Comparison and experiment of pressure drop of radial and annular type magnetorheological valves

The magnetorheological (MR) valve is a smart control mechanism using the magnetorheologcial fluid as the working fluid. The advantages of regulating pressure drop and fast response time make the valve have a promising application prospects in the hydraulic servo system, and the MR valve can also be used as a bypass valve to control the MR damper, which can be applied to the different types of vibration attenuating system. The change of pressure drop of MR valve considering radial and annular fluid flow paths was outlined through theory analysis, numerical simulation and experimental verification. The magnetized resistance gaps of both MR valves were constrained within a width of 2.5 mm and a length of 80 mm. The mathematical models of pressure drop of both MR valves were derived separately. The finite element modelling was carried out using ANSYS/Emag software to investigate the distribution of magnetic flux density and dynamic yield stress, and the analytical pressure drop was also obtained, the maximum theoretical pressure drops for the radial and annular type MR valves are 1930 kPa and 982 kPa respectively. Furthermore, a test rig was set up to test the pressure drop under different applied direct currents and different load cases, the maximum experimental pressure dropts for the radial and annular type MR valves are 950 kPa and 660 kPa, respectively. The simulation and experimental results showed that the pressure drop of the radial type MR valve was superior to that of annular type MR valve under the same geometry conditions and the same electromagnetic parameters. The results can provide a new guideline for design of other types MR valve

Plasma-induced unconventional shock waves on oil surfaces

Electric corona discharge in a multi-phase system results in complex electro-hydrodynamic phenomena. We observed unconventional shock wave propagation on an oil thin film sprayed over a polymer-coated conductor. A hair-thin single shock wave arose when the high voltage bias of an overhung steel needle was abruptly removed. However, such solitary waves possess neither interference nor reflection properties commonly known for ordinary waves, and also differ from the solitons in a canal or an optical fiber. We also observed time-retarded movement for dispersed oil droplets at various distances from the epicenter which have no physical contact, as if a wave propagating on a continuous medium. Such a causality phenomenon for noncontact droplets to move resembling wave propagation could not be possibly described by the conventional surface wave equation. Our systematic studies reveal a mechanism involving oil surface charges driven by reminiscent electric fields in the air when the needle bias is suddenly removed

Timely Fusion of Surround Radar/Lidar for Object Detection in Autonomous Driving Systems

Fusing Radar and Lidar sensor data can fully utilize their complementary advantages and provide more accurate reconstruction of the surrounding for autonomous driving systems. Surround Radar/Lidar can provide 360-degree view sampling with the minimal cost, which are promising sensing hardware solutions for autonomous driving systems. However, due to the intrinsic physical constraints, the rotating speed of surround Radar, and thus the frequency to generate Radar data frames, is much lower than surround Lidar. Existing Radar/Lidar fusion methods have to work at the low frequency of surround Radar, which cannot meet the high responsiveness requirement of autonomous driving systems.This paper develops techniques to fuse surround Radar/Lidar with working frequency only limited by the faster surround Lidar instead of the slower surround Radar, based on the state-of-the-art object detection model MVDNet. The basic idea of our approach is simple: we let MVDNet work with temporally unaligned data from Radar/Lidar, so that fusion can take place at any time when a new Lidar data frame arrives, instead of waiting for the slow Radar data frame. However, directly applying MVDNet to temporally unaligned Radar/Lidar data greatly degrades its object detection accuracy. The key information revealed in this paper is that we can achieve high output frequency with little accuracy loss by enhancing the training procedure to explore the temporal redundancy in MVDNet so that it can tolerate the temporal unalignment of input data. We explore several different ways of training enhancement and compare them quantitatively with experiments.Comment: Accepted at DATE 202

Influence of Oil on Heat Transfer Characteristics of R410A Flow Boiling in Conventional and Small Size Microfin Tubes

