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Control engineering theory is hard to grasp for undergraduates during the first semesters, as it deals with the dynamical behavior of systems also in combination with control strategies on an abstract level. Therefore, operational amplifier (OpAmp) processes are reasonable and very effective systems to connect mathematical description with actual system’s behavior. In this paper, we present an experiment for a laboratory session in which an embedded system, driven by a LabVIEW human machine interface (HMI) via USB, controls the analog circuits.With this setup we want to show the possibility of firstly, analyzing a first order process and secondly, designing a P-and PI-controller. Thereby, the theory of control engineering is always applied to the empirical results in order to break down the abstract level for the students.
It is investigated whether a nonrotating lifting fan remaining uncovered during cruise flight, as opposed to being covered by a shutter system, can be realized with limited additional drag and loss of lift during cruise flight. A wind-tunnel study of a wing-embedded lifting fan has been conducted at the Side Wind Test Facility Göttingen of DLR, German Aerospace Center in Göttingen using force, pressure, and stereoscopic particle image velocimetry techniques. The study showed that a step on the lower side of the wing in front of the lifting fan duct increases the lift-to-drag ratio of the whole model by up to 25% for all positive angles of attack. Different sizes and inclinations of the step had limited influence on the surface pressure distribution. The data indicate that these parameters can be optimized to maximize the lift-to-drag ratio. A doubling of the curvature radius of the lifting fan duct inlet lip on the upper side of the wing affected the lift-to-drag ratio by less than 1%. The lifting fan duct inlet curvature can therefore be optimized to maximize the vertical fan thrust of the rotating lifting fan during hovering without affecting the cruise flight performance with a nonrotating fan.
Innovative breeds of sugar cane yield up to 2.5 times as much organic matter as conventional breeds, resulting in a great potential for biogas production. The use of biogas production as a complementary solution to conventional and second-generation ethanol production in Brazil may increase the energy produced per hectare in the sugarcane sector. Herein, it was demonstrated that through ensiling, energy cane can be conserved for six months; the stored cane can then be fed into a continuous biogas process. This approach is necessary to achieve year-round biogas production at an industrial scale. Batch tests revealed specific biogas potentials between 400 and 600 LN/kgVS for both the ensiled and non-ensiled energy cane, and the specific biogas potential of a continuous biogas process fed with ensiled energy cane was in the same range. Peak biogas losses through ensiling of up to 27% after six months were observed. Finally, compared with second-generation ethanol production using energy cane, the results indicated that biogas production from energy cane may lead to higher energy yields per hectare, with an average energy yield of up to 162 MWh/ha. Finally, the Farm²CBG concept is introduced, showing an approach for decentralized biogas production.
Background
Osteoporosis is associated with the risk of fractures near the hip. Age and comorbidities increase the perioperative risk. Due to the ageing population, fracture of the proximal femur also proves to be a socio-economic problem. Preventive surgical measures have hardly been used so far.
Methods
10 pairs of human femora from fresh cadavers were divided into control and low-volume femoroplasty groups and subjected to a Hayes fall-loading fracture test. The results of the respective localization and classification of the fracture site, the Singh index determined by computed tomography (CT) examination and the parameters in terms of fracture force, work to fracture and stiffness were evaluated statistically and with the finite element method. In addition, a finite element parametric study with different position angles and variants of the tubular geometry of the femoroplasty was performed.
Findings
Compared to the control group, the work to fracture could be increased by 33.2%. The fracture force increased by 19.9%. The used technique and instrumentation proved to be standardized and reproducible with an average poly(methyl methacrylate) volume of 10.5 ml. The parametric study showed the best results for the selected angle and geometry.
Interpretation
The cadaver studies demonstrated the biomechanical efficacy of the low-volume tubular femoroplasty. The numerical calculations confirmed the optimal choice of positioning as well as the inner and outer diameter of the tube in this setting. The standardized minimally invasive technique with the instruments developed for it could be used in further comparative studies to confirm the measured biomechanical results.
The adoption of the Digital Health Transformation is a tremendous paradigm change in health organizations, which is not a trivial process in reality. For that reason, in this chapter, it is proposed a methodology with the objective to generate a changing culture in healthcare organisations. Such a change culture is essential for the successful implementation of any supporting methods like Interactive Process Mining. It needs to incorporate (mostly) new ways of team-based and evidence-based approaches for solving structural problems in a digital healthcare environment.
The paper presents a method for the quantitative assessment of choroidal blood flow using an OCT-A system. The developed technique for processing of OCT-A scans is divided into two stages. At the first stage, the identification of the boundaries in the selected portion was performed. At the second stage, each pixel mark on the selected layer was represented as a volume unit, a voxel, which characterizes the region of moving blood. Three geometric shapes were considered to represent the voxel. On the example of one OCT-A scan, this work presents a quantitative assessment of the blood flow index. A possible modification of two-stage algorithm based on voxel scan processing is presented.
