A new approach to pedestal differentiation for soil loss estimation-a case study from a burnt area in north-central Portugal

Soil pedestals have long been used as qualitative indicators of soil splash erosion.In rangelands,plant-capped pedestals,generally grass tussocks,have also been used to quantitatively estimate soil loss since the first half of the twentieth century.In agricultural lands,forests,and bad-lands,stone-capped pedestals have been used as qualitative and semi-quantitative indicators of active,'extreme'erosion.Little work has been reported on using capstone pedestal data for quantifying soil loss.We postulate that three distinct capstone pedestal types may be present in any given location and that a detailed analysis of a pedestal height histogram may be used to recognize their populations.This analysis can subsequently inform if soil loss can be reliably estimated and if so,which of the existing methods using pedestal height data will provide more accurate results.The three proposed capstone pedestal types are:(1)neo-pedestals formed underneath surface stones exposed by(partial)removal of the soil surface cover;(2)endo-pedestals formed underneath stones that were buried in the soil but have been exposed by erosion;and(3)phoenix-pedestals formed underneath stones from collapsed pedestals.In the pedestal height histogram of any given location,a skew to smaller heights may indicate the existence of endo-and/or phoenix-pedestals,which may be revealed as a bi-(or tri)modal distribution when using a smaller bin size.This concept was applied to a case study where soil loss had been monitored for control plots and mulched plots during a 5-year period following wildfire in a eucalypt plantation.We measured pedestal heights and used methods to quantitatively assess soil loss from soil pedestal data in the available literature.Soil pedestal data at the end of the 5-year period under or overestimated soil loss in the control treatment,with results ranging from 60 to 115%of measured soil loss,depending on the method.It is postulated that phoenix-and endo-pedestals may be a driving factor behind the observed discrepancies.We discuss how future research may provide more insight into dominant processes,and how frequency distributions may be used to select the best methods for estimating soil loss from pedestals.

Is the Cape Stone Forest in Shantou City formed by wave erosion? A comparison of the pedestal rocks on the coasts and the mountains of Queshi in eastern Guangdong, China

Cape Stone Forest is a group of granite rock pillars(pedestal rocks) towering over Shilin Lake, on the southern shore of Shantou Bay in eastern Guangdong, China. The rock pillars were previously identified as sea stacks because they have marine notch-like concave sidewalls at their base, and more importantly, the lake is immediately adjacent to the bay, which is exposed to the open sea. However, rock pillars similar in shape and size can also be found at the top of Queshi Mountain, which is only about 300 meters northwest of the lake and about 85 meters above sea level. Therefore, the marine origin of Cape Stone Forest is seriously questioned. In this study, 3D imagery and drone technology were used to collect data in the investigations without direct manual measurements in the water or on the mountain. It shows that the concave sidewalls of the rock pillars in the lake and on the mountains occur at different heights and are exposed to different directions, while a natural sea stack on Mayu Island at the mouth of Shantou Bay has a horizontal notch parallel to the sea level, although the granite rock of the sea stack is the same as that of the lake and the mountains. The eastern side of the island, where the sea stack is located, is exposed to the open sea but blocks large waves for the rock pillars in the lake. Therefore, the origin of Cape Stone Forest cannot be explained by wave-based mechanisms. The only satisfactory explanation that takes into account all the field evidence is that the narrow rock pillars of the lake and mountain were formed by chemical weathering that penetrated closely the spaced joints of the granite rock, and the notch-like concave sidewalls were formed by more effective chemical weathering at the base of the pillars.

Construction and realization of the knowledge base and inference engine of an IDSS model for air-conditioning cooling/heating sources selection

The knowledge representation mode and inference control strategy were analyzed according to the specialties of air-conditioning cooling/heating sources selection. The constructing idea and working procedure for knowledge base and inference engine were proposed while the realization technique of the C language was discussed. An intelligent decision support system (IDSS) model based on such knowledge representation and inference mechanism was developed by domain engineers. The model was verified to have a small kernel and powerful capability in list processing and data driving, which was successfully used in the design of a cooling/heating sources system for a large-sized office building.

