Blast waveform tailoring using controlled venting in blast simulators and shock tubes

A critical challenge of any blast simulation facility is in producing the widest possible pressure-impulse range for matching against equivalent high-explosive events.Shock tubes and blast simulators are often constrained with the lack of effective ways to control blast wave profiles and as a result have a limited performance range.Some wave shaping techniques employed in some facilities are reviewed but often necessitate extensive geometric modifications,inadvertently cause flow anomalies,and/or are only applicable under very specific configurations.This paper investigates controlled venting as an expedient way for waveforms to be tuned without requiring extensive modifications to the driver or existing geometry and could be widely applied by existing and future blast simulation and shock tube facilities.The use of controlled venting is demonstrated experimentally using the Advanced Blast Simulator(shock tube)at the Australian National Facility of Physical Blast Simulation and via numerical flow simulations with Computational Fluid Dynamics.Controlled venting is determined as an effective method for mitigating the impact of re-reflected waves within the blast simulator.This control method also allows for the adjustment of parameters such as tuning the peak overpressure,the positive phase duration,and modifying the magnitude of the negative phase and the secondary shock of the blast waves.This paper is concluded with an illustration of the potential expanded performance range of the Australian blast simulation facility when controlled venting for blast waveform tailoring as presented in this paper is applied.

Quasi-static and dynamic compressive behaviour of additively manufactured Menger fractal cube structures

This paper presents the first-ever investigation of Menger fractal cubes'quasi-static compression and impact behaviour.Menger cubes with different void ratios were 3D printed using polylactic acid(PLA)with dimensions of 40 mm×40 mm×40 mm.Three different orders of Menger cubes with different void ratios were considered,namely M1 with a void ratio of 0.26,M2 with a void ratio of 0.45,and M3with a void ratio of 0.60.Quasi-static Compression tests were conducted using a universal testing machine,while the drop hammer was used to observe the behaviour under impact loading.The fracture mechanism,energy efficiency and force-time histories were studied.With the structured nature of the void formation and predictability of the failure modes,the Menger geometry showed some promise compared to other alternatives,such as foams and honeycombs.With the increasing void ratio,the Menger geometries show force-displacement behaviour similar to hyper-elastic materials such as rubber and polymers.The third-order Menger cubes showed the highest energy absorption efficiency compared to the other two geometries in this study.The findings of the present work reveal the possibility of using additively manufactured Menger geometries as an energy-efficient system capable of reducing the transmitting force in applications such as crash barriers.

A Concise and Varied Visual Features-Based Image Captioning Model with Visual Selection

Image captioning has gained increasing attention in recent years.Visual characteristics found in input images play a crucial role in generating high-quality captions.Prior studies have used visual attention mechanisms to dynamically focus on localized regions of the input image,improving the effectiveness of identifying relevant image regions at each step of caption generation.However,providing image captioning models with the capability of selecting the most relevant visual features from the input image and attending to them can significantly improve the utilization of these features.Consequently,this leads to enhanced captioning network performance.In light of this,we present an image captioning framework that efficiently exploits the extracted representations of the image.Our framework comprises three key components:the Visual Feature Detector module(VFD),the Visual Feature Visual Attention module(VFVA),and the language model.The VFD module is responsible for detecting a subset of the most pertinent features from the local visual features,creating an updated visual features matrix.Subsequently,the VFVA directs its attention to the visual features matrix generated by the VFD,resulting in an updated context vector employed by the language model to generate an informative description.Integrating the VFD and VFVA modules introduces an additional layer of processing for the visual features,thereby contributing to enhancing the image captioning model’s performance.Using the MS-COCO dataset,our experiments show that the proposed framework competes well with state-of-the-art methods,effectively leveraging visual representations to improve performance.The implementation code can be found here:https://github.com/althobhani/VFDICM(accessed on 30 July 2024).

