Water jet guided laser as an alternative to EDM for micro-drilling of fuel injector nozzles: A comparison of machined surfaces

To characterize the inner surface of the fuel injector nozzle holes drilled by EDM and water jet guided laser drilling (Laser Micro-Jet) a specifically conceived scanning probe microscopy technique with true non-contact operating mode was used. A difference in morphology of the drilled surfaces is evident from the acquired surface topography along the hole axis for the two compared drilling techniques. Results showed that the surface texture can be characterized by (i) maximum peak-to-valley distance and (ii) periodicity. Acquired maps confirm that electro-eroded surfaces are an envelope of craters randomly distributed with total excursion up to 1.7 μm with a crater size of 15 μm. While, the efficient melt expulsion and immediate cooling of water jet guided laser generates a peak to valley distance of 800 nm with a periodicity of 18 μm. Average R_q derived from the measured cylindrical surfaces was 450 nm and 150 nm for EDM and Laser Micro-Jet, respectively. Water jet guided laser drilling has proved to be a reliable alternative to EDM from the point of view of repeatability of the results and surface quality to facilitate the atomization of the fuel jet.     

基于风廓线仪等资料的珠江三角洲污染气象条件研究

利用珠江三角洲区域空气质量资料和珠海、南沙、增城的逐30 min风廓仪观测资料,以及清远探空站每天08时和20时的温度探空资料等,研究了2012年10月珠江三角洲出现的大范围持续性污染天气期间的大气边界层特征.结果表明:2012年10月珠江三角洲出现的大范围持续性污染天气主要是受到弱冷空气南下和台风外围下沉气流天气形势的影响;在污染日,增城、南沙和珠海低层风速普遍小于3 m·s-1,300m高度以下风速甚至小于2 m·s-1,增城和珠海观测站的通风量普遍小于5000~6000 m2·s-1;非污染日的通风量则远远大于污染日;在近海的南沙站和珠海站,海陆风等局地环流的的作用不利于污染物的扩散,海风约出现于下午6时,最大影响高度约600~800 m;逆温层是导致重污染的天气的重要原因,清远探空站频繁出现逆温层,甚至出现多层低空逆温,污染日的逆温层平均厚度和平均强度都较大.     

Estimating water content in an active landfill with the aid of GPR

Landfill gas (LFG) receives a great deal of attention due to both negative and positive environmental impacts, global warming and a green energy source, respectively. However, predicting the quantity of LFG generated at a given landfill, whether active or closed is difficult due to the heterogeneities present in waste, and the lack of accurate in situ waste parameters like water content. Accordingly, ground penetrating radar (GPR) was evaluated as a tool for estimating in situ water content. Due to the large degree of subsurface heterogeneity and the electrically conductive clay cap covering landfills, both of which affect the transmission of the electromagnetic pulses, there is much scepticism concerning the use of GPR to quantify in situ water content within a municipal landfill.Two landfills were studied. The first landfill was used to develop the measurement protocols, while the second landfill provided a means of confirming these protocols. GPR measurements were initially completed using the surface GPR approach, but the lack of success led to the use of borehole (BH) GPR. Both zero offset profiling (ZOP) and multiple offset gathers (MOG) modes were tried, with the results indicating that BH GPR using the ZOP mode is the most simple and efficient method to measure in situ water content. The best results were obtained at a separation distance of 2 m, where higher the water content, smaller the effective separation distance. However, an increase in water content did appear to increase the accuracy of the GPR measurements. For the effective separation distance of 2 m at both landfills, the difference between GPR and lab measured water contents were reasonable at 33.9% for the drier landfill and 18.1% for the wetter landfill. Infiltration experiments also showed the potential to measure small increases in water content.     

山西北部一次飑线大风的多普勒雷达特征

利用山西省北部大同地区多普勒雷达的基本反射率因子、组合反射率因子、速度剖面图、垂直液态含水量、回波顶及VWP产品,结合环流形势和自动站分钟数据资料,对2010年6月16日发生在大同地区的飑线天气过程进行了分析。结果表明:这次飑线过程发生在高中低三层的冷涡环流形势和地面冷锋前的暖区;飑线过境时压、风、温三要素出现剧烈变化;研究极大风速≥16.8 m.s-1的台站时发现:飑线过境时两个站出现的速度极大值与外流边界的影响时间相吻合,四个站出现的速度极大值与强回波下沉气流影响时间相对应;冷涡携带的冷空气使飑线后部入流不断得到补充,而前侧暖湿气流沿着后部入流爬升,不断产生新的单体,是飑线能够维持、发展的主要原因。     

Bottomfast Ice Mapping and the Measurement of Ice Thickness on Tundra Lakes Using C‐Band Synthetic Aperture Radar Remote Sensing1

Abstract: Industrial activity in Canada’s north is increasing, placing demands on the use of water from lakes to build ice roads. Winter water withdrawal from these lakes has the potential to impact overwintering fish. Removal of water from small lakes can decrease oxygen and habitat available to fish. To address this issue, a protocol has been developed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans outlining water withdrawal thresholds. Bathymetric surveys are the traditional method to determine lake depth, but are costly given the remoteness of northern lakes. This paper investigates the use of satellite C‐band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing technology as a potential alternative or complement to traditional survey methods. Previous research has shown that a SAR can detect the transition from grounded to floating ice on lakes, or if a lake is completely frozen. Grounded ice has a dark signature while floating ice appears very bright in contrast. Similar results were observed for the datasets acquired in the study area. This suggests that lakes that freeze completely to the bottom can be identified using SAR. Such water bodies would not be viable fish overwintering habitat and can therefore be used as water sources without thresholds necessary. However, attempts to accurately calculate the depth of the ice at the grounded‐floating ice boundary using bathymetric profiles acquired in the summer and lake ice thickness measurements from a reference lake near Inuvik proved to be unreliable.     

