Quickly obtaining densely dispersed coherent particles in steel matrix and its related mechanical property

Densely distributed coherent nanoparticles(DCN)in steel matrix can enhance the work-hardening ability and ductility of steel simultaneously.All the routes to this end can be generally classified into the liquid-solid route and the solid-solid route.However,the formation of DCN structures in steel requires long processes and complex steps.So far,obtaining steel with coherent particle enhancement in a short time remains a bottleneck,and some necessary steps remain unavoidable.Here,we show a high-efficiency liquid-phase refining process reinforced by a dynamic magnetic field.Ti-Y-Mn-O particles had an average size of around(3.53±1.21)nm and can be obtained in just around 180 s.These small nanoparticles were coherent with the matrix,implying no accumulated dislocations between the particles and the steel matrix.Our findings have a potential application for improving material machining capacity,creep resistance,and radiation resistance.

Discussion on“Dispersion characteristics of clayey soils containing waste rubber particles”[J Rock Mech Geotech Eng 15(2023)3050-3058]

We read with great interest the recent article by Erenson(2023)entitled“Dispersion characteristics of clayey soils containing waste rubber particles”.The author has studied the dispersion characteristics of clayey soils containing different percentages of waste rubber particles(WRPs)by performing several tests(viz.consistency limit,linear shrinkage limit,double hydrometer,crumb test and pinhole test)and scanning electron microscopy(SEM)analysis on five clayey(viz.Na-activated bentonite,refined ball clay,Ukrainian kaolin,Avanos kaolin and Afyon clay)samples containing 0%,5%,10%and 15%WRPs.It should be noted that Erenson(2023)has presented some interesting observations,but there are some serious issues that we want to share through this discussion and request the author of the original paper to address them to avoid their persistence in the scientific literature.

Scalable Jet-Based Fabrication of PEI-Hydrogel Particles for CO_(2) Capture

The capture,regeneration,and conversion of CO_(2) from ambient air and flue gas streams are critical aspects of mitigating global warming.Solid sorbents for CO_(2) absorption are very promising as they have high mass transfer areas without energy input and reduce emissions and minimize corrosion as compared to liquid sorbents.However,precisely tunable solid CO_(2) sorbents are difficult to produce.Here,we demonstrate the high-throughput production of hydrogel-based CO_(2)-absorbing particles via liquid jetting.By wrapping a liquid jet consisting of an aqueous solution of cross-linkable branched polyethylenimine(PEI)with a layer of suspension containing hydrophobic silica nanoparticles,monodisperse droplets with a silica nanoparticle coating layer was formed in the air.A stable Pickering emulsion containing PEI droplets was obtained after these ejected droplets were collected in a heated oil bath.The droplets turn into mm-sized particles after thermal curing in the bath.The diameter,PEI content,and silica content of the particles were systematically varied,and their CO_(2) absorption was measured as a function of time.Steam regeneration of the particles enabled cyclic testing,revealing a CO_(2) absorption capacity of 6.5±0.5 mol kg^(−1)solid PEI in pure CO_(2) environments and 0.7±0.3 mol kg^(−1)solid PEI for direct air capture.Several thousands of particles were produced per second at a rate of around 0.5 kg per hour,with a single nozzle.This process can be further scaled by parallelization.The complete toolbox for the design,fabrication,testing,and regeneration of functional hydrogel particles provides a powerful route toward novel solid sorbents for regenerative CO_(2) capture.

A Distributed Particle Filter Applied in Single Object Tracking

Visual object-tracking is a fundamental task applied in many applications of computer vision. Particle filter is one of the techniques which has been widely used in object tracking. Due to the virtue of extendability and flexibility on both linear and non-linear environments, various particle filter-based trackers have been proposed in the literature. However, the conventional approach cannot handle very large videos efficiently in the current data intensive information age. In this work, a parallelized particle filter is provided in a distributed framework provided by the Hadoop/Map-Reduce infrastructure to tackle object-tracking tasks. The experiments indicate that the proposed algorithm has a better convergence and accuracy as compared to the traditional particle filter. The computational power and the scalability of the proposed particle filter in single object tracking have been enhanced as well.