Within the present work a sterilization process by a heated gas mixture that contains hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is validated by experiments and numerical modeling techniques. The operational parameters that affect the sterilization efficacy are described alongside the two modes of sterilization: gaseous and condensed H₂O₂. Measurements with a previously developed H₂O₂ gas sensor are carried out to validate the applied H₂O₂ gas concentration during sterilization. We performed microbiological tests at different H₂O₂ gas concentrations by applying an end-point method to carrier strips, which contain different inoculation loads of Geobacillus stearothermophilus spores. The analysis of the sterilization process of a pharmaceutical glass vial is performed by numerical modeling. The numerical model combines heat- and advection-diffusion mass transfer with vapor–pressure equations to predict the location of condensate formation and the concentration of H₂O₂ at the packaging surfaces by changing the gas temperature. For a sterilization process of 0.7 s, a H₂O₂ gas concentration above 4% v/v is required to reach a log-count reduction above six. The numerical results showed the location of H₂O₂ condensate formation, which decreases with increasing sterilant-gas temperature. The model can be transferred to different gas nozzle- and packaging geometries to assure the absence of H₂O₂ residues.
In the study, the process chain of additive manufacturing by means of powder bed fusion will be presented based on the material glass. In order to reliably process components additively, new concepts with different solutions were developed and investigated.
Compared to established metallic materials, the properties of glass materials differ significantly. Therefore, the process control was adapted to the material glass in the investigations. With extensive parameter studies based on various glass powders such as borosilicate glass and quartz glass, scientifically proven results on powder bed fusion of glass are presented. Based on the determination of the particle properties with different methods, extensive investigations are made regarding the melting behavior of glass by means of laser beams. Furthermore, the experimental setup was steadily expanded. In addition to the integration of coaxial temperature measurement and regulation, preheating of the building platform is of major importance. This offers the possibility to perform 3D printing at the transformation temperatures of the glass materials. To improve the component’s properties, the influence of a subsequent heat treatment was also investigated.
The experience gained was incorporated into a new experimental system, which allows a much better exploration of the 3D printing of glass. Currently, studies are being conducted to improve surface texture, building accuracy, and geometrical capabilities using three-dimensional specimen.
The contribution shows the development of research in the field of 3D printing of glass, gives an insight into the machine and process engineering as well as an outlook on the possibilities and applications.
SHEMAT-Suite: An open-source code for simulating flow, heat and species transport in porous media
(2020)
SHEMAT-Suite is a finite-difference open-source code for simulating coupled flow, heat and species transport in porous media. The code, written in Fortran-95, originates from geoscientific research in the fields of geothermics and hydrogeology. It comprises: (1) a versatile handling of input and output, (2) a modular framework for subsurface parameter modeling, (3) a multi-level OpenMP parallelization, (4) parameter estimation and data assimilation by stochastic approaches (Monte Carlo, Ensemble Kalman filter) and by deterministic Bayesian approaches based on automatic differentiation for calculating exact (truncation error-free) derivatives of the forward code.
Different analytical approaches exist to describe the structural substance or wear reserve of sewer systems. The aim is to convert engineering assessments of often complex defect patterns into computational algorithms and determine a substance class for a sewer section or manhole. This analytically determined information is essential for strategic rehabilitation planning processes up to network level, as it corresponds to the most appropriate rehabilitation type and can thus provide decision-making support. Current calculation methods differ clearly from each other in parts, so that substance classes determined by the different approaches are only partially comparable with each other. The objective of the German R&D cooperation project ‘SubKanS’ is to develop a methodology for classifying the specific defect patterns resulting from the interaction of all the individual defects, and their severities and locations. The methodology takes into account the structural substance of sewer sections and manholes, based on real data and theoretical considerations analogous to the condition classification of individual defects. The result is a catalogue of defect patterns and characteristics, as well as associated structural substance classifications of sewer systems (substance classes). The methodology for sewer system substance classification is developed so that the classification of individual defects can be transferred into a substance class of the sewer section or manhole, eventually taking into account further information (e.g. pipe material, nominal diameter, etc.). The result is a validated methodology for automated sewer system substance classification.
To prevent the reduction of muscle mass and loss of strength coming along with the human aging process, regular training with e.g. a leg press is suitable. However, the risk of training-induced injuries requires the continuous monitoring and controlling of the forces applied to the musculoskeletal system as well as the velocity along the motion trajectory and the range of motion. In this paper, an adaptive norm-optimal iterative learning control algorithm to minimize the knee joint loadings during the leg extension training with an industrial robot is proposed. The response of the algorithm is tested in simulation for patients with varus, normal and valgus alignment of the knee and compared to the results of a higher-order iterative learning control algorithm, a robust iterative learning control and a recently proposed conventional norm-optimal iterative learning control algorithm. Although significant improvements in performance are made compared to the conventional norm-optimal iterative learning control algorithm with a small learning factor, for the developed approach as well as the robust iterative learning control algorithm small steady state errors occur.