Application of water loop variable refrigerant flow air-conditioning system in large-scale buildings in northern China

A water loop variable refrigerant flow（WLVRF）air-conditioning system is designed to be applied in large-scale buildings in northern China.The system is energy saving and it is an integrated system consisting of a variable refrigerant flow（VRF）air-conditioning unit,a water loop and an air source heat pump.The water loop transports energy among different regions in the buildings instead of refrigerant pipes,decreasing the scale of the VRF air-conditioning unit and improving the performance.Previous models for refrigerants and building loads are cited in this investigation.Mathematical models of major equipment and other elements of the system are established using the lumped parameter method based on the DATAFIT software and the MATLAB software.The performance of the WLVRF system is simulated.The initial investments and the running costs are calculated based on the results of market research.Finally,a contrast is carried out between the WLVRF system and the traditional VRF system.The results show that the WLVRF system has a better working condition and lower running costs than the traditional VRF system.

Observation of Pedestal Plasma Turbulence on EAST Tokamak

Pedestal plasma turbulence was experimentally studied by microwave reflectometry on EAST tokamak. The characteristics of edge pedestal turbulence during dithering L-H transition, ELM-free H-mode phase and inter-ELM phase have recently been studied on EAST. An edge spatial structure of density fluctuation and its dithering temporal evolution is observed for the first time on the EAST tokamak during the L-H transition phase. A coherent mode usually appears during the ELM-free phase prior to the first ELM on EAST tokamak. The mode frequency gradually decreases as the pedestal evolves. Analysis shows that the coherent mode is in the pedestal region inside the separatrix. In plasma with type-III ELMs, a precursor mode before ELM is usually observed. The frequency of the precursor was initially about 150 kHz and gradually decreased till the next ELM. The mode amplitude increases or shows saturation before ELM. In the plasma with compound ELMs composed of high and low frequency ELMs, the precursor was also observed before the high frequency ELM while the harmonic oscillations with frequencies of 20 kHz, 40 kHz and 60 kHz appear before the low frequency ELM.

Entropy Assessment on Environmental Influence of Condense Heat in Recovery System in Air-Conditioning Refrigerating Machine

This paper presented an entropy evaluation method for the influences of condense heat recovery system on the environment.Aiming at the damage of the condense heat to the environment,an entropy of resource loss and an emission entropy from the condense heat recovery system in the air conditioning refrigerating machine were introduced.For the evaluation of the entropies,we developed a new algorithm for the parameter identification,called the composite influence coefficient,based on the Least Squares Support Vector Machine method.By simulation,the numerical experiments shows that the Least Squares Support Vector Machine method is one of the powerful methods for the parameter identification to compute the damage entropy of the condense heat,with the largest training error being-0.025(the relative error being-3.56%),and the biggest test error being 0.015(the relative error being 2.5%).

Impact of summer office set air-conditioning temperature on energy consumption and thermal comfort

To explore the relationship between summer office set air-conditioning temperature and energy consumption related to air conditioning use to provide human thermal comfort,a comparison experiment was conducted in three similar offices at temperatures of 24,26 and 28 ℃ respectively. A thermal comfort questionnaire survey was conducted. It is demonstrated that air-conditioner energy consumption at the set temperature of 28 ℃ is 113% and 271% lower than at 26 ℃ and 24 ℃,respectively. A linear relationship exists between air-conditioner energy consumption and the indoor and outdoor temperature difference. When comfortably dressed,over 80% of research participants accept the set temperature of 28 ℃. The regression analysis leads to a neutral temperature of 26.2 ℃ and an acceptable temperature of 28.2 ℃ for over 80% of the research participants subjects,indicating that the current 26 ℃ set temperature for offices in summer,required by Chinese General Office of the State Council,can be increased to 28 ℃. Moreover,analysis of predicted mean vote(PMV) index shows that a set temperature of 27 ℃,not 26 ℃,is sufficiently comfortable for office staff wearing long-sleeve shirts,long pants and leather shoes.

Genetic Optimization Algorithm of PID Decoupling Control for VAV Air-Conditioning System

Variable-air-volume (VAV) air-conditioning system is a multi-variable system and has multi coupling control loops. While all of the control loops are working together, they interfere and influence each other. A multivariable decoupling PID controller is designed for VAV air-conditioning system. Diagonal matrix decoupling method is employed to eliminate the coupling between the loop of supply air temperature and that of thermal-space air temperature. The PID controller parameters are optimized by means of an improved genetic algorithm in floating point representations to obtain better performance. The population in the improved genetic algorithm mutates before crossover, which is helpful for the convergence. Additionally the micro mutation algorithm is proposed and applied to improve the convergence during the later evolution. To search the best parameters, the optimized parameters ranges should be amplified 10 times the initial ideal parameters. The simulation and experiment results show that the decoupling control system is effective and feasible. The method can overcome the strong coupling feature of the system and has shorter governing time and less over-shoot than non-optimization PID control.

