To investigate the adsorptive properties of a local laterite deposited in Chenzhou, Hunan province, China, the adsorptive properties of the natural laterite were investigated by batch technique in this study. The effects of contact time, pH, ionic strength, temperature, and the concentration on adsorption properties were also analyzed. The obtained experimental results show that the main mineral composition of laterite is kaolinite and montmorillonite. The adsorption process achieved equilibrium within 60 minutes and 90 minutes for Sr(II) and Cr(VI), respectively. The adsorption capacities for Cr(VI) and Sr(II) by the laterite were about 7.25 mg·g^-1 and 8.35 mg·g^-1 under the given experimental conditions, respectively. The equilibrium adsorption data were fitted to the second-order kinetic equation. The adsorption capacity for Sr(II) onto the laterite increased with increasing pH from 3–11 but decreased with increasing ionic strength from 0.001 to 1.0 M NaCl. The Sr(II) adsorption reaction on laterite was endothermic and the process of adsorption was favored at high temperature. Similarly, the adsorption capacity for Cr(VI) onto the laterite increased with increasing pH from 3–11, however, the ionic strength and temperature had an insignificant effect on Cr(VI) adsorption. The adsorption of Cr(VI) and Sr(II) was dominated by ion exchange and surface complexation in this work. Furthermore, the Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherm model was used for the description of the adsorption process. The results suggest that the studied laterite samples can be effectively used for the treatment of contaminated wastewaters.

The unmanned underwater tracked bulldozer (UUTB) is an indispensable equipment for dredging and cleaning obstacles on the river bed in the flood season. The investigation on the interaction properties between the UUTB tracks and sediments provides foundation for the evaluation of operation performance when it works on the inland river bed. Based on the current worldwide research, the sediments mixed by sand, bentonite and water with sand content 0%, 10% and 20% were configured in this study to replace the real sediments on the inland river bed in China. The current pressure-sinkage model and shear stress-shear displacement model were discussed. Three different tracks were tested for the pressure-sinkage and the shear stress-shear displacement on the platform. The relationship between pressure and sinkage under sand content 0%, 10% and 20% are revealed based on the experimental results. The modulus of cohesive deformation and friction deformation of the sediments under said sand content are presented. The curves of shear stress and shear displacement are also obtained, which demonstrates the properties between the tracks and configured sediments under sand content 0%, 10% and 20%. The relationship between the tractive force and slip ratio with three different tracks under said sand content is also presented based on the quantitative analysis, which provides reference for the dynamics control and performance evaluation of UUTB on the inland river bed.

Direct energy deposition (DED) is a three-dimensional (3D) deposition technique that uses metallic powder; it is a multi-bead, multi-layered deposition technique. This study investigates the dependence of the defects of the 3D deposition and the process parameters of the DED technique as well as deposition characteristics and the hardness properties of the deposited material. In this study, high-thermal-conductivity steel (HTCS-150) was deposited onto a JIS SKD61 substrate. In single bead deposition experiments, the height and width of the single bead became bigger with increasing the laser power. The powder feeding rate affected only the height, which increased as the powder feeding rate rose. The scanning speed inversely affected the height, unlike the powder feeding rate. The multi-layered deposition was characterized by pores, a lack of fusion, pores formed by evaporated gas, and pores formed by non-molten metal inside the deposited material. The porosity was quantitatively measured in cross-sections of the depositions, revealing that the lack of fusion tended to increase as the laser power decreased; however, the powder feeding rate and overlap width increased. The pores formed by evaporated gas and non-molten metal tended to increase with rising the laser power and powder feeding rate; however, the overlap width decreased. Finally, measurement of the hardness of the deposited material at 25℃, 300℃, and 600℃ revealed that it had a higher hardness than the conventional annealed SKD61.

When the distribution of water quality samples is roughly balanced, the Bayesian criterion model of water-inrush source generally can obtain relatively accurate results of water-inrush source identification. However, it is often difficult to achieve desired classification results when training samples are imbalanced. Sample imbalance is common in the source identification of mine water-inrush. Therefore, we propose a three-dimensional (3D) spatial resampling method based on rare water quality samples, which achieves the balance of water quality samples. Based on the virtual water sample points distributed by the 3D grid, the method uses the 3D Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) method to interpolate the groundwater ion concentration of the virtual water samples to achieve oversampling of rare water samples. Case study in Gubei Coal Mine shows that the method improves overall discriminant accuracy of the Bayesian criterion model by 5.26%, from 85.26% to 90.69%. In particular, the discriminative precision of the rare class is improved from 0% to 83.33%, which indicates that the method can improve the discriminant accuracy of the rare class to large extent. In addition, this method increases the Kappa coefficient of the model by 19.92%, from 52.26% to 72.19%, increasing the degree of consistency from “general” to “significant”. Our research is of significance to enriching and improving the theory of prevention and treatment of mine water damage.

