Elastic twisting metamaterial for perfect longitudinal-torsional wave mode conversion

In this work,we design a twisting metamaterial for longitudinal-torsional(L-T)mode conversion in pipes through exploring the theory of perfect transmodal FabryPerot interference(TFPI).Assuming that the axial and radial motions in pipes can be decoupled,we find that the metamaterial can be designed in a rectangular coordinate system,which is much more convenient than that in a cylindrical system.Numerical calculation with detailed microstructures shows that an efficient L-T mode conversion can be obtained in pipes with different radii.In addition,we fabricate mode-converting microstructures on an aluminum pipe and conduct ultrasonic experiments,and the results are in good agreement with the numerical calculations.We expect that the proposed LT mode-converting metamaterial and its design methodology can be applied in various ultrasonic devices.

Mode Conversion and Diffraction of Guided Optical Waves from Magnetostatic Waves under Inclined Bias Magnetic Field

The noncollinear interaction of guided optical waves with magnetostatic waves under inclined bias magnetic field is theoretically studied in detail. Similar approach can also be applied to the collinear interaction. Calculation results indicate that the diffraction efficiency (DE) in magnitude is equal to the mode-conversion efficiency (MCE) under vertical bias magnetic field, but they differ greatly under inclined bias magnetic field. By comparison to the case of vertical magnetization, the DE or the MCE can be greatly increased under inclined magnetic field. The characteristic of the DE curves obtained is basically in agreement with the experimental result.

Dynamic Properties and Energy Conversion Efficiency of A Floating Multi-Body Wave Energy Converter

The present study proposed a floating multi-body wave energy converter composed of a floating central platform,multiple oscillating bodies and multiple actuating arms. The relative motions between the oscillating bodies and the floating central platform capture multi-point wave energy simultaneously. The converter was simplified as a forced vibration system with three degrees of freedom, namely two heave motions and one rotational motion. The expressions of the amplitude-frequency response and the wave energy capture width were deduced from the motion equations of the converter. Based on the built mathematical model, the effects of the PTO damping coefficient, the PTO elastic coefficient, the connection length between the oscillating body and central platform, and the total number of oscillating bodies on the performance of the wave energy converter were investigated. Numerical results indicate that the dynamical properties and the energy conversion efficiency are related not only to the incident wave circle frequency but also to the converter’s physical parameters and interior PTO coefficients. By adjusting the connection length, higher wave energy absorption efficiencies can be obtained. More oscillating bodies installed result in more stable floating central platform and higher wave energy conversion efficiency.

Deposition of cerium contained conversion films on LC4 alloy with square wave pulse method

Cerium contained conversion films were deposited on LC4 aluminum alloy usingsquare wave pulse (SWP) in a CeCl_3 solution with KMnO_4 as the oxidant. Energy dispersivespectroscopy (EDS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were adopted to study the composition andthe morphology of the film. It is found that the film is composed of Al, Zn, Cu, and small amount ofcerium. The polarization curves of the specimens treated with SWP technique measured in 3.5% (massfraction) NaCl solution reveal that the film thus formed inhibits both the anodic and cathodicprocess of the corrosion of the specimen. The immersion tests of treated specimens in 3.5% NaClsolution indicate that the corrosion resistance of the SWP treated specimen is better than that ofthe untreated and is equivalent to or even better than that of the traditionally electro-chemicallytreated specimens.

A Twin Unidirectional Impulse Turbine for Wave Energy Conversion—Effect of Fluidic Diode on the Performance

As a system using a conventional unidirectional air turbine in oscillating water column (OWC) based on a wave energy plant, a twin unidirectional impulse turbine topology has been suggested in previous studies. However, the average efficiency of the suggested twin turbine is considerably lower than that of a conventional unidirectional turbine in this topology because reciprocating air flow can’t be rectified adequately by a unidirectional turbine. In order to improve the efficiency, using fluidic diode is discussed. In this study, two different fluidic diodes were discussed by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a wind tunnel test. Further, its usefulness is discussed from a view point of the turbine efficiency. The fluidic diode was shown to improve rectification of the topology. However, it needs more improvement in regards to its energy loss in order to enhance the turbine efficiency.