Compact heat exchangers for refrigeration and air-conditioning systems are beneficial to reduce cost, charge inventory and leakage of refrigerant, and to improve energy efficiency and safety. Using small diameter microfin tubes is one way to decrease the size of heat exchangers. Currently, small diameter micofin tubes with outside diameter (O.D.) of 5.0 mm and 4.0 mm O.D. begin to be applied in newly developed R410A air conditioners instead of conventional size tubes (e.g. 7.0 mm O.D. microfin tubes). With the decrease of the tube diameter, the pressure drop becomes much larger, resulting in the decrease of the heat exchanger performance. In order to avoid such performance decrease, the heat exchanger should be redesign based on clearly understanding the difference of the heat transfer characteristics between conventional size microfin tubes and small diameter micofin tubes. Therefore, the heat transfer characteristics of R410A flow boiling inside both conventional size microfin tubes and small diameter microfin tubes should be known. Under real working conditions of R410A air conditioner, some amount of oil inevitably circulates with the refrigerant and has a significant impact on refrigerant evaporation heat transfer characteristics (Shen and Groll, 2005; Thome, 1996). Therefore, the influence of oil on heat transfer characteristics of R410A flow boiling inside microfin tubes with different diameters covering from conventional size to small size should be investigated. Experiments of R410A-oil mixture flow boiling inside microfin tubes with different outside diameters of 4.0~7.0 mm were performed. The experimental results show that, for 7.0 mm microfin tube, the influence factor of oil on the heat transfer characteristics are larger than 1.0 under the conditions of low vapor qualities (xr,o \u3c 0.4), presenting the enhancement effect of oil on heat transfer characteristics; with the increase of vapor quality, the enhancement becomes smaller, and is smaller than 1.0 under the conditions of low vapor qualities (xr,o \u3e 0.65), showing the deterioration effect of oil on heat transfer characteristics. As the tube diameter decreases from 7.0 mm to 4.0~5.0 mm, the deterioration effect of oil is weakened, especially at intermediate and high vapor qualities; for 4.0-5.0 mm tubes, the presence of oil shows the enhancement effect on heat transfer characteristics under the conditions of intermittent vapor quality (0.4 \u3c xr,o \u3c 0.8), which is not the same as the deterioration effect for 7.0 mm tubes. The comparison of heat transfer coefficient for two 5.0 mm microfin tubes with different fin structures shows that, larger fin height and contact area of liquid with tube wall may enhance the heat transfer for oil-free R410A, but result in smaller enhancement effect of oil at low vapor qualities and smaller deterioration effect of oil at intermediate and high vapor qualities. Based on the experimental data for conventional and small size microfin tubes, a general heat transfer correlation for R410A-oil mixture flow boiling inside microfin tubes was developed, and it agrees with 94% of the experimental data of R410A-oil mixture in 4.0 mm ~ 7.0 mm microfin tubes within a deviation of ±30%

Searching for Variable Stars in the Open Cluster NGC 2355 and Its Surrounding Region

We have investigated the variable stars in the field surrounding NGC 2355 based on the time-series photometric observation data. More than 3000 CCD frames were obtained in the V band spread over 13 nights with the Nanshan One-meter Wide-field Telescope. We have detected 88 variable stars, containing 72 new variable stars and 16 known variable stars. By analyzing these light curves, we classified the variable stars as follows: 26 eclipsing binaries, 52 pulsating stars, 4 rotating variables, and 6 unclear type variable stars for which their periods are much longer than the time baseline chosen. Employing Gaia DR2 parallax, kinematics, and photometry, the cluster membership of these variable stars were also analyzed for NGC 2355. In addition to the 11 variable members reported by Cantat-Gaudin et al. (2018), we identify 4 more variable member candidates located at the outer region of NGC 2355 and showed homogeneity in space positions and kinematic properties with the cluster members. The main physical parameters of NGC 2355 estimated from the two-color and color-magnitude diagrams are log(age/yr) = 8.9, E(B - V) = 0.24 mag, and [Fe/H] = - 0.07 dex.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. 6 tables,Accepted for publication in A