Air pressure law of a reservoir constructed in karst sinkholes

Karst sinkholes with natural negative landform provide favorable conditions for the pumped storage reservoir construction for less excavation work.However,the construction of the reservoir would plug the natural karst channels for water and air,which would cause remarkable air pressure in karst channels when the groundwater level fluctuates.A large laboratory simulation test was carried out to study the air pressure variation of a reservoir built on the karst sinkhole.The air pressure in the karst channel and inside the model was monitored during the groundwater rising and falling process.Result showed that the variation of air pressure in the karst channel and the surrounding rock exhibited a high degree of similarity.The air pressure increased rapidly at the initial stage of water level rising,followed by a slight decrease,then the air pressure increased sharply when the water level approached the top of the karst cave.The initial peak of air pressure and the final peak of air pressure were defined,and both air pressure peaks were linearly increasing with the water level rising rate.The negative air pressure was also analyzed during the drainage process,which was linearly correlated with the water level falling rate.The causes of air pressure variation in karst channels of a pumped storage reservoir built on the karst sinkhole were discussed.The initial rapid increase,then slight decrease and final sudden increase of air pressure were controlled by the combined effects of air compression in karst channel and air seepage into the surrounding rock.For the drainage process,the instant negative air pressure and gradual recovering of air pressure were controlled by the combined effects of negative air pressure induced by water level falling and air supply from surrounding rock.This work could provide valuable reference for the reservoir construction in karst area.

Analysis and evaluation on pressure fluctuations in air dense medium fluidized bed

Pressure fluctuations contribute to the instability of separation process in air dense medium fluidized bed, which provides a high motivation for further study of underlying mechanisms. Reasons for generation and propagation of pressure fluctuations in the air dense medium fluidized bed have been discussed.Drift rate and collision rate of particles were employed to deduce the correlation between voidage and pressure fluctuations. Simultaneously, a dynamic pressure fluctuation measuring and analysis system was established. Based on frequency domain analysis and wavelet analysis, collected signals were disassembled and analyzed. Results show gradually intensive motion of particles increases magnitudes of signal components with lower frequencies. As a result of violent particle motion, the magnitude of real pressure signal's frequency experienced an increase as air velocity increased moderately. Wavelet analysis keeps edge features of the real signal and eliminates the noise efficaciously. The frequency of denoised signal is closed to that of pressure signal identified in frequency domain analysis.

A homogeneous atmospheric pressure air plasma in a 10 mm gap based on a three-electrode configuration

Generation of atmospheric pressure homogeneous air plasma in a large gap(>4 mm)is a challenge.In this study,an atmospheric pressure homogeneous air plasma generated in a gap up to 10 mm is reported,which is based on a three-electrode configuration,where a high-voltage(HV)electrode and a middle electrode form a surface dielectric barrier discharge(S-DBD),and together with the ground electrode form the main volume discharge.High-speed photographs confirm that the discharge in the main gap is homogeneous.The gas temperature of the plasma estimated from the N_(2)(C^(3)∏_(u)-B^(3)∏_(g))(Δv=-2)emission is about 320 K,which is close to room temperature.A detailed analysis shows that the discharge ignited between the HV electrode and the middle electrode is serving as an electron source,and the electrons deposited on the dielectric plate are due to the S-DBD along with the applied voltage generating a driving force,which results in a high concentration of seed electrons in the main gap and induces the homogeneous plasma.Further analysis shows that the electric field in the main gap is only about18.45 k V·cm^(-1),which is much lower than the typical breakdown electric field of 30 k V·cm^(-1)for atmospheric pressure air discharge.

Fluid-chemical modeling of the near-cathode sheath formation process in a high current broken in DC air circuit breaker

When the contacts of a medium-voltage DC air circuit breaker(DCCB) are separated, the energy distribution of the arc is determined by the formation process of the near-electrode sheath. Therefore, the voltage drop through the near-electrode sheath is an important means to build up the arc voltage, which directly determines the current-limiting performance of the DCCB. A numerical model to describe the near-electrode sheath formation process can provide insight into the physical mechanism of the arc formation, and thus provide a method for arc energy regulation. In this work, we establish a two-dimensional axisymmetric time-varying model of a medium-voltage DCCB arc when interrupted by high current based on a fluid-chemical model involving 16 kinds of species and 46 collision reactions. The transient distributions of electron number density, positive and negative ion number density, net space charge density, axial electric field, axial potential between electrodes, and near-cathode sheath are obtained from the numerical model. The computational results show that the electron density in the arc column increases, then decreases, and then stabilizes during the near-cathode sheath formation process, and the arc column's diameter gradually becomes wider. The 11.14 V–12.33 V drops along the17 μm space charge layer away from the cathode(65.5 k V/m–72.5 k V/m) when the current varies from 20 k A–80 k A.The homogeneous external magnetic field has little effect on the distribution of particles in the near-cathode sheath core,but the electron number density at the near-cathode sheath periphery can increase as the magnetic field increases and the homogeneous external magnetic field will lead to arc diffusion. The validity of the numerical model can be proven by comparison with the experiment.