Special Topic on Near-Field Communication and Sensing Towards 6G

6G wireless technologies involve dense device deployment,utilize large-scale antenna arrays,and operate in the millimeter-wave and terahertz bands.This will shift the challenges of communication and sensing from the far field to the radiative near field,where traditional models and algorithms may incur errors or even become obsolete due to mismatch.Therefore,there is an urgent need to discuss localization and communication issues in the near-field region.The near-field assumption allows us to capture more information in electromagnetic signals,unlocking new possibilities for improving communication quality and localization accuracy.It can be anticipated that research on the near-field will play an increasingly important role in 6G and future wireless networks.

Introducing aggregate into grouting material and its influence on load transfer of the rock bolting system

A fully grouted bolt provides greater shear load capacity for transmitting the load from the rock to the bolt, and vice versa. When grout fills irregularities between the bolt and the rock, a keying effect is created to transfer the load to the bolt via shear resistance at the interface and within the grout. Previous research has revealed that the mechanical properties of the grout had a great impact on the load transfer capacity of the rock bolting system. This paper presents a method to enhance the rock bolting strength by introducing metal granules into the grouting material. Experimental results suggest that both the average peak load of pullout tests and the total energy absorption of the system will increase if some metal granules are mixed into the resin.

Contrast-enhanced and targeted ultrasound

Ultrasonic imaging is becoming the most popular medical imaging modality,owing to the low price per examination and its safety.However,blood is a poor scatterer of ultrasound waves at clinical diagnostic transmit frequencies.For perfusion imaging,markers have been designed to enhance the contrast in B-mode imaging.These so-called ultrasound contrast agents consist of microscopically small gas bubbles encapsulated in biodegradable shells.In this review,the physical principles of ultrasound contrast agent microbubble behavior and their adjustment for drug delivery including sonoporation are described.Furthermore,an outline of clinical imaging applications of contrast-enhanced ultrasound is given.It is a challenging task to quantify and predict which bubble phenomenon occurs under which acoustic condition,and how these phenomena may be utilized in ultrasonic imaging.Aided by high-speed photography,our improved understanding of encapsulated microbubble behavior will lead to more sophisticated detection and delivery techniques.More sophisticated methods use quantitative approaches to measure the amount and the time course of bolus or reperfusion curves,and have shown great promise in revealing effective tumor responses to anti-angiogenic drugs in humans before tumor shrinkage occurs.These are beginning to be accepted into clinical practice.In the long term,targeted microbubbles for molecular imaging and eventually for directed anti-tumor therapy are expected to be tested.

Creep behaviour and constitutive model of coal filled with gas

Coal exhibits different creep behaviours when filled with different amounts of gas. Creep tests of coal filled with 0 and 0.5 MPa gas were performed, and strain under different axial stress was compared.The three creep constitutive models which were analysed using the method fitting experimental data for determining which creep model can reflect the creep process of the test best. The results show that the deformation of coal filled with 0.5 MPa gas is more higher than that of coal filled with 0 MPa gas under the same axial stress. Gas plays a positive effect on the deformation of coal process and will accelerate creep process. And gas will reduce coal intensity and change coal creep properties.Compared with Nishihara Model and Extensional Nishihara Model, Burgers Model can reflect the three stages of creep process of coal filled with gas better. The research results can contribute to reveal coal and gas outburst mechanism.

Learning a Deep Predictive Coding Network for a Semi-Supervised 3D-Hand Pose Estimation

In this paper we present a CNN based approach for a real time 3 D-hand pose estimation from the depth sequence.Prior discriminative approaches have achieved remarkable success but are facing two main challenges:Firstly,the methods are fully supervised hence require large numbers of annotated training data to extract the dynamic information from a hand representation.Secondly,unreliable hand detectors based on strong assumptions or a weak detector which often fail in several situations like complex environment and multiple hands.In contrast to these methods,this paper presents an approach that can be considered as semi-supervised by performing predictive coding of image sequences of hand poses in order to capture latent features underlying a given image without supervision.The hand is modelled using a novel latent tree dependency model(LDTM)which transforms internal joint location to an explicit representation.Then the modeled hand topology is integrated with the pose estimator using data dependent method to jointly learn latent variables of the posterior pose appearance and the pose configuration respectively.Finally,an unsupervised error term which is a part of the recurrent architecture ensures smooth estimations of the final pose.Experiments on three challenging public datasets,ICVL,MSRA,and NYU demonstrate the significant performance of the proposed method which is comparable or better than state-of-the-art approaches.

