Lubricant degradation, transport and the effect of extended oil drain intervals on piston assembly tribology

There are ever increasing demands on lubricant manufacturers to meet governmental legislation and customer needs by improving fuel economy, engine durability and exhaust system compatibility as shown by the introduction of GF4 and move towards GF5 specification oils. This has created an ever increasing need to understand how oil degrades in an engine and how this degraded oil affects piston assembly tribology. This review conference paper will give an overview of a collaborative project that has been undertaken to further enhance the understanding of how lubricant degrades in an operating engine, its transport through the engine and effect upon piston assembly tribology

Extraction and tribological investigation of top piston ring zone oil from a gasoline engine

With tightening emission regulations, increased expected fuel economy, and longer drain intervals impacting on lubricant formulation, greater understanding of how oil degrades in an automotive engine is becoming ever more important. Equally significant is the effect that this degraded lubricant has on the tribological operation of the engine, particularly its overall internal friction and component wear. In a previous paper, four tests to degrade oil in a single cylinder engine were reported [1]. These tests were set up such that the lubricating oil was degraded in the ring pack before returning to the sump, where it was sampled and chemical and rheological analysis undertaken. This paper reports the extension of this work using the same Hydra engine and describes how oil has additionally been extracted from the rear of the top piston ring during engine operation. This extracted oil has then been subjected to similar analysis as the sump oil samples in the previous tests, along with additional analysis to look at the tribological properties of the oil using tribometers. The results clearly show significant differences in the rheological, tribological, and chemical properties of the fresh oil and used sump oil samples when compared with the top ring zone (TRZ) oil samples, particularly the effect of load on the levels of volatiles present in the TRZ samples and their effect on traction and friction coefficient values during tribological testing

The role of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in ischaemic diabetic lower extremity ulcers: A double-blind randomised-controlled trial

AbstractObjective: ischaemic lower-extremity ulcers in the diabetic population are a source of major concern because of the associated high risk of limb-threatening complications. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of hyperbaric oxygen in the management of these ulcers. Method: eighteen diabetic patients with ischaemic, non-healing lower-extremity ulcers were recruited in a double-blind study. Patients were randomly assigned either to receive 100% oxygen (treatment group) or air (control group), at 2.4 atmospheres of absolute pressure for 90 min daily (total of 30 treatments). Results: healing with complete epithelialisation was achieved in five out of eight ulcers in the treatment group compared to one out of eight ulcers in the control group. The median decrease of the wound areas in the treatment group was 100% and in the control group was 52% (p = 0.027). Cost-effectiveness analysis has shown that despite the extra cost involved in using hyperbaric oxygen, there was a potential saving in the total cost of treatment for each patient during the study. Conclusion: hyperbaric oxygen enhanced the healing of ischaemic, non-healing diabetic leg ulcers and may be used as a valuable adjunct to conventional therapy when reconstructive surgery is not possible.Eur J Vasc Endovasc Surg 25, 513-518 (2003

Normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) parameters for breast fibrosis: pooled results from two randomised trials

Introduction: the dose–volume effect of radiation therapy on breast tissue is poorly understood. We estimate NTCP parameters for breast fibrosis after external beam radiotherapy.Materials and methods: we pooled individual patient data of 5856 patients from 2 trials including whole breast irradiation followed with or without a boost. A two-compartment dose volume histogram model was used with boost volume as the first compartment and the remaining breast volume as second compartment. Results from START-pilot trial (n?=?1410) were used to test the predicted models.Results: 26.8% patients in the Cambridge trial (5?years) and 20.7% patients in the EORTC trial (10?years) developed moderate-severe breast fibrosis. The best fit NTCP parameters were BEUD3(50)?=?136.4?Gy, ?50?=?0.9 and n?=?0.011 for the Niemierko model and BEUD3(50)?=?132?Gy, m?=?0.35 and n?=?0.012 for the Lyman Kutcher Burman model. The observed rates of fibrosis in the START-pilot trial agreed well with the predicted rates.Conclusions: this large multi-centre pooled study suggests that the effect of volume parameter is small and the maximum RT dose is the most important parameter to influence breast fibrosis. A small value of volume parameter ‘n’ does not fit with the hypothesis that breast tissue is a parallel organ. However, this may reflect limitations in our current scoring system of fibrosi