Unsteady Turbulent Simulation and Pressure Fluctuation Analysis for Centrifugal Pumps

The pressure fluctuation in the flow passage of both impeller and casing is addressed on design condition. The initial conditions for the unsteady turbulent simulation are resulted from the steady calculations, and the three dimensional unsteady turbulent simulation concerning the rotor-stator interaction is executed by a Navier-Stoke solver embedded with k -ε turbulence model and with appropriate moving interface boundary conditions. Detecting points are distributed in the flow passage in different radial and circumferential positions to capture the static pressure fluctuation character for one cycle of the impeller. The time-domain spectrums show that the static pressure curves are periodic and have five peaks and five valleys. With the radius increasing, the pressure fluctuation peak-to-peak values in the impeller are increasing, and reach the maximum value on the interface. In the casing flow passage, those values are about 7% of local static pressure except some ones near the tongue. The values become decreasingly in the diffuser pipe. The frequency spectrums transformed by fast Fourier transform （FFT） show that the dominant frequency is approximate with the blade passing frequency, and the pressure fluctuations in impeller passage have high frequency content while those in casing ones have no such information.

Experimental Study of the Pressure Fluctuations in a Pump Turbine at Large Partial Flow Conditions

Frequent shifts of output and operating mode require a pump turbine with excellent stability. Current researches show that large partial flow conditions in pump mode experience positive-slope phenomena with a large head drop. The pressure fluctuation at the positive slope is crucial to the pump turbine unit safety. The operating instabilities at large partial flow conditions for a pump turbine are analyzed. The hydraulic performance of a model pump turbine is tested with the pressure fluctuations measured at unstable operating points near a positive slope in the performance curve. The hydraulic performance tests show that there are two separated positive-slope regions for the pump turbine, with the flow discharge for the first positive slope from 0.85 to 0.91 times that at the maximum efficiency point. The amplitudes of the pressure fluctuations at these unstable large partial flow conditions near the first positive slope are much larger than those at stable operating condtions. A dominant frequency is measured at 0.2 times the impeller rotational frequency in the flow passage near the impeller exit, which is believed to be induced by the rotating stall in the flow passage of the wicket gates. The test results also show hysteresis with pressure fluctuations when the pump turbine is operated near the first positive slope. The hysteresis creates different pressure fluctuations for those operation points even though their flow rates and heads are similar respectively. The pressure fluctuation characteristics at large partial flow conditions obtained by the present study will be helpful for the safe operation of pumped storage units.

Numerical Simulation of Pressure Fluctuations in a Large Francis Turbine Runner

The pressure fluctuation caused by unsteady flow in runner is one of the main reasons of vibration for a large Francis hydraulic turbine. It directly affects the steady operation of the hydraulic turbine unit. The existing research of the pressure fluctuation in hydraulic turbine mainly focuses on the unsteady flow in draft tube. Accurate distribution of pressure fluctuations inside a runner is not very clear. In this paper, the numerical method for predicting the pressure fluctuations in runner is investigated and the numerical simulation is performed for a large Francis hydraulic turbine. It is proved that the combination of shear-stress transport（SST） k-o） turbulence model and pressure-implicit with splitting of operators（PISO） algorithm could give more reliable prediction of pressure fluctuations in runner. The frequencies of pressure fluctuations in runner are affected by the flow in guide vane and the flow in draft tube The first dominant frequency is significantly determined by the flow in draft tube, especially at part load condition. This frequency is approximately equal to one-third of the runner rotating frequency. The evident second dominant frequency is exactly equal to the guide vane passing frequency. The peak-to-peak amplitudes of pressure fluctuations in runner at small guide vane open angle are larger than that at large open angle at the same operating head. The amplitudes at points on blade pressure surface are generally greater than that on suction surface. The research results could be used to direct the hydraulic design and operation stability improvement of a large Francis hydraulic turbine.