A New Multiobjective Particle Swarm Optimization Using Local Displacement and Local Guides

This paper introduces a novel variant of particle swarm optimization that leverages local displacements through attractors for addressing multiobjective optimization problems. The method incorporates a square root distance mechanism into the external archives to enhance the diversity. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach on a set of constrained and unconstrained multiobjective test functions, establishing a benchmark for comparison. In order to gauge its effectiveness relative to established techniques, we conduct a comprehensive comparison with well-known approaches such as SMPSO, NSGA2 and SPEA2. The numerical results demonstrate that our method not only achieves efficiency but also exhibits competitiveness when compared to evolutionary algorithms. Particularly noteworthy is its superior performance in terms of convergence and diversification, surpassing the capabilities of its predecessors.

Characterisation of wear particles from biomedical carbon/carbon composites with different preforms in hip joint simulator

A hip joint simulator was employed to predict the clinical wear behaviour of carbon/carbon （C/C） composites with needled carbon cloth preform and carbon felt preform. Wear particles generated from the two kinds of C/C composites were isolated and characterised by the size distribution and morphology. The evolvement of wear particles in the hip joint simulator was proposed. The results show that the wear particles from two kinds of C/C composites have a size ranging from submicron to tens of micrometers. The wear particles have various morphologies including broken fiber, fragment fiber, slice pyrolytic carbon and spherical pyrolytic carbon. C/C composites with needled carbon cloth preforms have larger size range and more broken fiber particles and slice pyrolytic carbon particles in comparison with C/C composites with carbon felt preforms. The evolvement of pyrolytic carbon particles is caused by surface regularization, whereas, the evolvement of carbon fiber particles is related to stress direction in the hip joint simulator.

Multiobjective particle swarm inversion algorithm for two-dimensional magnetic data

Regularization inversion uses constraints and a regularization factor to solve ill- posed inversion problems in geophysics. The choice of the regularization factor and of the initial model is critical in regularization inversion. To deal with these problems, we propose a multiobjective particle swarm inversion （MOPSOI） algorithm to simultaneously minimize the data misfit and model constraints, and obtain a multiobjective inversion solution set without the gradient information of the objective function and the regularization factor. We then choose the optimum solution from the solution set based on the trade-off between data misfit and constraints that substitute for the regularization factor. The inversion of synthetic two-dimensional magnetic data suggests that the MOPSOI algorithm can obtain as many feasible solutions as possible; thus, deeper insights of the inversion process can be gained and more reasonable solutions can be obtained by balancing the data misfit and constraints. The proposed MOPSOI algorithm can deal with the problems of choosing the right regularization factor and the initial model.

Modified particle swarm optimization-based antenna tilt angle adjusting scheme for LTE coverage optimization

In order to solve the challenging coverage problem that the long term evolution（ LTE） networks are facing, a coverage optimization scheme by adjusting the antenna tilt angle（ ATA） of evolved Node B（ e NB） is proposed based on the modified particle swarm optimization（ MPSO） algorithm.The number of mobile stations（ MSs） served by e NBs, which is obtained based on the reference signal received power（RSRP） measured from the MS, is used as the metric for coverage optimization, and the coverage problem is optimized by maximizing the number of served MSs. In the MPSO algorithm, a swarm of particles known as the set of ATAs is available; the fitness function is defined as the total number of the served MSs; and the evolution velocity corresponds to the ATAs adjustment scale for each iteration cycle. Simulation results showthat compared with the fixed ATA, the number of served MSs by e NBs is significantly increased by 7. 2%, the quality of the received signal is considerably improved by 20 d Bm, and, particularly, the system throughput is also effectively increased by 55 Mbit / s.

Computer vision-aided DEM study on the compaction characteristics of graded subgrade filler considering realistic coarse particle shapes

The compaction quality of subgrade filler strongly affects subgrade settlement.The main objective of this research is to analyze the macro-and micro-mechanical compaction characteristics of subgrade filler based on the real shape of coarse particles.First,an improved Viola-Jones algorithm is employed to establish a digitalized 2D particle database for coarse particle shape evaluation and discrete modeling purposes of subgrade filler.Shape indexes of 2D subgrade filler are then computed and statistically analyzed.Finally,numerical simulations are performed to quantitatively investigate the effects of the aspect ratio(AR)and interparticle friction coefficient(μ)on the macro-and micro-mechanical compaction characteristics of subgrade filler based on the discrete element method(DEM).The results show that with the increasing AR,the coarse particles are narrower,leading to the increasing movement of fine particles during compaction,which indicates that it is difficult for slender coarse particles to inhibit the migration of fine particles.Moreover,the average displacement of particles is strongly influenced by the AR,indicating that their occlusion under power relies on particle shapes.The dis-placement and velocity of fine particles are much greater than those of the coarse particles,which shows that compaction is primarily a migration of fine particles.Under the cyclic load,the interparticle friction coefficientμhas little effect on the internal structure of the sample;under the quasi-static loads,however,the increase inμwill lead to a significant increase in the porosity of the sample.This study could not only provide a novel approach to investigate the compaction mechanism but also establish a new theoretical basis for the evaluation of intelligent subgrade compaction.