Selection of Weather Parameters for Air-Conditioning System Design for Buildings with Long Thermal Lag

Two building factors-a longer thermal lag of more than one hour for building envelops and a lag of indoor radiation to convert into cooling load-have impact on the instantaneous heat input and instantaneous cooling load.So the two factors should be taken into account when selecting the weather parameters for air-conditioning system design.This paper developed a new statistic method for the rational selection of coincident solar irradiance,dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures.The method was applied to historic weather records of 25 years in Hong Kong to generate coincident design weather data.And the results show that traditional design solar irradiance,dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures may be significantly overestimated in many conditions,and the design weather data for the three different constructions is not kept constant.

The Experiment and Simulation of Solid Desiccant Dehumidification for Air-Conditioning System in a Tropical Humid Climate

The aim of this research was to study and design a solid desiccant dehumidification system suitable for tropical climate to reduce the latent load of air-conditioning system and improve the thermal comfort. Different dehumidifiers such as desiccant column and desiccant wheel were investigated. The ANSYS and TRASYS software were used to predict the results of dehumidifiers and the desiccant cooling systems, respectively. The desiccant bed contained approximately 15 kg of silica-gel, with 3 mm average diameter. Results indicated that the pressure drop and the adsorption rate of desiccant column are usually higher than those of the desiccant wheel. The feasible and practical adsorption rate of desiccant wheel was 0.102 kgw/h at air flow rate 1.0 kg/min, regenerated air temperature of 55?C and at a wheel speed of 2.5 rpm. The humidity ratio of conditioning space and cooling load of split-type air conditioner was decreased to 0.002 kgw/kgda (14%) and 0.71 kWth (19.26%), respectively. Consequently, the thermal comfort was improved from 0.5 PMV (10.12% PPD) to 0.3 PMV (7.04% PPD).

An Energy-Saving Control Strategy on Central Air-Conditioning System

An energy-saving control strategy based on predictive control for central air-conditioning systems is proposed in this paper. The cold load model is developed to describe the dynamic characteristics of temperature control systems, and then parameters in the cold load model and in the central air-conditioning system model are estimated. Generalized predictive control (GPC) is used to establish an optimization model to minimize the consumption of energy and the control error of temperature. The simulated annealing (SA) algorithm, combined with quadratic programming, is adopted to solve the optimal problem. Contrasted with the simulation of traditional PID control, the results prove the effectiveness of this proposed strategy.

The Research of EAST Pedestal Structure and Preliminary Application

The pedestal characteristic is an important basis for high confinement mode （H- mode） research. Because of the finite spatial resolution of Thomson scattering （TS） diagnostic on Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak （EAST）, it is necessary to characterize the pedestal with a suitable functional form. Based on simulated and experimental data of EAST, it is shown that the two-line method with a bilinear fitting has better reproducibility of pedestal parameters than hyperbolic tangent （tanh） and modified hyperbolic tangent （mtanh） methods. This method has been applied to EAST type I edge localized mode （ELM） discharges, and the electron pedestal density is found to be proportional to the line-averaged density and the edge pressure gradient is found to be proportional to the pedestal pressure. Furthermore, the ion poloidal gyro-radius has been identified as the suitable parameter to describe the pedestal pressure width.

Decorative Arts of the Qing-Style Pedestal of Outdoor Furnishings

The pedestal of outdoor furnishings is a facility of courtyard outdoor furnishings. It is an important part of ceremonial furnishings in official buildings. The Qing-style pedestal of outdoor furnishings has unique shapes and ornamentations as well as rich artistic connotation. In addition to having significant artistic value and historical value, it also embodies the user’s aesthetic taste.

LOW SIDELOBE APERTURE DISTRIBUTION OF MULTI-STEP AMPLITUDE QUANTIZATION WITH PEDESTAL

A low sidelobe aperture design method of multi-step amplitude quantization with pedestal is proposed, and general analysis and formulas are described. The computation results compared with our previous method "Multi-Step Amplitude Quantization(MSAQ)" on peak side-lobe level, aperture efficiency, normalized input power and sidelobe degradation with tolerance are given. It is shown that, under the same conditions, the method presented in this paper is better than the MSAQ.