The Influence of Atmospheric Pressure on Air Content and Pore Structure of Air-entrained Concrete

To study the effect of atmospheric pressure on the properties of fresh and hardened airentrained concrete, three kinds of air entraining agents were used for preparing air-entrained concrete in the plateaus(Lhasa, 61 kPa) and the plains(Beijing, 101 kPa). Air content, slump, compressive strength and pore structure of the three air-entrained concretes were tested in these two places. It is found that the air content of concrete under low atmospheric pressure(LAP) is 4%-36% lower than that of concrete under normal atmospheric pressure(NAP), which explaines the decrease of slump for air-entrained concrete under LAP. Pore number of hardened concrete under LAP is reduced by 48%-69%. While, the proportion of big pores(pore diameter >1 200 μm) and air void spacing factor are increased by 1.5%-7.3% and 51%-92%, respectively. The deterioration of pore structure results in a 3%-9% reduction in the compressive strength of concrete. From the results we have obtained, it can be concluded that the increase of critical nucleation energy of air bubbles and the decrease of volumetric compressibility coefficient of air in the concrete are responsible for the variation of air content and pore structure of concrete under LAP.

Impact of Impeller Stagger Angles on Pressure Fluctuation for a Double-Suction Centrifugal Pump

Pressure fluctuation may cause high amplitude of vibration of double-suction centrifugal pumps, but the impact of impeller stagger angles is still not well understood. In this paper, pressure fluctuation experiments are carried out for five impeller configurations with different stagger angles by using the same test rig system. Results show that the stagger angles exert negligible effects on the characteristics of head and efficiency. The distributions of pressure fluctuations are relatively uniform along the suction chamber wall, and the maximum pressure fluctuation amplitude is reached near the suction inlet tongue region. The pressure fluctuation characteristics are affected largely by impeller rotation, whose dominant frequencies include impeller rotation frequency and its harmonic frequencies, and half blade passage frequency. The stagger angle exerts a small effect on the pressure fluctuations in the suction chamber while a great effect on the pressure fluctuation in volute casing, especially on the aspect of decreasing the amplitude on blade passage frequency. Among the tested cases, the distribution of pressure fluctuations in the volute becomes more uniform than the other impeller configurations and the level of pressure fluctuation may be reduced by up to 50% when the impeller stagger angle is close to 24° or 360°.The impeller structure pattern needs to be taken into consideration during the design period, and the halfway staggered impeller is strongly recommended.

Intraocular pressure fluctuation and the risk of glaucomatous damage deterioration: a Meta-analysis

AIM: To systematically review whether the increased fluctuation of intraocular pressure(IOP) is a risk factor for open angle glaucoma(OAG) progression. METHODS: Scientific studies relevant to IOP fluctuation and glaucoma progression were retrieved from MEDLINE,EMBASE and CENTRAL databases, and were listed as references in this paper. The hazard ratio(HR) was calculated by using fixed or random-effects models according to the heterogeneity of included studies. RESULTS: Individual data for 2211 eyes of 2637 OAG patients in fourteen prospective studies were included in this Meta-analysis. All studies were longitudinal clinical studies with follow-up period ranging from 3 to 8.5 y. The combined HR was 1.23(95%CI 1.04-1.46, P=0.02) for the association between IOP fluctuation and glaucoma onset or progression with the evidence of heterogeneity(P<0.1).Subgroup analyses with different types of IOP fluctuation were also evaluated. Results indicated that the summary HR was 0.98(95%CI 0.78-1.24) in short-term IOP fluctuation group, which showed no statistical significance with heterogeneity, whereas, the combined HR was 1.43(95%CI1.13-1.82, P=0.003) in long-term IOP fluctuation group without homogeneity. Sensitivity analysis further showed that the pooled HR was 1.10(95%CI 1.03-1.18, P=0.004) for long-term IOP fluctuation and visual function progression with homogeneity among studies(P=0.3). CONCLUSION: Long-term IOP fluctuation can be a risk factor for glaucoma progression based on the presentedevidence. Thus, controlling the swing of IOP is crucial for glaucoma or glaucoma suspecting patients.

Pressure Fluctuation in the Submerged Circulative Impinging Stream Reactor

Pressure fluctuation in the submerged circulative impinging stream reactor （SCISR） is studied by measuring the dynamic pressure with micro pressure sensors of high accuracy, with water as the process material. Experimental results show that the maximum amplitude of fluctuation can be up to about 1.6kPa. On the power spectra the fluctuation is relatively concentrated in the range of 〈1000Hz, with some weak peeks in acoustic wave range. The space profile of intensive fluctuation region in the reactor is determined. The region is found to take the form of a couple truncated cones of empty core, with coincided bottoms, and is symmetrical with respect to the impinging plane and approximately symmetrical about the axis, essentially independent of u0. The integral intensity of fluctuation increases as the impinging velocity, Uo increasing.

