Heat Transfer Design for Bionic Surfaces in a Simplified Transition Segment of Marine Gas Turbine Combustor

Gas turbine is a widely-used propulsion device for power convection in marine dynamical system. Conventional coolants such as impingement cooling and thermal protection material have lower convective heat transfer efficiency on the target surface which can hinder the development of marine gas turbine combustor. In this paper, impact cooling simplification models are established, which have simulated the function of the transition segment of marine gas turbine combustor to be protected from high temperature. Being enlightened by the butterfly scale, four types of bionic ribs are designed on the simplification models. During the analysis, conservation equations for mass, momentum and energy are solved by using finite volume method with Realizable k−ε turbulence model. By comparing the four types bionic ribs models, the surface with Type 3 rib structure has the best cooling efficiency. The results show that the sharp corner and unequal length fins of bionic rib could affect the cooling efficiency. The inspire application of the bionic structures will provide a reference for new cooling structure design in marine gas turbine combustor

A Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Multi-Criteria Decision Support System for Textile Manufacturing Process Optimization

Textile manufacturing is a typical traditional industry involving high complexity in interconnected processes with limited capacity on the application of modern technologies. Decision-making in this domain generally takes multiple criteria into consideration, which usually arouses more complexity. To address this issue, the present paper proposes a decision support system that combines the intelligent data-based random forest (RF) models and a human knowledge based analytical hierarchical process (AHP) multi-criteria structure in accordance to the objective and the subjective factors of the textile manufacturing process. More importantly, the textile manufacturing process is described as the Markov decision process (MDP) paradigm, and a deep reinforcement learning scheme, the Deep Q-networks (DQN), is employed to optimize it. The effectiveness of this system has been validated in a case study of optimizing a textile ozonation process, showing that it can better master the challenging decision-making tasks in textile manufacturing processes.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2012.0110

Numerical Simulation on the Effect of Turbulence Models on Impingement Cooling of Double Chamber Model

Investigation of the effects of impingement cooling for the different turbulence models and study of the aerodynamic behavior of a simplified transition piece model (TP) are the two themes of this paper. A model (double chamber model) of a one-fourth cylinder is designed which could simulate the transition piece structure and performance. The relative strengths and drawbacks of renormalization group theory k-ε (RNG), the realizable k-ε (RKE), the v2-f, the shear stress transport k-ω (SST), and large-eddy simulation (LES) models are used to solve the closure problem. The prediction of the inner wall temperature, cooling effectiveness, and velocity magnitude contours in various conditions are compared in five different turbulence models. Surprisingly, the v2-f and SST models can produce even better predictions of fluid properties in impinging jet flows. It is recommended as the best compromise between solution speed and accuracy

Simulation of Impinging Cooling Performance with Pin Fins and Mist Cooling Adopted in a Simplified Gas Turbine Transition Piece

The gas turbine transition piece was simplified to a one-four cylinder double chamber model with a single row of impinging holes in the outer wall. Heat transfer augmentation in the coolant chamber was achieved through the use of pin fin structure and mist cooling, which could increase the turbulence and heat transfer efficiency. The present research is focused on heat transfer and pressure characteristics of the impinging cooling in the coolant chamber using FLUENT software. With the given diameter of impinging hole, pin fin diameter ratios D/d have been numerically studied in ranges from 1 to 2. Three different detached L were simulated. The impinging cooling performance in all cases was compared between single-phase and two-phase (imported appropriate mist) flow in the coolant chamber. All the simulation results reveal that the factors of L and D/d have significant effects on the convective heat transfer. After the pin fin structure was taken, the resulting temperature decrease of 38.77 K at most compared with the result of structure without pin fins. And with the mist injecting into the cooling chamber, the area weighted average temperature got a lower value without excess pressure loss, which could satisfy the more stringent requirements in engineering

Taurine alleviates Streptococcus uberis-induced inflammation by activating autophagy in mammary epithelial cells

Streptococcus uberis infection can cause serious inflammation and damage to mammary epithelial cells and tissues that can be significantly alleviated by taurine. Autophagy plays an important role in regulating immunity and clearing invasive pathogens and may be regulated by taurine. However, the relationships between taurine, autophagy, and S. uberis infection remain unclear. Herein, we demonstrate that taurine augments PTEN activity and inhibits Akt/mTOR signaling, which decreases phosphorylation of ULK1 and ATG13 by mTOR and activates autophagy. Activating autophagy accelerates the degradation of intracellular S. uberis, reduces intracellular bacterial load, inhibits over-activation of the NF-κB pathway, and alleviates the inflammation and damage caused by S. uberis infection. This study increases our understanding of the mechanism through which taurine regulates autophagy and is the first to demonstrate the role of autophagy in S. uberis infected MAC-T cells. Our study also provides a theoretical basis for employing nutritional elements (taurine) to regulate innate immunity and control S. uberis infection. It also provides theoretical support for the development of prophylactic strategies for this important pathogen