Application of Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation to Air-conditioning Competitive Power Analysis

As the conceptual design of air-conditioning is done using the theory of Quality Function Deployment (QFD),cus- tomer requirements should be understood and the product competitive power be analyzed as exactly as possible for new product de- signing.Lots of information in the process of this research is fuzzy and uncertain,but traditional QFD can not deal with it well. Fuzzy theory can solve the problem.So a fuzzy model for analyzing product competitive power is formulated in this paper to im- prove traditional QFD,after that it is applied to analyze air-conditioning competitive power.When air-conditioning competitive power is analyzed using this model,firstly the importance weight of the customer requirements o fair-conditioning is determined us- ing the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) weighting process,then air-conditloning competitive power is evaluated using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation.It is proved that the model is feasible and has good applicability.

Application of Dual Throttling Air-Conditioning System to Explosion-Proof Frequency Converter

An explosion-proof dual throttling air-conditioning system was put forward to solve the heat dissipation and internal dewing problems of explosion-proof frequency converter in the underground coal mine. This study investigated the feasibility and benefits of explosion-proof dual throttling cooling and dehumidification air-conditioning system applied to the explosion-proof frequency converter. The physical model of dual throttling air-conditioning system was established and its performance parameter was described by mathematical method. The design calculation of the system has also been done. The experimental result showed that the system reached the steady state at the refrigeration mode after running 45 min, and the maximum internal temperature of the flame-proof cavity was 31.0 ℃. The system reached the steady state at the dehumidification mode after running 37 min. The maximum internal relative humidity and temperature of the flame-proof cavity were 33.4% and 36.3 ℃, respectively. Therefore, the proposed system had excellent ability of heat dissipation and avoided internal dewing. Compared with water cooling system, it was more energy-saving and economical. The airflow field of dual throttling air-conditioning system was also studied by CFD simulation. It was found that the result of CFD numerical simulation was highly consistent with the experimental data.

Simulation of Artificial Intelligence for Automotive Air-conditioning System

The artificial intelligence is applied to the simulation of the automotive air-conditioning system ( AACS )According to the system's characteristics a model of AACS, based on neural network, is developed. Different control methods of AACS are discussed through simulation based on this model. The result shows that the neural- fuzzy control is the best one compared with the on-off control and conventional fuzzy control method.It can make the compartment's temperature descend rapidly to the designed temperature and the fluctuation is small.

Energy performance assessment on central air-conditioning system of commercial building: A case study in China

Energy performance assessment on central air-conditioning system is essential to optimize operating, reduce operating costs, improve indoor environmental quality, and determine whether the retrofitting of the equipment is necessary. But it is difficult to evaluate it reasonably and comprehensively due to its complexity. A "holistic" approach was discussed to evaluate the energy performance of central air-conditioning system for an extra-large commercial building in a subtropical city. All procedures were described in detail, including field investigation method, field measurement instruments, data processing and data analyzing. The main factors affecting energy consumption of air-conditioning system were analyzed and the annual cooling-energy use intensity of this building was calculated and also compared with other shopping malls and other types of buildings in Guangzhou. And COP(coefficient of performance) of chiller, water transfer factor of chilled water system and cooling water system were taken into consideration. At last, the thermal comfort and indoor air quality issues were addressed. The results show that the chilled water pumps are over-sized and the indoor environmental quality should be improved. The purpose of this work is to provide reference for energy performance assessment method for air-conditioning system.

Research on the Arrangement of Dew Point Temperature Detectors of Capillary Plane Radiation Air-Conditioning

Based on analysis of the reason and process of condensation on ceiling radiant cooling panels, two kinds of arrangement of detectors are put forward. The physical model is established, the results show that detectors are arranged as the form of triangle is more suitable. It can not only satisfy the use requirement but also it is economical and practical. Finally we can conclude that the inlet water temperature 0.5°C higher than dew point temperature is safe and reliable.

Analysis of Solar Direct-Driven Organic Rankine Cycle Powered Vapor Compression Cooling System Combined with Electric Motor for Office Building Air-Conditioning

Solar energy powered organic Rankine cycle vapor compression cycle(ORC-VCC)is a good alternative to convert solar heat into a cooling effect.In this study,an ORC-VCC system driven by solar energy combined with electric motor is proposed to ensure smooth operation under the conditions that solar radiation is unstable and discontinuous,and an office building located in Guangzhou,China is selected as a case study.The results show that beam solar radiation and generation temperature have considerable effects on the system performance.There is an optimal generation temperature at which the system achieves optimum performance.Also,as a key indicator,the cooling power per square meter collector should be considered in the hybrid solar cooling system in design process.Compared to the vapor compression cooling system,the hybrid cooling system can save almost 68.23%of electricity consumption.