Flow Pattern and Pressure Fluctuation of Severe Slugging in Pipeline-riser System

During the exploitation of offshore oil and gas,it is easy to form severe slugging which can cause great harm in the riser connecting wellheads and offshore platform preprocessing system.The flow pattern and pressure fluctuation of severe slugging were studied in an experimental simulation system with inner diameter of 0.051 m.It is found that severe slugging can be divided into three severe slugging regimes：regime I at low gas and liquid flow rates with large pressure fluctuation,intermittent flow of liquid and gas in the riser,and apparent cutoff of liquid phase,regime II at high gas flow rate with non-periodic fluctuation and discontinuous liquid outflow and no gas cutoff,regime III at high liquid flow rate with degenerative pressure fluctuation in form of relatively stable bubbly or plug flow.The results indicate that severe slugging still occurs when the declination angle of pipeline is 0,and there are mainly two kinds of regimes：regime I and regime II.As the angle increases,the formation ranges of regime I and regime III increase slightly while that of regime II is not affected.With the increase of gas superficial velocity and liquid superficial velocity,the pressure fluctuation at the bottom of riser increases initially and then decreases.The maximum value of pressure fluctuation occurs at the transition boundary of regimes I and II.

CFD simulation of pressure fluctuation characteristics in the gas-solid fluidized bed:Comparisons with experiments

A simple hydrodynamic model based on two-fluid theory, taking into account the effect of discrete particles on both the gas- and solid-phase momentum equations, was used to numerically investigate the pressure fluctuation characteristics in a gas-solid fluidized bed with the aid of CFX 4.4, a commercial CFD software package, by adding user-defined Fortran subroutines. Numerical simulations together with typical experimental measurements show that pressure fluctuations originate above the distributor when a gas pulse is injected into the fluidized bed. The pressure above the bubble gradually increases due to the presence of a rising bubble. When the bubble passes through the bed surface, the pressure near the bed surface gradually decreases to a lower value. Moreover, the pressure signals in the bubbling fluidized beds show obviously periodic characteristics. The major frequency of pressure fluctuations at the same vertical position is affected slightly by the operating gas velocity, and the amplitude of pressure fluctuations is related to both the operating gas velocity and the vertical height. In this study, the influence of the operating gas velocity on the pressure wave propagation velocity can be ignored, and only two peak frequencies in the power spectrum of the pressure fluctuations are observed which are associated with the bubble formation above the distributor and its eruption at the bed surface.

Pressure fluctuation and its influencing factors in circulating water pump

In order to investigate the effect of sampling frequency and time on pressure fluctuations, the three-dimensional unsteady numerical simulations were conducted in a circulating water pump. Through comparison of turbulence models with hydraulic performance experiment, SST k-co model was confirmed to study the rational determination of sampling frequency and time better. The Fast Fourier Transform （FFT） technology was then adopted to process those fluctuating pressure signals obtained. On these bases, the characteristics of pressure fluctuations acting on the tongue were discussed. It is found that aliasing errors decrease at higher sampling frequency of 17 640 Hz, but not at a lower sampling frequency of 1 764 Hz. Correspondingly, an output frequency range ten-times wider is obtained at 17 640 Hz. Compared with 8R, when the sampling time is shorter, the amplitudes may be overvalued, and the frequencies and amplitudes of low-frequency fluctuations can not be well predicted. The frequencies at the tongue are in good agreement with the values calculated by formula and the frequency compositions less than the blade passing frequency are accurately predicted.

Reliability of Blood Pressure Measurements: An Analysis of the White Coat Effect and Its Fluctuations

In this paper, we evaluate the difference between the first and second measurements of blood pressure (BP) when BP is measured twice using the results of 17,775 medical checkups. The two measurements for both systolic BP (SBP) and the diastolic BP (DBP) fluctuated a large amount even though they were measured at a short interval. The first measurements were 6.7 and 2.4 mmHg higher than the second ones for SBP and DBP, suggesting a white coat effect. Then, the factors that might affect the differences between the two measurements were analyzed by the regression models. For both SBP and DBP, the difference increased as the first measurement increased. Age, gender, BMI and alcohol consumption were other important factors affecting the difference. In the case of a typical male individual, the typical criteria for hypertension of 140/90, 160/100 and 180/110 mmHg criteria in the first measurement would correspond to 135/86, 150/94 and 165/102 mmHg in the second measurement. The necessity of developing accurate and cost-efficient BP measurement methods is strongly suggested.