Electrical performance of laser braze-welded aluminum–copper interconnects

The reported investigation is related to laser beam braze-welding technology for dissimilar aluminum–copper interconnects for Li-ion battery assembly. The correlation between the brittle and high-resistivity intermetallic compounds and the electrical contact resistance showed that a thin intermetallic layer is highly desirable. It was proved that highest shear strength and lowest contact resistance can be achieved within the same parameter set which is of particular interest to battery electrical vehicle applications requiring both high mechanical reliability and electrical performance.A study on the weld seam layout further showed that two parallel weld seams with optimized spacing and overlap design provide lowest contact resistance.     

Effects of Spatial and Temporal Data Aggregation on the Performance of the Multi‐Radar Multi‐Sensor System

The objectives of this study were to (1) evaluate the performance of the Multi‐Radar Multi‐Sensor (MRMS) system in capturing precipitation compared to gauge data, and (2) assess the effects of spatial (1–50 km) and temporal (15–120 min) data aggregation scales on the performance of the MRMS system. Point‐to‐grid comparisons were conducted between 215 rain gauges and the MRMS system. The MRMS system at 1 km spatial and 15 min temporal resolutions captured precipitation reasonably well with average R², root mean square error (RMSE), and percent bias (PBIAS) values of 0.65, 0.5 mm, and 11.9 mm; whereas Threat Score, probability of detection, and false alarm ratio were 0.57, 0.92, and 0.40, respectively. Decreasing temporal resolution from 15 min to two hours resulted in an increase in R² and a decrease in RMSE, whereas PBIAS was not affected. Reducing spatial resolution from 1 to 50 km resulted in increases in R² and PBIAS, whereas RMSE was decreased. Increasing spatial aggregation scale from 1 to 50 km resulted in an R² increase of only 0.08. Similarly, improvement in R² was only modest (0.17) compared to an eightfold reduction in temporal resolution (from 15 min to two hours). While aggregating data at coarser temporal resolutions resolved some of the under/overestimation issues of the MRMS system, it was apparent even at coarser spatial and temporal resolutions the MRMS system inherently overestimated smaller precipitation events while underestimated bigger events.     

大型水面舰船目标雷达波散射特征分析

针对大型水面舰船超电大尺度和复杂外形结构特点,论述了大型水面舰船的雷达波散射机制,结合电磁理论,对大型水面舰船的各类散射源进行了结构划分,并运用现代计算电磁学和计算机图形学,计算分析了典型大型水面舰船的雷达波散射特征及各主要结构对全舰RCS的影响.结果表明,大型水面舰船上层建筑的平面直反射和面与面之间的多次散射是主要散射源.     

COMBINATION OF RADAR AND GAUGE DATA IN A RAINFALL ARCHIVE SYSTEM1

ABSTRACT: Near real time daily rainfall estimates for the UK are available from three sources: a sparse network of gauges, radar data, or radar data adjusted by the sparse gauges. The PARAGON rainfall archive system, which has been developed by the UK Meteorological Office, is able to produce these estimates in near real time on a 5 km grid. The ability of these estimates to reproduce the 5 km grid point field derived later from a dense network of gauges is compared using case studies. Five techniques have been used to assess the relative quality of the various estimates. There is general agreement between the results of the various techniques. For the London radar there are examples of days when the rainfall estimate was improved by incorporating radar data; conversely, there are days when the radar data make it worse. Overall little evidence was found to suggest that adjusted radar data are consistently markedly better than gauge estimates. Discriminate use of radar data is recommended.     

Ground-Cover Measurements: Assessing Correlation Among Aerial and Ground-Based Methods

Wyoming’s Green Mountain Common Allotment is public land providing livestock forage, wildlife habitat, and unfenced solitude, amid other ecological services. It is also the center of ongoing debate over USDI Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) adjudication of land uses. Monitoring resource use is a BLM responsibility, but conventional monitoring is inadequate for the vast areas encompassed in this and other public-land units. New monitoring methods are needed that will reduce monitoring costs. An understanding of data-set relationships among old and new methods is also needed. This study compared two conventional methods with two remote sensing methods using images captured from two meters and 100 meters above ground level from a camera stand (a ground, image-based method) and a light airplane (an aerial, image-based method). Image analysis used SamplePoint or VegMeasure software. Aerial methods allowed for increased sampling intensity at low cost relative to the time and travel required by ground methods. Costs to acquire the aerial imagery and measure ground cover on 162 aerial samples representing 9000 ha were less than $3000. The four highest correlations among data sets for bare ground—the ground-cover characteristic yielding the highest correlations (r)—ranged from 0.76 to 0.85 and included ground with ground, ground with aerial, and aerial with aerial data-set associations. We conclude that our aerial surveys are a cost-effective monitoring method, that ground with aerial data-set correlations can be equal to, or greater than those among ground-based data sets, and that bare ground should continue to be investigated and tested for use as a key indicator of rangeland health.