Search results for "Structural engineering"
showing 10 items of 1998 documents
Energy analysis of a non-linear dynamic impact using FEM
2014
In the car industry, the Finite Element Method (FEM) is being more and more used to analyze the crashworthiness performance of vehicles. In order to validate the results, these impact simulations are normally compared with real crash footage and acceleration data. This paper studies the deformation- and energy output of a simple dummy model during a non-linear dynamic impact. The dummy model is crashed into an obstacle at three different velocities to observe the energy dissipated through different damping mechanisms. Furthermore, in impact simulations, material damping plays an important role in energy dissipation. However, it can be difficult to determine realistic damping parameter value…
Metabolic shift of polyphosphate-accumulating organisms with different levels of polyphosphate storage
2012
Previous studies have shown that polyphosphate-accumulating organisms (PAOs) are able to behave as glycogen-accumulating organisms (GAOs) under different conditions. In this study we investigated the behavior of a culture enriched with Accumulibacter at different levels of polyphosphate (poly-P) storage. The results of stoichiometric ratios Gly degraded/HAc uptake, PHB synthesized/HAc uptake, PHV synthesized/HAc uptake and P release/HAc uptake confirmed a metabolic shift from PAO metabolism to GAO metabolism: PAOs with high poly-P content used the poly-P to obtain adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP), and glycogen (Gly) to obtain nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and some ATP. In a test whe…
Modeling the anaerobic treatment of sulfate rich urban wastewater. Application to AnMBR technology
2020
[EN] Although anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBR) are a core technology in the transition of urban wastewater (UWW) treatment towards a circular economy, the transition is being held back by a number of bottlenecks. The dissolved methane released from the effluent, the need to remove nutrients (ideally by recovery), or the energy lost by the competition between methanogenic and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) for the biodegradable COD have been identified as the main issues to be addressed before AnMBR becomes widespread. Mathematical modeling of this technology can be used to obtain further insights into these bottlenecks plus other valuable information for design, simulation and contro…
Wooden panel paintings investigation: An air-coupled ultrasonic imaging approach
2007
In this paper, a method for the study of wooden panel paintings using air-coupled acoustical imaging is presented. In order to evaluate the advantages of the technique, several samples were made to mimic panel paintings along with their typical defects. These specimens were tested by means of both single-sided and through-transmission techniques using planar transducers. Image data were processed by means of a two-dimensional (2-D)-fast Fourier transform-based algorithm to increase the S/N ratio and 2-D representations (C-scans) were generated. The simulated defects were imaged using both configurations. Investigations were undertaken on four antique paintings from a private collection. The…
Generalized effective stress concept for saturated active clays
2021
Experimental evidence shows that changes in pore-water chemistry can significantly affect the mechanical behavior of saturated active clays. Despite this evidence, how the chemical composition of the pore water can be considered in effective stress definition is questionable. This paper develops the concept of generalized effective stress for active clays. To this end, physicochemical studies on water–clay mineral interactions are used to clearly define the different types of ions and water present in an active clay. In particular, the presence of both movable and non-movable ions within the liquid water is highlighted. Taking this into account, thermodynamic and geochemistry principles ar…
Novel solutions for closed-loop Reverse Electrodialysis: thermodynamic characterisation and perspective analysis
2019
Abstract Closed-loop Reverse Electrodialysis is a novel technology to directly convert low-grade heat into electricity. It consists of a reverse electrodialysis (RED) unit where electricity is produced exploiting the salinity gradient between two salt-water solutions, coupled with a regeneration unit where waste-heat is used to treat the solutions exiting from the RED unit and restore their initial composition. One of the most important advantages of closed-loop systems compared to the open systems is the possibility to select ad-hoc salt solutions to achieve high efficiencies. Therefore, the properties of the salt solutions are essential to assess the performance of the energy generation a…
Evapotranspiration from an Olive Orchard using Remote Sensing-Based Dual Crop Coefficient Approach
2013
A remote sensing-based approach to estimate actual evapotranspiration (ET) was tested in an area covered by olive trees and characterized by Mediterranean climate. The methodology is a modified version of the standard FAO-56 dual crop coefficient procedure, in which the crop potential transpiration, T p, is obtained by directly applying the Penman-Monteith (PM) equation with actual canopy characteristics (i.e., leaf area index, albedo and canopy height) derived from optical remote sensing data. Due to the minimum requirement of in-situ ancillary inputs, the methodology is suitable also for applications on large areas where the use of tabled crop coefficient values become problematic, due to…
Characterization of Intertidal Macrofaunal Communities of Two Sandy Beaches under Different Anthropogenic Pressures
2022
The macrofauna in the intertidal zone of sandy beaches provides the trophic connectivity between land and sea, by linking microbiome, meiofauna, and megafauna, representing a food source for several terrestrial animals, including shorebirds and mammals. However, the macrozoobenthos in urbanised beaches is subjected to intense disturbances, such as breakwater barriers and tourism, which limit or impede the energy transfer from the marine to the terrestrial habitats. Because the information about diversity and abundance of the macrozoobenthos of the intertidal zone on the Mediterranean sandy coasts is scant, the main objective of this study is to increase the knowledge on the macrofauna livin…
Effects of grip and push forces on the acute response of the hand-arm system under vibrating conditions
1993
The purpose of the occupational medicine component of a joint research project was to study the effects of grip and push forces on the acute reaction of the hand-arm system under vibrating conditions. Several series of experiments were carried out by means of a vibration simulator in a laboratory environment in order to study biodynamic vibration behaviour, muscle response, skin temperature, shifts of the vibration perception threshold and the intensity of subjective vibration perception; in addition, field tests with hammer drills were conducted. On the whole, the findings obtained suggest that the coupling of the hand with the handle involved in using vibrating tools has a considerable im…
Flexible multibody simulation approach in the analysis of tibial strain during walking.
2007
Strains within the bone tissue play a major role in bone (re)modeling. These small strains can be assessed using experimental strain gage measurements, which are challenging and invasive. Further, the strain measurements are, in practise, limited to certain regions of superficial bones only, such as the anterior surface of the tibia. In this study, tibial strains occurring during walking were estimated using a numerical approach based on flexible multibody dynamics. In the introduced approach, a lower body musculoskeletal model was developed by employing motion capture data obtained from walking at a constant velocity. The motion capture data were used in inverse dynamics simulation to teac…