Pressure Fluctuation in the Submerged Circulative Impinging Stream Reactor

Pressure fluctuation in the submerged circulative impinging stream reactor (SCISR) is studied by meas- uring the dynamic pressure with micro pressure sensors of high accuracy, with water as the process material. Ex- perimental results show that the maximum amplitude of fluctuation can be up to about 1.6kPa. On the power spectra the fluctuation is relatively concentrated in the range of <1000Hz, with some weak peeks in acoustic wave range. The space profile of intensive fluctuation region in the reactor is determined. The region is found to take the form of a couple truncated cones of empty core, with coincided bottoms, and is symmetrical with respect to the impinging plane and approximately symmetrical about the axis, essentially independent of u0. The integral intensity of fluctua- tion increases as the impinging velocity, u0 increasing.

Pressure fluctuation signal analysis of pump based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition method

Pressure fluctuations, which are inevitable in the operation of pumps, have a strong non-stationary characteristic and contain a great deal of important information representing the operation conditions. With an axial-flow pump as an example, a new method for time-frequency analysis based on the ensemble empirical mode decomposition （EEMD） method is proposed for research on the characteristics of pressure fluctuations. First, the pressure fluctuation signals are preprocessed with the empirical mode decomposition （EMD） method, and intrinsic mode functions （IMFs） are extracted. Second, the EEMD method is used to extract more precise decomposition results, and the number of iterations is determined according to the number of IMFs produced by the EMD method. Third, correlation coefficients between IMFs produced by the EMD and EEMD methods and the original signal are calculated, and the most sensitive IMFs are chosen to analyze the frequency spectrum. Finally, the operation conditions of the pump are identified with the frequency features. The results show that, compared with the EMD method, the EEMD method can improve the time-frequency resolution and extract main vibration components from pressure fluctuation signals.

Effects of total pressures and equivalence ratios on kerosene/air rotating detonation engines using a paralleling CE/SE method

In this paper,the kerosene/air rotating detonation engines(RDE)are numerically investigated,and the emphasis is laid on the effects of total pressures and equivalence ratios on the operation characteristics of RDE including the initiation,instabilities,and propulsive performance.A hybrid MPI t OpenMP parallel computing model is applied and it is proved to be able to obtain a more effective parallel performance on high performance computing(HPC)systems.A series of cases with the total pressure of 1 MPa,1.5 MPa,2 MPa,and the equivalence ratio of 0.9,1,1.4 are simulated.On one hand,the total pressure shows a significant impact on the instabilities of rotating detonation waves.The instability phenomenon is observed in cases with low total pressure(1 MPa)and weakened with the increase of the total pressure.The total pressure has a small impact on the detonation wave velocity and the specific impulse.On the other hand,the equivalence ratio shows a negligible influence on the instabilities,while it affects the ignition process and accounts for the detonation velocity deficit.It is more difficult to initiate rotating detonation waves directly in the lean fuel operation condition.Little difference was observed in the thrust with different equivalence ratios of 0.9,1,and 1.4.The highest specific impulse was obtained in the lean fuel cases,which is around 2700 s.The findings could provide insights into the understanding of the operation characteristics of kerosene/air RDE.

Influence of air pressure on mechanical effect of laser plasma shock wave

The influence of air pressure on mechanical effect of laser plasma shock wave in a vacuum chamber produced by a Nd：YAG laser has been studied. The laser pulses with pulse width of 10ns and pulse energy of about 320mJ at 1.06μm wavelength is focused on the aluminium target mounted on a ballistic pendulum, and the air pressure in the chamber changes from 2.8 × 10^ 3 to 1.01 × 10^5pa. The experimental results show that the impulse coupling coefficient changes as the air pressure and the distance of the target from focus change. The mechanical effects of the plasma shock wave on the target are analysed at different distances from focus and the air pressure.

Reduction of shrinkage porosities in aluminum alloy castings by external pressure fluctuation under gravity field

A novel method to improve the feeding capacity of ZL205 A alloy castings by pressure fluctuation during its solidification process under gravity field was proposed. The experiments were done in the graphite mould by applying the fluctuation pressure at the top of the riser. Results of the X-ray inspection of castings and simulations of flow velocity of alloy melt and temperature field show that the new method can effectively improve the feeding capacity and significantly reduce the shrinkage in the castings. The mechanism of improving the feeding capacity by pressure fluctuation is that the fluctuating pressure can make the ZL205 A alloy melt form a vibration wave in the melt. The vibration wave can intensify the convection of the melt, and therefore, break down the barrage from the feeding channel which forms during the solidification process of the ZL205 A alloy, improving the feeding capacity.