Experimental Study on Conversion Characteristics of Dual-Mode OWC Models Appropriate for Voyaging

Freely movable wave energy converters(WECs) will greatly improve their adaptability to the marine environment.In this paper, a dual-mode oscillating water column(OWC) WEC with potential sailing capability is proposed. By opening and closing a gate on the side facing the waves, the WEC converts wave energy in the vertical duct(called VD mode) with low sailing resistance or in the backward bend duct(called BBD mode) with high sailing resistance.A small model and a medium model were designed and manufactured. The capture width ratio(CWR) of the small model in the two modes was experimentally studied. The CWR under bidirectional airflow and conversion characteristics under unidirectional airflow of the medium model in the BBD mode were obtained. Tests of the small model show that the peak CWR is 145.2% under regular waves and 90.1% under random waves in BBD mode, and in VD mode the peak CWR is about 60% of that in the BBD mode. Tests of the medium model show that the peak CWR is 228.96% under regular waves, the maximum wave-to-battery efficiency is 63.36% under regular waves and 30.17%under random waves, respectively.

Wells Turbine for Wave Energy Conversion —Improvement of the Performance by Means of Impulse Turbine for Bi-Directional Flow

Wells turbine has inherent disadvantages in comparison with conventional turbines: relative low efficiency at high flow coefficient and poor starting characteristics. To solve these problems, the authors propose Wells turbine with booster turbine for wave energy conversion, in order to improve the performance in this study. This turbine consists of three parts: a large Wells turbine, a small impulse turbine with fixed guide vanes for oscillating airflow, and a generator. It was conjectured that, by coupling the two axial flow turbines together, pneumatic energy from oscillating airflow is captured by Wells turbine at low flow coefficient and that the impulse turbine gets the energy at high flow coefficient. As the first step of this study on the proposed turbine topology, the performance of turbines under steady flow conditions has been investigated experimentally by model testings. Furthermore, we estimate mean efficiency of the turbine by quasi-steady analysis.

The research on direct-drive wave energy conversion system and performance optimization

A direct-drive wave energy conversion system based on a three-phase permanent magnet tubular linear generator （PMTLG） and a heaving buoy is proposed to convert wave energy into electrical energy. Sufficient experimental methods are adopted to compare the computer simulations, the validity of which is verified by the experiment results from a wave tank laboratory. In the experiment, the motion curves of heaving buoy are with small fluctuations, mainly caused by the PMTLG＇s detent force. For the reduction of these small fluctuations and a maximum operational efficiency of the direct-drive wave energy conversion system, the PMTLG＇s detent force minimization technique and the heaving buoy optimization will be discussed. It is discovered that the operational efficiency of the direct-drive wave energy conversion system increases dramatically after optimization. The experiment and optimization results will provide useful reference for the future research on ocean wave energy conversion system.

The Conversion Relationship between the Local Earthquake Magnitude and Surface Wave Magnitude in the Inner Mongolia Digital Seismic Network

Using 116 earthquakes over M_L3.8 in the Inner Mongolia region from 2008 to 2015, the local earthquake magnitude M_L and surface wave magnitude M_S are remeasured. Based on norm linear regression(SR1 and SR2) and norm(OR) orthogonal regression method, we established the conversion relationship between M_L and M_S. The results were tested with Gaussian disturbance. The result shows that the orthogonal regression method(OR) result has the best fitting curve, and the conversion relation is M_S=0.96 M_L-0.10. The difference between our result and Guo Lücan's(M_S=1.13 M_L-1.08) may be caused by regional tectonic characteristics. M_(S Inner Mongolia) value is significantly higher than the M_(S empirical) value, with an average difference of 0.23, the difference distribution of empirical relation and the rectified relation is in the range of 0.2-0.3.