FABP4-mediated lipid droplet formation in Streptococcus uberis-infected macrophages supports host defence

Foamy macrophages containing prominent cytoplasmic lipid droplets (LDs) are found in a variety of infectious diseases. However, their role in Streptococcus uberis-induced mastitis is unknown. Herein, we report that S. uberis infection enhances the fatty acid synthesis pathway in macrophages, resulting in a sharp increase in LD levels, accompanied by a significantly enhanced inflammatory response. This process is mediated by the involvement of fatty acid binding protein 4 (FABP4), a subtype of the fatty acid-binding protein family that plays critical roles in metabolism and inflammation. In addition, FABP4 siRNA inhibitor cell models showed that the deposition of LDs decreased, and the mRNA expression of Tnf, Il1b and Il6 was significantly downregulated after gene silencing. As a result, the bacterial load in macrophages increased. Taken together, these data demonstrate that macrophage LD formation is a host-driven component of the immune response to S. uberis. FABP4 contributes to promoting inflammation via LDs, which should be considered a new target for drug development to treat infections

Taurine reprograms mammary-gland metabolism and alleviates inflammation induced by Streptococcus uberis in mice

Streptococcus uberis (S. uberis) is an important pathogen causing mastitis, which causes continuous inflammation and dysfunction of mammary glands and leads to enormous economic losses. Most research on infection continues to be microbial metabolism-centric, and many overlook the fact that pathogens require energy from host. Mouse is a common animal model for studying bovine mastitis. In this perspective, we uncover metabolic reprogramming during host immune responses is associated with infection-driven inflammation, particularly when caused by intracellular bacteria. Taurine, a metabolic regulator, has been shown to effectively ameliorate metabolic diseases. We evaluated the role of taurine in the metabolic regulation of S. uberis-induced mastitis. Metabolic profiling indicates that S. uberis exposure triggers inflammation and metabolic dysfunction of mammary glands and mammary epithelial cells (the main functional cells in mammary glands). Challenge with S. uberis upregulates glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation in MECs. Pretreatment with taurine restores metabolic homeostasis, reverses metabolic dysfunction by decrease of lipid, amino acid and especially energy disturbance in the infectious context, and alleviates excessive inflammatory responses. These outcomes depend on taurine-mediated activation of the AMPK–mTOR pathway, which inhibits the over activation of inflammatory responses and alleviates cellular damage. Thus, metabolic homeostasis is essential for reducing inflammation. Metabolic modulation can be used as a prophylactic strategy against mastitis

Molecular epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance of outbreaks of Klebsiella pneumoniae clinical mastitis in Chinese dairy farms

Klebsiella pneumoniae is an opportunistic pathogen that causes serious infections in humans and animals. However, the availability of epidemiological information on clinical mastitis due to K. pneumoniae is limited. To acquire new information regarding K. pneumoniae mastitis, data were mined about K. pneumoniae strains on dairy cattle farms (farms A to H) in 7 Chinese provinces in 2021. Hypermucoviscous strains of K. pneumoniae were obtained by the string test. MICs of antimicrobial agents were determined via the broth microdilution method. Ten antimicrobial resistance genes and virulence genes were identified by PCR. The prevalence of K. pneumoniae was 35.91% (65/181), and 100% of the bacteria were sensitive to enrofloxacin. Nine antimicrobial resistance genes and virulence genes were identified and compared among farms. The hypermucoviscous phenotype was present in 94.44% of isolates from farm B, which may be a function of the rmpA virulence gene. Based on these data, the multidrug-resistant strains SD-14 and HB-21 were chosen and sequenced. Genotypes were assayed for K. pneumoniae isolates from different countries and different hosts using multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Ninety-four sequence types (STs) were found, and 6 STs present a risk for spreading in specific regions. Interestingly, ST43 was observed in bovine isolates for the first time. Our study partially reveals the current distribution characteristics of bovine K. pneumoniae in China and may provide a theoretical basis for the prevention and treatment of bovine K. pneumoniae mastitis

Crashworthiness Design for Bionic Bumper Structures Inspired by Cattail and Bamboo

Many materials in nature exhibit excellent mechanical properties. In this study, we evaluated the bionic bumper structure models by using nonlinear finite element (FE) simulations for their crashworthiness under full-size impact loading. The structure contained the structural characteristics of cattail and bamboo. The results indicated that the bionic design enhances the specific energy absorption (SEA) of the bumper. The numerical results showed that the bionic cross-beam and bionic box of the bionic bumper have a significant effect on the crashworthiness of the structure. The crush deformation of bionic cross-beam and box bumper model was reduced by 33.33%, and the total weight was reduced by 44.44%. As the energy absorption capacity under lateral impact, the bionic design can be used in the future bumper body