Physicochemical characteristics of ambient particles settling upon leaf surfaces of urban plants in Beijing

Particulate pollution is a serious health problem throughout the world, exacerbating a wide range of respiratory and vascular illnesses in urban areas. Urban plants play an important role in reducing particulate pollution. Physicochemical characteristics of ambient particles settling upon leaf surfaces of eleven roadside plants at four sites of Beijing were studies. Results showed that density of particles on the leaf surfaces greatly varied with plant species and traffic condition. Fraxinus chiuensis, Sophora japonica Ailanthus altissima, Syringa oblata and Prunus persica, had larger densities of particles among the tall species. Due to resuspension of road dust, the densities of particles of Euonymus japonicns and Parthenocissus quinquefolia with low sampling height were 2-35 times to other taller tree species. For test plant species, micro-roughness of leaf surfaces and density of particles showed a close correlation. In general, the larger micro-roughness of leaf surfaces is, the larger density of particles is. Particles settling upon leaf surfaces were dominantly PM30 （particulate matter less than 10 μm in aerodynamic diameter; 98.4%） and PM2.5 （particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter; 64.2%） which were closely relative to human health. Constant elements of particles were C, O, K, Ca, Si, Al, Mg, Na, Fe, S, Cl and minerals with higher content were SiO2, CaCO3, CaMg（CO3）2, NaCI and 2CASO4. H2O, SiO2. CaCO3 and CaMg（CO3）2 mainly came from resuspension of road dust. 2CaSO4. H2O was produced by the reaction between CaCO3 derived from earth dust or industrial emission and SO2, H2SO4 or sulfate. NaCl was derived from sea salt.

Diurnal variation of number concentration and size distribution of ultrafine particles in the urban atmosphere of Beijing in winter

Number concentration and distribution of airborne particles in the size range 5.6 to 560 nm diameter were measured in Beijing for a 15-d period in winter 2005. Dally average number concentrations of nucleation mode （5.6-20 um）, Aitken mode （20-100 um）, and accumulation mode （100-560 um） particles, and total particles were 17500, 32000, 4000, and 53500 cm^-3, respectively. Average particle size distribution was monomodal with a mode diameter of about 40 um at night and bimodal with mode diameters of about 10 and about 40 um during the daytime. New particle formation events, which were connected to diurnal variation of nucleation mode particles, were observed in more than half of the observation days. The events often started around 10：00-11：00 Chinese Standard Time （CST） and ended up after 3-4 h. Concentrations of Aitken and accumulation mode particles increased from midnight and reached their maxima at about 10：00 CST, and then decreased and became the lowest in the afternoon. Analysis of diurnal cycles in traffic volume and meteorological parameters revealed that the accumulation of the particles in Aitken and accumulation modes in the morning was influenced by formation of an inversion and increase in vehicle emission, and dispersion of such particles in the afternoon was associated with more effective vertical mixing and higher wind speed.

Particle agglomeration and inhibition method in the fluidized pyrolysis reaction of waste resin

This work investigated the pyrolysis reaction of waste resin in a fluidized bed reactor.It was found that the pyrolysis-generated ash would adhere to the surface of ceramic particles,causing particle agglomeration and defluidization.Adding kaolin could effectively inhibit the particle agglomeration during the fluidized pyrolysis reaction through physical isolation and chemical reaction.On the one hand,kaolin could form a coating layer on the surface of ceramic particles to prevent the adhesion of organic ash generated by the pyrolysis of resin.On the other hand,when a sufficient amount of kaolin(-0.2%(mass))was added,the activated kaolin could fully contact with the Na+ ions generated by the pyrolysis of resin and react to form a high-melting aluminosilicate mineral(nepheline),which could reduce the formation of low-melting-point sodium sulfate and thereby avoid the agglomeration of ceramic particles.