Tuning Interface Bridging Between MoSe2 and Three‑Dimensional Carbon Framework by Incorporation of MoC Intermediate to Boost Lithium Storage Capability

Interface engineering has been widely explored to improve the electrochemical performances of composite electrodes,which governs the interface charge transfer,electron transportation,and structural stability.Herein,MoC is incorporated into MoSe2/C composite as an intermediate phase to alter the bridging between MoSe2-and nitrogen-doped three-dimensional(3D)carbon framework as MoSe2/MoC/N–C connection,which greatly improve the structural stability,electronic conductivity,and interfacial charge transfer.Moreover,the incorporation of MoC into the composites inhibits the overgrowth of MoSe2 nanosheets on the 3D carbon framework,producing much smaller MoSe2 nanodots.The obtained MoSe2 nanodots with fewer layers,rich edge sites,and heteroatom doping ensure the good kinetics to promote pseudo-capacitance contributions.Employing as anode material for lithium-ion batteries,it shows ultralong cycle life(with 90%capacity retention after 5000 cycles at 2 A g−1)and excellent rate capability.Moreover,the constructed LiFePO4//MoSe2/MoC/N–C full cell exhibits over 86%capacity retention at 2 A g−1 after 300 cycles.The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the interface engineering by incorporation of MoC as interface bridging intermediate to boost the lithium storage capability,which can be extended as a potential general strategy for the interface engineering of composite materials.

A hybrid tubular standing support for underground mines:Compressive behaviour

This paper presents the development of an innovative standing support for underground mines.The main feature of this standing support is its exterior container,a combination of polyvinyl chloride(PVC)with large rupture strain and fibre-reinforced polymer(FRP)with high strength-to-weight ratio.To demonstrate the advantages of this cementitious grout filled PVC-FRP tubular(PFT)standing support,a series of compression tests were conducted.Test variables included the strength of cementitious grout infill material and the thickness of FRP jacket.Compression tests were also conducted on cementitious grout-filled PVC tubular(PT)support and cementitious grout-filled FRP tubular(FT)support.These tests showed that PFT support presents a typical strain-hardening behaviour together with an outstanding axial deformation ability(>20%of the overall height of the support).In addition,the maximum compressive strength of PFT support is much higher than that of the corresponding PT support and FT support.Furthermore,using thicker FRP jacket or high strength cementitious grout material can enhance the load carrying capacity of PFT support.These comparative results indicated that the high performance of PFT support is mainly attributed to the combination of confining constituents(i.e.PVC and FRP)and infill material.

Privacy-Preserving Prepayment Based Power Request and Trading in Smart Grid

Demand response has been intensively studied in recent years. It can motivate customers to change their consumption patterns according to the dynamic(time-varying) electricity price, which is considered to be the most cost-effective and reliable solution for smoothing the demand curve. However, many existing schemes, based on users' demand request in each period, require users to consume their requested electricity exactly, which sometimes causes inconvenience and losses to the utility, because customers cannot always be able to consume the accurate electricity demand due to various personal reasons. In this paper, we tackle this problem in a novel approach. Instead of charging after consumption, we adopt the prepayment mechanism to implement power request. Furthermore, we propose a trading market running by the control center to cope with the users' dynamic demand. It is noteworthy that both users' original demand and trading records are protected against potential adversaries including the curious control center. Through the numerical simulation, we demonstrate that our scheme is highly efficient in both computation and communication.