Critical point network for drainage between rough surfaces

In this paper, we present a network method for computing two-phase flows between two rough surfaces with significant contact areas. Low-capillary number drainage is investigated here since one-phase flows have been previously investigated in other contributions. An invasion percolation algorithm is presented for modeling slow displacement of a wetting fluid by a non wetting one between two rough surfaces. Short-correlated Gaussian process is used to model random rough surfaces.The algorithm is based on a network description of the fracture aperture field. The network is constructed from the identification of critical points (saddles and maxima) of the aperture field. The invasion potential is determined from examining drainage process in a flat mini-channel. A direct comparison between numerical prediction and experimental visualizations on an identical geometry has been performed for one realization of an artificial fracture with a moderate fractional contact area of about 0.3. A good agreement is found between predictions and observations

Holstein polarons in a strong electric field: delocalized and stretched states

The coherent dynamics of a Holstein polaron in strong electric fields is considered under different regimes. Using analytical and numerical analysis, we show that even for small hopping constant and weak electron-phonon interaction, the original discrete Wannier-Stark (WS) ladder electronic states are each replaced by a semi-continuous band if a resonance condition is satisfied between the phonon frequency and the ladder spacing. In this regime, the original localized WS states can become {\em delocalized}, yielding both `tunneling' and `stretched' polarons. The transport properties of such a system would exhibit a modulation of the phonon replicas in typical tunneling experiments. The modulation will reflect the complex spectra with nearly-fractal structure of the semi-continuous band. In the off-resonance regime, the WS ladder is strongly deformed, although the states are still localized to a degree which depends on the detuning: Both the spacing between the levels in the deformed ladder and the localization length of the resulting eigenfunctions can be adjusted by the applied electric field. We also discuss the regime beyond small hopping constant and weak coupling, and find an interesting mapping to that limit via the Lang-Firsov transformation, which allows one to extend the region of validity of the analysis.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, submitted to PR

Study of variable stars in the MOA data base: long-period red variables in the Large Magellanic Cloud

One hundred and forty six long-period red variable stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) from the three year MOA project database were analysed. A careful periodic analysis was performed on these stars and a catalogue of their magnitudes, colours, periods and amplitudes is presented. We convert our blue and red magnitudes to $K$ band values using 19 oxygen-rich stars. A group of red short-period stars separated from the Mira sequence has been found on a (log P, K) diagram. They are located at the short period side of the Mira sequence consistent with the work of Wood and Sebo (1996). There are two interpretations for such stars; a difference in pulsation mode or a difference in chemical composition. We investigated the properties of these stars together with their colour, amplitude and periodicity. We conclude that they have small amplitudes and less regular variability. They are likely to be higher mode pulsators. A large scatter has been also found on the long period side of the (log P, K) diagram. This is possibly a systematic spread given that the blue band of our photometric system covers both standard B and V bands and affects carbon-rich stars.Comment: 19 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Parallelization of the discrete gradient method of non-smooth optimization and its applications

We investigate parallelization and performance of the discrete gradient method of nonsmooth optimization. This derivative free method is shown to be an effective optimization tool, able to skip many shallow local minima of nonconvex nondifferentiable objective functions. Although this is a sequential iterative method, we were able to parallelize critical steps of the algorithm, and this lead to a significant improvement in performance on multiprocessor computer clusters. We applied this method to a difficult polyatomic clusters problem in computational chemistry, and found this method to outperform other algorithms. <br /

Evidence for SU(3) symmetry breaking from hyperon production

We examine the SU(3) symmetry breaking in hyperon semileptonic decays (HSD) by considering two typical sets of quark contributions to the spin content of the octet baryons: Set-1 with SU(3) flavor symmetry and Set-2 with SU(3) flavor symmetry breaking in HSD. The quark distributions of the octet baryons are calculated with a successful statistical model. Using an approximate relation between the quark fragmentation functions and the quark distributions, we predict polarizations of the octet baryons produced in $e^+e^-$ annihilation and semi-inclusive deeply lepton-nucleon scattering in order to reveal the SU(3) symmetry breaking effect on the spin structure of the octet baryons. We find that the SU(3) symmetry breaking significantly affects the hyperon polarization. The available experimental data on the $\Lambda$ polarization seem to favor the theoretical predictions with SU(3) symmetry breaking. We conclude that there is a possibility to get a collateral evidence for SU(3) symmetry breaking from hyperon production. The theoretical errors for our predictions are discussed.Comment: 3 tables, 14 figure