The aim of the paper was an attempt at applying the time-series analysis to the control of the melting process of grey cast iron in production conditions. The production data were collected in one of Polish foundries in the form of spectrometer printouts. The quality of the alloy was controlled by its chemical composition in about 0.5 hour time intervals. The procedure of preparation of the industrial data is presented, including OCR-based method of transformation to the electronic numerical format as well as generation of records related to particular weekdays. The computations for time-series analysis were made using the author’s own software having a wide range of capabilities, including detection of important periodicity in data as well as regression modeling of the residual data, i.e. the values obtained after subtraction of general trend, trend of variability amplitude and the periodical component. The most interesting results of the analysis include: significant 2-measurements periodicity of percentages of all components, significance 7-day periodicity of silicon content measured at the end of a day and the relatively good prediction accuracy obtained without modeling of residual data for various types of expected values. Some practical conclusions have been formulated, related to possible improvements in the melting process control procedures as well as more general tips concerning applications of time-series analysis in foundry production.

Maintaining railway turnout operability is crucial for ensuring railway transport safety. Electric heating of railway turnouts is a significant technical and economic issue. The classical heating is characterised by high power consumption. For this reason, research is needed to optimise the current system. This paper presents results of a numerical analysis and of experimental researches. The numerical analysis was carried out using the ANSYS software. There was conducted a numerical comparative analysis of energy loss during heating performed using two different heaters. Including the classical method and a heater thermally insulated from a rail. In the first step, heating of a working space filled with a substitute snow model was considered. The snow-covered surface area was held within the working space of the turnout. It was assumed that the snow substitute material had thermal properties approximately the same as real light snow. It was also assumed that the material is in the solid state which would not undergo a phase change. In the next step, a real snow model that included the phase change process was taken into account. The energy efficiency and heat distribution in the turnout have been analysed and compared. The experimental researches were carried out in a physical model. The results showed that the use of a contactless heater results in creating a larger area over which emitted heat affected snow in the working space. Consequently, more snow was melted around the contactless heater than the classic one. This experimental observation supported the results of the numerical analyses presented previously.

The present numerical study treats the impact of fin shape design on the thermal efficiency of phase change material (PCM)-based thermal energy storage (TES) unit, focusing on the same surface area occupied by fins. Comparing two different finned TES units equipped with rectangular and triangular fin shapes, respectively, showed significant enhancements in PCM melting activity. Comparative analysis demonstrated that triangular fin shape lowers PCM melting time by 12.64% for equivalent fin numbers, and by 15.38% for equal fin lengths due to the enlargement of the heat transfer area provided by the triangular shape. Further examination of fins with triangular shape in terms of spacing and length, under fixed thickness and size parameters, revealed significant reduction in melting time with increasing fins length. Notably, 50.75% decrease in melting time was achieved by decreasing the number of fins to 20 while increasing fin length to 10 mm. Moreover, maintaining a heat transfer fluid (HTF) temperature 20 K higher than the melting PCM temperature maximizes TES thermal efficiency. These outcomes emphasize the importance of optimizing fin shape design for enhancing heat transfer without affecting the energy storage capacity of TES systems, with potential applications in building thermal management.