Dilation and breakage dissipation of granular soils subjected to monotonic loading

Dilation and breakage energy dissipation of four different granular soils are investigated by using an energy balance equation. Due to particle breakage, the dilation curve does not necessarily pass through the origin of coordinates. Breakage energy dissipation is found to increase significantly at the initial loading stage and then gradually become stabilised. The incremental dissipation ratio between breakage energy and plastic work exhibits almost independence of the confining pressure. Accordingly, a plastic flow rule considering the effect of particle breakage is suggested. The critical state friction angle is found to be a combination of the basic friction between particles and the friction contributed by particle breakage.

Inertisation options for BG method and optimisation using CFD modelling

Spontaneous combustion(sponcom) is one of the issues of concern with the blasting gallery(BG) method of coal mining and has the potential to cause fires, and impact on production and safety, greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions and huge costs involved in controlling the aftermath situations. Some of the research attempts made to prevent and control coal mine fires and spontaneous combustion in thick seams worked with bord and pillar mining methods are presented in this paper. In the study, computational fluid dynamics(CFD) modelling techniques were used to simulate and assess the effects of various mining methods, layouts, designs, and different operational and ventilation parameters on the flow of goaf gases in BG panels. A wide range of parametric studies were conducted to develop proactive strategies to control and prevent ingress of oxygen into the goaf area preventing spontaneous combustion and mine fires.

Random Long-Range Interaction Induced Synchronization in Coupled Networks of Inertial Ratchets

We investigate how the random long-range interactions affect the synchronization features in networks of inertial ratchets,where each ratchet is driven by a periodic time-dependent external force,under the influence of an asymmetric periodic potential.It is found that for a given coupling strength𝐶,the synchronization of the coupled ratchets is induced as the fraction of random long-range interactions𝑝increases and the ratchet networks reach full synchronization for a larger𝑝.It is also found that the system reaches synchronization more effectively for a stronger coupling strength.

A Hybrid Modified Sine Cosine Algorithm Using Inverse Filtering and Clipping Methods for Low Autocorrelation Binary Sequences

The essential purpose of radar is to detect a target of interest and provide information concerning the target’s location,motion,size,and other parameters.The knowledge about the pulse trains’properties shows that a class of signals is mainly well suited to digital processing of increasing practical importance.A low autocorrelation binary sequence(LABS)is a complex combinatorial problem.The main problems of LABS are low Merit Factor(MF)and shorter length sequences.Besides,the maximum possible MF equals 12.3248 as infinity length is unable to be achieved.Therefore,this study implemented two techniques to propose a new metaheuristic algorithm based on Hybrid Modified Sine Cosine Algorithm with Cuckoo Search Algorithm(HMSCACSA)using Inverse Filtering(IF)and clipping method to achieve better results.The proposed algorithms,LABS-IF and HMSCACSA-IF,achieved better results with two large MFs equal to 12.12 and 12.6678 for lengths 231 and 237,respectively,where the optimal solutions belong to the skew-symmetric sequences.The MF outperformed up to 24.335%and 2.708%against the state-of-the-art LABS heuristic algorithm,xLastovka,and Golay,respectively.These results indicated that the proposed algorithm’s simulation had quality solutions in terms of fast convergence curve with better optimal means,and standard deviation.

A Simulation Study of Support Break-Off and Water Inrush during Mining under the High Confined and Thick Unconsolidated Aquifer

The thick Cenozoic unconsolidated aquifer is deposited under Sunan syncline core in Huaibei coalfield, the water yield property of unconsolidated bottom aquifer is strong and water pressure is high in some areas (up to 4 MPa in some areas). Water inrush accident often occurs during mining under unconsolidated aquifer, the biggest characteristic is abnormal mine pressure and support break-off during water inrush accident comparing with normal condition. In order to study mechanism of?support break-off and water inrush during mining under the high confined thick unconsolidated aquifer, a simulation of similar material was designed. The experimental results indicated that, under normal condition, the compound breakage sequence of water-resisting key strata between coal seam and high confined thick unconsolidated aquifer is from top to bottom and the basic reason of synchronous fracture is the load of bottom key strata increased suddenly when the breakage of top key strata happened. Because of high confined thick unconsolidated aquifer, surface acts on the bottom key strata soil layer in the form of uniformly distributed load, which is the load-transfer mechanism of confined thick unconsolidated aquifer. Once the overlying key strata compound breaks, the height of unstable strata will reach far more than 30 meters and exceed support capability of current fully-mechanized mining supporter, which leads to support break-off accident during mining process under confined unconsolidated aquifer.