The locally resonant sonic material (LRSM) is an artificial metamaterial that can block underwater sound. The low-frequency insulation performance of LRSM can be enhanced by coupling local resonance and Bragg scattering effects. However, such method is hard to be experimentally proven as the best optimizing method. Hence, this paper proposes a statistical optimization method, which first finds a group of optimal solutions of an object function by utilizing genetic algorithm multiple times, and then analyzes the distribution of the fitness and the Euclidean distance of the obtained solutions, in order to verify whether the result is the global optimum. By using this method, we obtain the global optimal solution of the low-frequency insulation of LRSM. By varying parameters of the optimum, it can be found that the optimized insulation performance of the LRSM is contributed by the coupling of local resonance with Bragg scattering effect, as well as a distinct impedance mismatch between the matrix of LRSM and the surrounding water. This indicates coupling different effects with impedance mismatches is the best method to enhance the low-frequency insulation performance of LRSM.

The permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) driven by an inverter is widely used in the industrial field, but the inverter has a significant impact on the operational stability of the PMSM. The torque ripple of the PMSM is directly affected by the coupling of multiple harmonic voltages in the motor windings. In order to analyze its influence, a water-cooled PMSM with 20 kW 2000 r/min is taken as an example to establish the finite element model of the prototype, and the correctness of the model is verified by experiments. Firstly, based on the finite element method, the electromagnetic field of the PMSM is numerically solved in different operating states, and the performance parameters of the PMSM are obtained. Based on these parameters, the influence of the harmonic voltage amplitude on the torque ripple is studied, and the influence law is obtained. Secondly, combined with the decoupling analysis method, the influence of harmonic voltage coupling on the torque ripple is compared and analyzed, and the variation law of harmonic voltage coupling on the torque ripple is obtained. In addition, the influence of different harmonic voltage coupling on the average torque of the PMSM is studied, and the influence degree of different harmonic voltage amplitude on the torque fluctuation is determined. The conclusion of this paper provides reliable theoretical guidance for improving motor performance.

The concentrated winding (CW) is obviously different from the traditional distributed winding (DW) in the arrangement of windings and the calculation of winding factors, which will inevitably lead to different performances of the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). In order to analyze the differences between the CW and the DW in the performance, a 3 kW, 1500 r/min PMSM is taken as an example to establish a 2-D finite element model. The correctness of the model is verified by comparing experimental data and calculated data. Firstly, the finite element method (FEM) is used to calculate the electromagnetic field of the PMSM, and the performance parameters of the PMSM are obtained. On this basis, the influences of the two winding structures on the performance are quantitatively analyzed, and the differences between the two winding structures on the performance of the PMSM will be determined. Finally, the differences of efficiency between the two winding structures are obtained. In addition, the influences of the winding structures on eddy current loss are further studied, and the mechanism of eddy current loss is revealed by studying the eddy current density. The analysis of this paper provides reference and practical value for the optimization design of the PMSM.

In automatic and accurate reading recognition of analog meters based on machine vision, one of important issues is the detection of pointer features, which includes the meter center and pointer image processing. The current automatic-recognition approaches to reading analog meters often consist in locating the meter center based on the dial region or its border. The located center is not coincident with the rotation center of pointer which leads to inevitable reading errors. In the paper, the centripetalism of annular scale lines is used to calculate the position of the pointer rotation center. First, it uses the region growing method to locate the dial region and uses the eccentricity measure to extract annular scale lines. Second, the parameters of these scale lines are estimated with the Hough transform method. Then, the common intersection of a group of lines, i.e., the meter rotation center, is determined with the maximum probability criterion. Finally, the pointer centerline and direction are detected through the calculated center and the Hough transform results. The simulated and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can accurately locate the pointer rotation center and obtain pointer centerline. Moreover, it is applicable to the meter image captured under a slant camera view or with uneven light illumination.

