Beams

Determining the geometric characteristics of even complex cross-sections of steel beams is not a major challenge nowadays. The problem arises when openings of various shapes and sizes appear at more or less regular intervals along the length of the beam. Such alternations cause the beam to have different stiffnesses along its length. It has different bending and shear stiffnesses at the opening point and in the full section. In this paper, we present a very convenient and easy-to-implement method of determining the equivalent stiffness of a beam with any cross-section (open or closed) and with any system of holes along its length. The presented method uses the principles of the finite element method (FEM), but does not require any formal analysis, i.e., solving the system of equations. All that is needed is a global stiffness matrix of the representative volumetric element (RVE) of the 3D representation of a beam modeled with shell finite elements. The proposed shell-to-beam homogenization procedure is based on the strain energy equivalence, and allows for precise and quick determination of all equivalent stiffnesses of a beam (flexural and shear). The results of the numerical homogenization procedure were compared with the existing analytical solution and experimental results of various sections. It has been shown that the results obtained are comparable with the reference results

Effective Stiffness of Thin-Walled Beams with Local Imperfections

Thin-walled beams are increasingly used in light engineering structures. They are economical, easy to manufacture and to install, and their load capacity-to-weight ratio is very favorable. However, their walls are prone to local buckling, which leads to a reduction of compressive, as well as flexural and torsional, stiffness. Such imperfections can be included in such components in various ways, e.g., by reducing the cross-sectional area. This article presents a method based on the numerical homogenization of a thin-walled beam model that includes geometric imperfections. The homogenization procedure uses a numerical 3D model of a selected piece of a thin-walled beam section, the so-called representative volume element (RVE). Although the model is based on the finite element method (FEM), no formal analysis is performed. The FE model is only used to build the full stiffness matrix of the model with geometric imperfections. The stiffness matrix is then condensed to the outer nodes of the RVE, and the effective stiffness of the cross-section is calculated by using the principle of the elastic equilibrium of the strain energy. It is clear from the conducted analyses that the introduced imperfections cause the decreases in the calculated stiffnesses in comparison to the model without imperfections

Homogenization of sandwich panels

The numerical modeling of plates with periodic corrugationrequires some efforts to be made in terms ofcareful and precise discretization of the complicated structure. This automatically generates very com-putationally expensive models. One of the most popular methods of model simplification is analytical ornumerical homogenization. The main goal of this paper is to present the homogenization techniques thatcan be used to effectively model sandwich panels such as corrugated plates in an elastic phase. Two meth-ods of different complexity are described: homogenization through application of the classical laminatedplate theory and homogenization through the deformation energy-equivalence method. The accuracy ofthese methods is compared with the literature data and the results of a structural sample in two basictests, i.e., the four-point bending test and the uniaxial tensile test. The results show that each methodprovides similar effective parameters which proves the robustness of the presented methods

Zastosowanie uogólnionego nieliniowego prawa konstytutywnego dla płaskich konstrukcji belkowych podatnych na ścinanie

The paper presents a modified finite element method for nonlinear analysis of 2D beam structures. To take into account the influence of the shear flexibility, a Timoshenko beam element was adopted. The algorithm proposed enables using complex material laws without the need of implementing advanced constitutive models in finite element routines. The method is easy to implement in commonly available CAE software for linear analysis of beam structures. It allows to extend the functionality of these programs with material nonlinearities. By using the structure deformations, computed from the nodal displacements, and the presented here generalized nonlinear constitutive law, it is possible to iteratively reduce the bending, tensile and shear stiffnesses of the structures. By applying a beam model with a multi layered cross-section and generalized stresses and strains to obtain a representative constitutive law, it is easy to model not only the complex multi-material cross-sections, but also the advanced nonlinear constitutive laws (e.g. material softening in tension). The proposed method was implemented in the MATLAB environment, its performance was shown on the several numerical examples. The cross-sections such us a steel I-beam and a steel I-beam with a concrete encasement for different slenderness ratios were considered here. To verify the accuracy of the computations, all results are compared with the ones received from a commercial CAE software. The comparison reveals a good correlation between the reference model and the method proposed.W artykule przedstawiono zmodyfikowaną metodę elementów skończonych do nieliniowej analizy płaskich konstrukcji belkowych. Aby wziąć pod uwagę wpływ podatności na ścinanie, zastosowano belkowy element Timoshenki. Zaproponowany algorytm umożliwia stosowanie złożonych praw materiałowych bez konieczności implementacji zaawansowanych modeli konstytutywnych w procedurach elementów skończonych. Metoda jest łatwa do wdrożenia w powszechnie dostępnym oprogramowaniu CAE do liniowej analizy konstrukcji belkowych. Pozwala to na rozszerzenie funkcjonalności tych programów o nieliniowości materiałowe. Wykorzystując odkształcenia konstrukcji, obliczone z przemieszczeń węzłów oraz przedstawione tutaj uogólnione nieliniowe prawo konstytutywne, możliwe jest iteracyjne zmniejszanie sztywności konstrukcji na zginanie, ściskanie/rozciąganie i ścinanie. Stosując model belkowy z przekrojem wielowarstwowym oraz uogólnionymi odkształceniami i naprężeniami w celu uzyskania reprezentatywnego prawa konstytutywnego, łatwo jest modelować nie tylko złożone przekroje wielomateriałowe, ale także zaawansowane nieliniowe prawa konstytutywne (np. osłabienie materiału przy rozciąganiu). Zaproponowana metoda została zaimplementowana w środowisku MATLAB, a jej działanie pokazano na kilku przykładach numerycznych. Przeanalizowano przekroje dwuteownika stalowego oraz dwuteownika stalowego obetonowanego dla różnych wartości smukłości. Aby zweryfikować dokładność obliczeń, wyniki porównano z wartościami otrzymanymi z komercyjnego oprogramowania CAE. Porównanie pokazało dobrą korelację między modelem referencyjnym a proponowaną metodą