The energy conversion rates from eddies and mean fl ow into internal lee waves in the global ocean

Internal lee waves play an important role in transferring energy from eddies to small scale mixing.However,the energy conversion from eddies into lee waves in the global ocean remains poorly understood.Conversion rates from eddies and from mean fl ow in the global ocean were diff erentiated using single beam sounding data,stratifi cation from climatology,eddy velocity,and mean fl ow from a global ocean model.The global integral energy conversion from eddies is estimated to be 0.083 TW and is almost twice as that from the mean fl ow.A new method was developed to study the uncertainties of energy conversion caused by dealing with the topographic data.Results show that diff erent data processing procedures,and the resolution and accuracy of topographic data have a signifi cant impact on the estimated global energy conversion.

CHARACTERISTICS OF GRAVITY WAVE PROPAGATION AND ENERGY CONVERSION IN A SUDDEN HEAVY RAINFALL EVENT

In this paper, a sudden heavy rainfall event is analyzed, which occurred over the Yellow River midstream during 5-6 August 2014. We used observational, NCEP/NCAR reanalysis, high-resolution satellite, and numerical simulation data. The main results are as follows. Under an unfavorable environmental circulation, inadequate water vapor and unfavorable dynamic conditions but sufficient energy, a local sudden heavy rainfall was caused by the release of strong unstable energy that was triggered by cold air transport into middle and lower layers and the propagation of gravity waves. The distributions of rain area, rain clusters, and 10-minute rainfall showed typical mesoscale and microscale fluctuation characteristics. In the mesoscale rain area or upstream, there was a quasi-stationary wave of mesoscale gravity waves with their propagation downstream. In the course of propagation from southwest to northeast,the wavelength became longer and the amplitude attenuated. In the various phases of gravity wave development, there were evident differences in the direction of the wave front. Wave energy was mainly in the lower layers. Unstable vertical wind shear at heights of 1-6 km provided fluctuation energy for the gravity waves. The mechanisms of heavy rainfall formation were different at Linyou and Hancheng stations. Diabatic heating was the main source of disturbed effective potential energy at Linyou. The explosive short-period strong precipitation was caused by the release of strong effective potential energy triggered by the gravity waves, and its development and propagation after that energy maximized. In contrast, the latent heat release of upstream precipitation was the main source of disturbed effective potential energy at Hancheng. This formed a positive feedback mechanism that produced continuous precipitation. In the studied event, the development of westerly belt systems had disturbed the wind field. The contribution of kinetic energy generated by this disturbance could not be ignored. The Froude number, mountain shape parameter, and ratio between mountain height and temperature inversion layer thickness had various effects of atmosphere and terrain on mesoscale and microscale mountain waves. In upper and lower layers, there were five airflows that were strengthened by the terrain. All these had important influences on local heavy rainfall at Linyou and Hancheng stations.

A Twin Unidirectional Impulse Turbine for Wave Energy Conversion

A twin unidirectional impulse turbine has been proposed in order to enhance the performance of wave energy plant. This turbine system uses two unidirectional impulse turbines and their flow direction is different each other. However, the effect of guide vane solidity on the turbine characteristics has not been clarified to date. The performances of a uni- directional impulse turbine under steady flow conditions were investigated experimentally by using a wind tunnel with large piston/cylinder in this study. Then, mean efficiency of the twin impulse turbine in bidirectional airflow has been estimated by a quasi-steady analysis using experimental results in order to investigate the effect of guide vane solidity on the performance.