A hot compression test was conducted on a Gleeble-3500 thermo-simulation machine to study the critical conditions and kinetics of dynamic recrystallization in a high-carbon tool steel. The critical conditions for the initiation of dynamic recrystallization were determined using the working-hardening theory. The quantitative relationship between the critical characteristics of dynamic recrystallization and the hot deformation parameters were elucidated based on two different methods:the apparent method and physically based method. It was found that the two methods both have high applicability for the investigated steel, but the physically-based method needs less parameters and makes it possible to study the effect of different factors. A dynamic recrystallization kinetics model was used to calculate the recrystallization volume fraction under different conditions. The calculation results matched well with the data obtained from the flow curves.

Ice formed on radome surfaces causes communication disruption due to radio-frequency interference (RFI), which reveals the importance of de-icing systems for radomes. As a radome de-icing application, in this work, carbon nanotube (CNT) thin films were fabricated using a spray-coating method, and influence of process parameters on RF transmittance and electrothermal properties was investigated. With the increase of spraying time, sheet resistance of the fabricated film decreases, which results in a decrease of the RF transmittance and improvement of the heating performance. Also, the de-icing capability of the fabricated CNT film was evaluated at –20oC, and efficient removal of ice under cold conditions was demonstrated.

Dynamic charge carrier transport behavior in the zirconium (Zr) oxide was investigated based on the frequency-dependent capacitance-voltage (C-V) and temperature-dependent current-voltage (I-V) measurements. The Zr oxide was formed on the ZIRLO and newly developed zirconium-based alloy (NDZ) by corrosion in the PWR-simulated loop at 360°C. The corrosion test for 90 days showed that the NDZ exhibits better corrosion resistance than ZIRLO alloy. Based on the C-V measurement, dielectric constant values for the Zr oxide was estimated to be 11.28 and 11.52 for the ZIRLO and NDZ. The capacitance difference between low and high frequency was larger in the ZIRLO than in the NDZ, which was attributed to more mobile electrical charge carriers in the oxide layer on the ZIRLO alloy. The current through the oxide layers on the ZIRLO increased more drastically with increasing temperature than on the NDZ, which indicating that more charge trap sites exist in the ZIRLO than in NDZ. Based on the dynamic charge carrier transport behavior, it was concluded that the electrical charge carrier transport within the oxide layers was closely related with the corrosion behavior of the Zr alloys.

Due to air pollution, global warming and energy shortage demands new clean energy conversion technologies. The conversion of industrial waste heat into useful electricity using thermoelectric (TE) technology is a promising method in recent decades. Still, its applications are limited by the low efficiency of TE materials in the operating range between 400-600 K. In this work, we have fabricated Cu0.005Bi0.5Sb1.495Te3 powder using a single step gas atomization process followed by spark plasma sintering at different temperatures (623, 673, 723, and 773 K), and their thermoelectric properties were investigated. The variation of sintering temperature showed a significant impact on the grain size. The Seebeck coefficient values at room temperature increased significantly from 127 μVK to 151 μV/K with increasing sintering temperature from 623 K to 723 K due to decreased carrier concentration. The maximum ZT values for the four samples were similar in the range between 1.15 to 1.18 at 450 K, which suggest these materials could be used for power generation in the mid-temperature range (400-600 K).

U-10wt.%Zr-5wt.%RE fuel slugs for a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) were conventionally prepared by a modified injection casting method, which had the drawback of a low fabrication yield rate of approximately 60% because of the formation of many metallic fuel scraps, such as melt residue and unsuitable fuel slug butts. Moreover, the metallic fuel scraps were classified as a radioactive waste and stored in temporary storage without recycling. It is necessary to develop a recycling process technology for scrap wastes in order to reduce the radioactive wastes of the fuel scraps and improve the fabrication yield of the fuel slugs. In this study, the additive recycling process of the metallic fuel scraps was introduced to re-fabricate the U-10wt.%Zr-5wt.%RE fuel slugs. The U-10wt.%Zr-5wt.%RE fuel scraps were cleaned on the surface impurity layers with a mechanical treatment that used an electric brush under an Ar atmosphere. The U-10wt.%Zr-5wt.%RE fuel slugs were soundly re-fabricated and examined to evaluate the feasibility of the additive process compared with the metallic fuel slugs that used pure metals.