Long-cycling and dendrite-free lithium metal anodes via salt chemistry

With over 30 years of development for lithium ion batteries(LIBs),LIBs have achieved great success in terms of their cathodes,anodes,electrolytes,and other necessary components[1].Their battery chemistry has also been extended to sodium,potassium,and other alkaline ion batteries,which have also made great achievements[2-4].

Core–Shell Microfiber Encapsulation Enables Glycerol‑Free Cryopreservation of RBCs with High Hematocrit

Cryopreservation of red blood cells(RBCs)provides great potential benefits for providing transfusion timely in emergencies.High concentrations of glycerol(20%or 40%)are used for RBC cryopreservation in current clinical practice,which results in cytotoxicity and osmotic injuries that must be carefully controlled.However,existing studies on the low-glycerol cryopreservation of RBCs still suffer from the bottleneck of low hematocrit levels,which require relatively large storage space and an extra concentration process before transfusion,making it inconvenient(time-consuming,and also may cause injury and sample lose)for clinical applications.To this end,we develop a novel method for the glycerol-free cryopreservation of human RBCs with a high final hematocrit by using trehalose as the sole cryoprotectant to dehydrate RBCs and using core–shell alginate hydrogel microfibers to enhance heat transfer during cryopreservation.Different from previous studies,we achieve the cryopreservation of human RBCs at high hematocrit(>40%)with high recovery(up to 95%).Additionally,the washed RBCs post-cryopreserved are proved to maintain their morphology,mechanics,and functional properties.This may provide a nontoxic,high-efficiency,and glycerol-free approach for RBC cryopreservation,along with potential clinical transfusion benefits.

Cost-Efficient Medium Frequency Propagation Research with Software Defined Radio

Medium Frequency radio holds significance in modern society as it supports broadcasting and individual communications in the public, government, and military sectors. Enhancing the availability and quality of these communications is only possible by enhancing the understanding of medium frequency propagation. While traditional methods of radio wave propagation research can have a high material demand and cost, software defined radio presents itself as a versatile and low-cost platform for medium frequency signal reception and data acquisition. This paper details a research effort that utilizes software defined radio to help characterize medium frequency signal strength in relation to ionospheric and solar weather propagation determinants. Signal strength data from seven medium frequency stations of unique transmission locations and varying transmission powers were retrieved in 24-hour segments via a receiving loop antenna, Airspy HF+ Discovery software defined radio, and SDR Sharp software interface network. Retrieved data sets were visualized and analyzed in MATLAB for the identification of signal strength trends, which were subsequently compared to historical ionospheric and space weather indices in pursuit of a quantifiable correlation between such indices and medium frequency signal strengths. The results of the investigation prove that software defined radio, when used in conjunction with a receiving antenna and data analysis program, provides a versatile mechanism for cost-efficient propagation research.

全国高等学校采矿工程专业学生实践作品大赛发展趋势初步探索

全国高等学校采矿工程专业实践作品大赛已成功举办五届,在采矿工程专业学生实践创新能力培养和高校采矿工程专业实践教学方面发挥了重要的导向作用。为进一步提高本项大赛的影响力,本文以历届竞赛参赛单位、作品质量、奖项设置等内容的详细分析为蓝本,对赛前组织、赛中协调、赛后总结过程中出现的较为显著的问题做以归纳总结,提出搭建官方网站、严控参赛规模、创新参赛项目、扩大参赛对象范围、吸引矿山企业参会、加快创新成果转换等多种途径,以期进一步提高学科竞赛在采矿工程专业实践教学和学生创新能力培养中的作用。