An improved particle filter indoor fusion positioning approach based on Wi-Fi/PDR/geomagnetic field

The existing indoor fusion positioning methods based on Pedestrian Dead Reckoning(PDR)and geomagnetic technology have the problems of large initial position error,low sensor accuracy,and geomagnetic mismatch.In this study,a novel indoor fusion positioning approach based on the improved particle filter algorithm by geomagnetic iterative matching is proposed,where Wi-Fi,PDR,and geomagnetic signals are integrated to improve indoor positioning performances.One important contribution is that geomagnetic iterative matching is firstly proposed based on the particle filter algorithm.During the positioning process,an iterative window and a constraint window are introduced to limit the particle generation range and the geomagnetic matching range respectively.The position is corrected several times based on geomagnetic iterative matching in the location correction stage when the pedestrian movement is detected,which made up for the shortage of only one time of geomagnetic correction in the existing particle filter algorithm.In addition,this study also proposes a real-time step detection algorithm based on multi-threshold constraints to judge whether pedestrians are moving,which satisfies the real-time requirement of our fusion positioning approach.Through experimental verification,the average positioning accuracy of the proposed approach reaches 1.59 m,which improves 33.2%compared with the existing particle filter fusion positioning algorithms.

Black Carbon Particles in the Urban Atmosphere in Beijing

A study of the concentration of black carbon particles and its variation in the urban atmosphere has been carried out since 1996 in the Beijing area. The measurements were done in the late autumn and early winter each year, the period before and after domestic heating activities begin. The results show the presence of black carbon particles at the high level that vary over a large range in the urban atmosphere in Beijing. The mean value of daily average concentration for the whole observation period of 1996-2004 is 20.0 μgm^-3. An evident decrease of black carbon particle concentration in the Beijing area is observed after 2000, and the daily average concentration of black carbon particles is estimated to be 16.0 μgm^-3 with a variation range of 2.10-50.50 μgm^-3 for the period of 2000-2004. The observation method and main variation behavior characteristics of black carbon particles in the urban atmosphere in the Beijing area are given and discussed.

Surrogate-Assisted Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm With Pareto Active Learning for Expensive Multi-Objective Optimization

For multi-objective optimization problems, particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm generally needs a large number of fitness evaluations to obtain the Pareto optimal solutions. However, it will become substantially time-consuming when handling computationally expensive fitness functions. In order to save the computational cost, a surrogate-assisted PSO with Pareto active learning is proposed. In real physical space(the objective functions are computationally expensive), PSO is used as an optimizer, and its optimization results are used to construct the surrogate models. In virtual space, objective functions are replaced by the cheaper surrogate models, PSO is viewed as a sampler to produce the candidate solutions. To enhance the quality of candidate solutions, a hybrid mutation sampling method based on the simulated evolution is proposed, which combines the advantage of fast convergence of PSO and implements mutation to increase diversity. Furthermore, ε-Pareto active learning(ε-PAL)method is employed to pre-select candidate solutions to guide PSO in the real physical space. However, little work has considered the method of determining parameter ε. Therefore, a greedy search method is presented to determine the value ofεwhere the number of active sampling is employed as the evaluation criteria of classification cost. Experimental studies involving application on a number of benchmark test problems and parameter determination for multi-input multi-output least squares support vector machines(MLSSVM) are given, in which the results demonstrate promising performance of the proposed algorithm compared with other representative multi-objective particle swarm optimization(MOPSO) algorithms.

Seasonal Variations of Number Size Distributions and Mass Concentrations of Atmospheric Particles in Beijing

Particle number and mass concentrations were measured in Beijing during the winter and summer periods in 2003, together with some other parameters including black carbon (BC) and meteorological conditions. Particle mass concentrations exhibited low seasonality, and the ratio of PM2.5/PM10 in winter was higher than that in summer. Particle number size distribution (PSD) was characterized by four modes and exhibited low seasonality. BC was well correlated with the number and mass concentrations of accumulation and coarse particles, indicating these size particles are related to anthropogenic activities. Particle mass and number concentrations (except ultra-fine and nucleation particles) followed well the trends of BC concentration for the majority of the day, indicating that most particles were associated with primary emissions. The diurnal number distributions of accumulation and coarse mode particles were characterized by two peaks.

