FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF WALLFLOW DIESEL PARTICULATE FILTER SYSTEM WITH REVERSE PULSE AIR REGENERATION

To simulate steady airflows inside of wall-flow diesel particulate filters （DPF） with different reverse blowing pipes collocation, a mathematical model of the flow in a DPF is established by an equivalent continuum approach. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical values calculated from the model. Simulation shows that the velocity and the pressure distribution of the filters in the regenerative process are key factors to the filter＇s regeneration. How to decrease the mal-distribution of the flow in the filter and how to achieve the better regenerative performance at the least cost of air consumption in the regenerative process are the ultimate goals of the study. Calculation and experiments show that the goals can be realized through adjusting the angle of two reverse blowing pipes and their relative location suitably.

A cascade model of information processing and encoding for retinal prosthesis

Retinal prosthesis offers a potential treatment for individuals suffering from photoreceptor degeneration diseases.Establishing biological retinal models and simulating how the biological retina convert incoming light signal into spike trains that can be properly decoded by the brain is a key issue.Some retinal models have been presented,ranking from structural models inspired by the layered architecture to functional models originated from a set of specific physiological phenomena.However,Most of these focus on stimulus image compression,edge detection and reconstruction,but do not generate spike trains corresponding to visual image.In this study,based on stateof-the-art retinal physiological mechanism,including effective visual information extraction,static nonlinear rectification of biological systems and neurons Poisson coding,a cascade model of the retina including the out plexiform layer for information processing and the inner plexiform layer for information encoding was brought forward,which integrates both anatomic connections and functional computations of retina.Using MATLAB software,spike trains corresponding to stimulus image were numerically computed by four steps：linear spatiotemporal filtering,static nonlinear rectification,radial sampling and then Poisson spike generation.The simulated results suggested that such a cascade model could recreate visual information processing and encoding functionalities of the retina,which is helpful in developing artificial retina for the retinally blind.

Effects of continuously regenerating diesel particulate filters on regulated emissions and number-size distribution of particles emitted from a diesel engine

The effects of continuously regenerating diesel particulate filter （CRDPF） systems on regulated gaseous emissions, and number-size distribution and mass of particles emanated from a diesel engine have been investigated in this study. Two CRDPF units （CRDPF-1 and CRDPF-2） with different specifications were separately retrofitted to the engine running with European steady-state cycle （ESC）. An electrical low pressure impactor （ELPI） was used for particle number-size distribution measurement and mass estimation. The conversion/reduction rate （RcR） of hydrocarbons （HC） and carbon monoxide （CO） across CRDPF-1 was 83% and 96.3%, respectively. Similarly, the RCR of HC and CO and across CRDPF-2 was 91.8% and 99.1%, respectively. The number concentration of particles and their concentration peaks; nuclei mode, accumulation mode and total particles; and particle mass were highly reduced with the CRDPF units. The nuclei mode particles at downstream of CRDPF-1 and CRDPF-2 decreased by 99.9% to 100% and 97.8% to 99.8% respectively; and the particle mass reduced by 73% to 92.2% and 35.3% to 72.4%, respectively, depending on the engine conditions. In addition, nuclei mode particles increased with the increasing of engine speed due to the heterogeneous nucleation initiated by the higher exhaust temperature, while accumulation mode particles were higher at higher loads due to the decrease in the air-to-fuel ratio （A/F） at higher loads.

Widely tunable microwave photonic filter based on self-adaptive optical carrier regeneration

In this paper, we have designed and proofed a widely tunable microwave photonic filter (MPF) on the basis of self-adaptive optical carrier regeneration method through stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) amplification. The MPF system features with a single microwave passband as the result of the processed signal sideband beating with the regenerated optical carrier. Since the Brillouin-laser optical carrier and the SBS amplification are generated from one laser source, the optical carrier regeneration process of the proposed MPF is self- adaptive and carrier-frequency independent. Moreover, by simply varying the wavelength spacing between the optical carrier and the optical filter, the central passband of the MPF can be continuously tuned from 6 to 32 GHz, which is limited by the bandwidth of the modulator and the photodetector. The 3 dB bandwidth and the out-of-band suppression ratio of the MPF can reach 640 MHz and 21 dB, respectively.

Effects of regenerative mechanical vibration on the mechanical integrity of ceramic diesel particulate filters

In this study, the effects of mechanical vibration on the mechanical properties of ceramic diesel particulate filters(DPFs) were investigated. The goal is to determine how the mechanical vibration used in the regenerative ash cleaning process for these filters affects their mechanical integrity during subsequent reuse. Both virgin and vibrated DPF samples were subjected to compressive and 3-point flexural loading at three different loading rates along axial and tangential directions. Statistical analysis was conducted to determine the significance of variation in the compressive and flexural strengths of the DPFs as a result of exposure to mechanical vibration. The results show that there is no statistically significant difference in both compressive and flexural strengths of the virgin DPFs and the DPFs subjected to the same level of mechanical vibration typically used in ash cleaning of DPFs. When the intensity of vibration was doubled, the drop in compressive strength became statistically significant, but less than 10% under axial loading. However, no drop in flexural strength was observed for DPFs subjected to this high intensity of mechanical vibration. The safe threshold for mechanical vibration of ceramic filters is considered to be much higher than that currently used in vibration-based ash cleaning process.

Impacts of continuously regenerating trap and particle oxidation catalyst on the NO_2 and particulate matter emissions emitted from diesel engine

Two continuously regenerating diesel particulate filter （CRDPF） with different configurations and one particles oxidation catalyst （POC） were employed to perform experiments in a controlled laboratory setting to evaluate their effects on NO2, smoke and particle number emissions. The results showed that the application of the after-treatments increased the emission ratios of NO2/NOx significantly. The results of smoke emissions and particle number （PN） emissions indicated that both CRDPFs had sufficient capacity to remove more than 90% of total particulate matter （PM） and more than 97% of solid particles. However, the POC was able to remove the organic components of total PM, and only partially to remove the carbonaceous particles with size less than 30 nm. The negligible effects of POC on larger particles were observed due to its honeycomb structure leads to an inadequate residence time to oxidize the solid particles or trap them. The particles removal efficiencies of CRDPFs had high degree of correlations with the emission ratio of NO2/NOx. The PN emission results from two CRDPFs indicated that more NO2 generating in diesel oxidation catalyst section could obtain the higher removal efficiency of solid particles. However this also increased the risk of NO2 exposure in atmosphere.