A Counter-Rotating Impulse Turbine for Wave Energy Conversion

Wave energy can be converted to the electrical energy by using a wave energy converter. The wave energy converter with oscillating water column (OWC) is one of the most promising devices because of its simple structure and easy maintenance. In this device, an oscillating water column due to the wave motion is used to drive an air column. An air turbine is used to convert the pneumatic energy of this bi-directional airflow into the mechanical energy. The counter-rotating impulse turbine for wave energy conversion has been proposed and tested so far, and the average efficiency has been shown to about 0.3. On the contrary, in another offshore experiment, it has been reported that the power generation efficiency of this turbine is larger than Wells turbine in case of small waves. However, there is a scarcity of the detailed characteristics data of counter-rotating impulse turbine. In a previous study, the authors investigated the effect of rotor blade solidity and setting angle of guide vane on the performance of this turbine, and they clarified that the efficiency of this turbine is higher than impulse turbine with single rotor in the range of high flow coefficients. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of rotor blade profile on the turbine performance by using the computation fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis. The inner and outer angles of turbine rotor blade are changed in the range of 50° to 70°. The commercial CFD software of SCRYU/Tetra of Cradle Co. Ltd. was used in the present work. The Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations were used as the governing equations and the low Reynold’s number SST k-ω model was used to predict the turbulent stresses. As a result, it was found that the inner angle of γ = 70° and the outer angle of γ = 60° of the turbine rotor blades can give the best turbine efficiency and it shows the efficiency close to the impulse turbine with single rotor, even in the range of low flow coefficients.

A Study on Fluidic Diode for Wave Energy Conversion-Effect of Bypass Geometry on the Turbine Performance

A twin-impulse turbine for bi-directional flow has been developed for wave energy converter. However, the previous studies elucidated that the mean efficiency of the twin turbine is much lower than that of the impulse turbine for a unidirectional flow because a portion of airflow passes through the reverse flow turbine whose efficiency is very low. Therefore, a fluidic diode was adopted in the twin-impulse turbine in order to reduce the air flow through the reverse flow turbine. In this study, the rectification effect of the fluidic diode was investigated where a bypass is introduced into a blunt body. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was conducted to investigate the effect of fluidic diodes on the turbine performance. In this analysis, RANS equations were used as the governing equations and the standard k-ε model was used as the turbulence model. The computational domain is composed of a circular tube and fluidic diode, and the domain meshed with an approximately 1.5 million mesh elements. As a result, it was found that the rectification effect of the fluidic diode is enhanced by installing a blunt body with a bypass hole of 5° taper angle.

Influence of mode conversions in the skull on transcranial focused ultrasound and temperature fields utilizing the wave field separation method： A numerical study

Transcranial focused ultrasound is a booming noninvasive therapy for brain stimuli. The Kelvin–Voigt equations are employed to calculate the sound field created by focusing a 256-element planar phased array through a monkey skull with the time-reversal method. Mode conversions between compressional and shear waves exist in the skull. Therefore, the wave field separation method is introduced to calculate the contributions of the two waves to the acoustic intensity and the heat source, respectively. The Pennes equation is used to depict the temperature field induced by ultrasound. Five computational models with the same incident angle of 0？and different distances from the focus for the skull and three computational models at different incident angles and the same distance from the focus for the skull are studied. Numerical results indicate that for all computational models, the acoustic intensity at the focus with mode conversions is 12.05%less than that without mode conversions on average. For the temperature rise, this percentage is 12.02%. Besides, an underestimation of both the acoustic intensity and the temperature rise in the skull tends to occur if mode conversions are ignored. However, if the incident angle exceeds 30？, the rules of the over-and under-estimation may be reversed. Moreover,shear waves contribute 20.54% of the acoustic intensity and 20.74% of the temperature rise in the skull on average for all computational models. The percentage of the temperature rise in the skull from shear waves declines with the increase of the duration of the ultrasound.

Experimental Investigation on a Fixed Oscillating Water Column with an Impulse Turbine for Wave Energy Conversion

A fixed oscillating water column(OWC)-type wave energy converter consists of an air chamber,an air turbine and a generator.The energy conversion processes are the primary conversion in an air chamber and the secondary conversion of the turbine.For the practical use,it is necessary to develop a design method which can consider the incident wave motion,the motion of the internal free surface affected in the structure such as a partly submerged wall,the fluctuation of air pressure in an air chamber,and the rotation of the air turbine.At here,the authors carried out the wave tank tests using the model OWC equipped with the impulse turbine and a generator to obtain the experimental data needed to make this design method.As the result,the efficiencies of the three cases with different speed ratio between generator and turbine,and the effects of the curtain wall depth and the wave length on the energy conversion performance were clarified.

Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller for Grid Interface Ocean Wave Energy Conversion

This paper presents a closed-loop vector control structure based on adaptive Fuzzy Logic Sliding Mode Controller (FL-SMC) for a grid-connected Wave Energy Conversion System (WECS) driven Self-Excited Induction Generator (SEIG). The aim of the developed control method is to automatically tune and optimize the scaling factors and the membership functions of the Fuzzy Logic Controllers (FLC) using Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithms (MOGA) and Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO). Two Pulse Width Modulated voltage source PWM converters with a carrier-based Sinusoidal PWM modulation for both Generator- and Grid-side converters have been connected back to back between the generator terminals and utility grid via common DC link. The indirect vector control scheme is implemented to maintain balance between generated power and power supplied to the grid and maintain the terminal voltage of the generator and the DC bus voltage constant for variable rotor speed and load. Simulation study has been carried out using the MATLAB/Simulink environment to verify the robustness of the power electronics converters and the effectiveness of proposed control method under steady state and transient conditions and also machine parameters mismatches. The proposed control scheme has improved the voltage regulation and the transient performance of the wave energy scheme over a wide range of operating conditions.

Transmission Performance of the Optical Millimeter-wave Up-conversion Link Using a Phase Modulator

Numerically analyzed is the transmission performance of the optical millimeter(mm)-wave generated by frequency up-conversion via a phase modulator along the dispersive fiber.60 GHz mm-wave sub-carrier(SC)signals can be obtained after fiber transmission,simultaneously,the phase-modulated signals can be converted to the intensity-modulated ones.The numerical results show that the optical mm-wave at fading loops has better performance,and the eye diagram still keeps open when optical mm-wave signal is transmitted over 98 km.

Highly efficient conversion from classical guided waves to topological chiral edge states

Electromagnetic topological chiral edge states mimicking the quantum Hall effect have attracted a great deal of attention due to their unique features of free backscattering and immunity against sharp bends and defects.However,the matching techniques between classical waveguides and the topological one-way waveguide deserve more attention for real-world applications.In this paper,a highly efficient conversion structure between a classical rectangular waveguide and a topological one-way waveguide is proposed and demonstrated at the microwave frequency,which efficiently converts classical guided waves to topological one-way edge states.A tapered transition is designed to match both the momentum and impedance of the classical guided waves and the topological one-way edge states.With the conversion structure,the waves generated by a point excitation source can be coupled to the topological one-way waveguide with very high coupling efficiency,which can ensure high transmission of the whole system(i.e.,from the source and the receiver).Simulation and measurement results demonstrate the proposed method.This investigation is beneficial to the applications of topological one-way waveguides and opens up a new avenue for advanced topological and classical integrated functional devices and systems.

Hydrodynamic Analysis and Power Conversion for Point Absorber WEC with Two Degrees of Freedom Using CFD

Point absorber wave energy device with multiple degrees of freedom(DOF) is assumed to have a better absorption ability of mechanical energy from ocean waves. In this paper, a coaxial symmetric articulated point absorber wave energy converter with two degrees of freedom is presented. The mechanical equations of the oscillation buoy with power take-off mechanism(PTO) in regular waves are established. The three-dimensional numerical wave tank is built in consideration of the buoy motion based upon the CFD method. The appropriate simulation elements are selected for the buoy and wave parameters. The feasibility of the CFD method is verified through the contrast between the numerical simulation results of typical wave conditions and test results. In such case, the buoy with single DOF of heave, pitch and their coupling motion considering free(no PTO damping) and damped oscillations in regular waves are simulated by using the verified CFD method respectively. The hydrodynamic and wave energy conversion characteristics with typical wave conditions are analyzed. The numerical results show that the heave and pitch can affect each other in the buoy coupling motion, hydrodynamic loads, wave energy absorption and flow field.The total capture width ratio with two coupled DOF motion is higher than that with a single DOF motion. The wave energy conversion of a certain DOF motion may be higher than that of the single certain DOF motion even though the wave is at the resonance period. When the wave periods are high enough, the interaction between the coupled DOF motions can be neglected.