Extended wet sieving method for determination of complete particle size distribution of general soils

The traditional standard wet sieving method uses steel sieves with aperture?0.063 mm and can only determine the particle size distribution(PSD)of gravel and sand in general soil.This paper extends the traditional method and presents an extended wet sieving method.The extended method uses both the steel sieves and the nylon filter cloth sieves.The apertures of the cloth sieves are smaller than 0.063 mm and equal 0.048 mm,0.038 mm,0.014 mm,0.012 mm,0.0063 mm,0.004 mm,0.003 mm,0.002 mm,and 0.001 mm,respectively.The extended method uses five steps to separate the general soil into many material sub-groups of gravel,sand,silt and clay with known particle size ranges.The complete PSD of the general soil is then calculated from the dry masses of the individual material sub-groups.The extended method is demonstrated with a general soil of completely decomposed granite(CDG)in Hong Kong,China.The silt and clay materials with different particle size ranges are further examined,checked and verified using stereomicroscopic observation,physical and chemical property tests.The results further confirm the correctness of the extended wet sieving method.

Chemical composition and quantitative relationship between meteorological condition and fine particles in Beijing

The recent year's monitor results of Beijing indicated that the pollution level of fine particles PM 2.5 showed an increasing trend. To understand pollution characteristics of PM 2.5 and its relationship with the meteorological conditions in Beijing, a one-year monitoring of PM 2.5 mass concentration and correspondent meteorological parameters was performed in Beijing in 2001. The PM 2.5 levels in Beijing were very high, the annual average PM 2.5 concentration in 2001 was 7 times of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards proposed by US EPA. The major chemical compositions were organics, sulfate, crustals and nitrate. It was found that the mass concentrations of PM 2.5 were influenced by meteorological conditions. The correlation between the mass concentrations of PM 2.5 and the relative humidity was found. And the correlation became closer at higher relative humidity. And the mass concentrations of PM 2.5 were negtive-correlated to wind speeds, but the correlation between the mass concentration of PM 2.5 and wind speed was not good at stronger wind.

A stable implicit nodal integration-based particle finite element method(N-PFEM)for modelling saturated soil dynamics

In this study,we present a novel nodal integration-based particle finite element method(N-PFEM)designed for the dynamic analysis of saturated soils.Our approach incorporates the nodal integration technique into a generalised Hellinger-Reissner(HR)variational principle,creating an implicit PFEM formulation.To mitigate the volumetric locking issue in low-order elements,we employ a node-based strain smoothing technique.By discretising field variables at the centre of smoothing cells,we achieve nodal integration over cells,eliminating the need for sophisticated mapping operations after re-meshing in the PFEM.We express the discretised governing equations as a min-max optimisation problem,which is further reformulated as a standard second-order cone programming(SOCP)problem.Stresses,pore water pressure,and displacements are simultaneously determined using the advanced primal-dual interior point method.Consequently,our numerical model offers improved accuracy for stresses and pore water pressure compared to the displacement-based PFEM formulation.Numerical experiments demonstrate that the N-PFEM efficiently captures both transient and long-term hydro-mechanical behaviour of saturated soils with high accuracy,obviating the need for stabilisation or regularisation techniques commonly employed in other nodal integration-based PFEM approaches.This work holds significant implications for the development of robust and accurate numerical tools for studying saturated soil dynamics.

Distribution of Cu and Pb in particle size fractions of urban soils from different city zones of Nanjing, China

Soil samples from 4 defined city zones of Nanjing were randomly collected at 0-5 cm and 5-20 cm intervals and size fractions of soil particles were separated from undisturbed bulk soils by low energy dispersion procedure. The total contents of Cu and Pb in the different particle size fractions of the urban soils were analyzed by HNO3-HF-HClO4 digestion and flame atomic absorption spectrophotometer determination. The total content of Cu and Pb in soil particle size fractions varied with their size and with city zones as well. Both the content and variation with the size fractions of Pb was bigger than of Cu supporting our previous finding that there was Pb pollution to different degrees in the urban soils although the two elements were generally enriched in clay-sized fraction. Contaminated Pb tended to be preferentially enriched in the size fraction of 2000-250 μm and clay-sized fraction. While the size fractions of the soils from newly developed and preserved area contained smaller amount of Cu and Pb, the partitioning of them in coarse and fine particle size fractions were insignificant compared to that from inner residence and commercial area. The very high Pb level over 150 mg/kg of the fine particle fractions from the soils of the inner city could be a cause of high blood Pb level reported of children from the city as acute exposure to Pb of fine particles of the urban soil might occur by soil ingestion and inhalation by young children. Thus, much attention should be paid to the partitioning of toxic metals in fine soil particles of the urban soils and countermeasures against high health risk of Pb exposure by soil ingestion and dust inhalation should be practiced against the health problem of blood Pb for young children from the cities.