To meet the challenges of manufacturing smart products, the manufacturing plants have been radically changed to become smart factories underpinned by industry 4.0 technologies. The transformation is assisted by employment of machine learning techniques that can deal with modeling both big or limited data. This manuscript reviews these concepts and present a case study that demonstrates the use of a novel intelligent hybrid algorithms for Industry 4.0 applications with limited data. In particular, an intelligent algorithm is proposed for robust data modeling of nonlinear systems based on input-output data. In our approach, a novel hybrid data-driven combining the Group-Method of Data-Handling and Singular-Value Decomposition is adapted to find an offline deterministic model combined with Pareto multi-objective optimization to overcome the overfitting issue. An Unscented-Kalman-Filter is also incorporated to update the coefficient of the deterministic model and increase its robustness against data uncertainties. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined on a set of real industrial measurements.
To meet the challenges of manufacturing smart products, the manufacturing plants have been radically changed to become smart factories underpinned by industry 4.0 technologies. The transformation is assisted by employment of machine learning techniques that can deal with modeling both big or limited data. This manuscript reviews these concepts and present a case study that demonstrates the use of a novel intelligent hybrid algorithms for Industry 4.0 applications with limited data. In particular, an intelligent algorithm is proposed for robust data modeling of nonlinear systems based on input-output data. In our approach, a novel hybrid data-driven combining the Group-Method of Data-Handling and Singular-Value Decomposition is adapted to find an offline deterministic model combined with Pareto multi-objective optimization to overcome the overfitting issue. An Unscented-Kalman-Filter is also incorporated to update the coefficient of the deterministic model and increase its robustness against data uncertainties. The effectiveness of the proposed method is examined on a set of real industrial measurements.
The field of Cognitive Robotics aims at intelligent decision making of autonomous robots. It has matured over the last 25 or so years quite a bit. That is, a number of high-level control languages and architectures have emerged from the field. One concern in this regard is the action language GOLOG. GOLOG has been used in a rather large number of applications as a high-level control language ranging from intelligent service robots to soccer robots. For the lower level robot software, the Robot Operating System (ROS) has been around for more than a decade now and it has developed into the standard middleware for robot applications. ROS provides a large number of packages for standard tasks in robotics like localisation, navigation, and object recognition. Interestingly enough, only little work within ROS has gone into the high-level control of robots. In this paper, we describe our approach to marry the GOLOG action language with ROS. In particular, we present our architecture on inte grating golog++, which is based on the GOLOG dialect Readylog, with the Robot Operating System. With an example application on the Pepper service robot, we show how primitive actions can be easily mapped to the ROS ActionLib framework and present our control architecture in detail.
Interior transmission eigenvalue problems for the Helmholtz equation play an important role in inverse wave scattering. Some distribution properties of those eigenvalues in the complex plane are reviewed. Further, a new scattering model for the interior transmission eigenvalue problem with mixed boundary conditions is described and an efficient algorithm for computing the interior transmission eigenvalues is proposed. Finally, extensive numerical results for a variety of two-dimensional scatterers are presented to show the validity of the proposed scheme.
Elastic transmission eigenvalues and their computation via the method of fundamental solutions
(2020)
A stabilized version of the fundamental solution method to catch ill-conditioning effects is investigated with focus on the computation of complex-valued elastic interior transmission eigenvalues in two dimensions for homogeneous and isotropic media. Its algorithm can be implemented very shortly and adopts to many similar partial differential equation-based eigenproblems as long as the underlying fundamental solution function can be easily generated. We develop a corroborative approximation analysis which also implicates new basic results for transmission eigenfunctions and present some numerical examples which together prove successful feasibility of our eigenvalue recovery approach.
Combining physiological relevance and throughput for in vitro cardiac contractility measurement
(2020)
Despite increasing acceptance of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) in safety pharmacology, controversy remains about the physiological relevance of existing in vitro models for their mechanical testing. We hypothesize that existing signs of immaturity of the cell models result from an improper mechanical environment. We cultured hiPSC-CMs in a 96-well format on hyperelastic silicone membranes imitating their native mechanical environment, resulting in physiological responses to compound stimuli.We validated cell responses on the FLEXcyte 96, with a set of reference compounds covering a broad range of cellular targets, including ion channel modulators, adrenergic receptor modulators and kinase inhibitors. Acute (10 - 30 min) and chronic (up to 7 days) effects were investigated. Furthermore, the measurements were complemented with electromechanical models based on electrophysiological recordings of the used cell types.hiPSC-CMs were cultured on freely-swinging, ultra-thin and hyperelastic silicone membranes. The weight of the cell culture medium deflects the membranes downwards. Rhythmic contraction of the hiPSC-CMs resulted in dynamic deflection changes which were quantified by capacitive distance sensing. The cells were cultured for 7 days prior to compound addition. Acute measurements were conducted 10-30 minutes after compound addition in standard culture medium. For chronic treatment, compound-containing medium was replaced daily for up to 7 days. Electrophysiological properties of the employed cell types were recorded by automated patch-clamp (Patchliner) and the results were integrated into the electromechanical model of the system.Calcium channel agonist S Bay K8644 and beta-adrenergic stimulator isoproterenol induced significant positive inotropic responses without additional external stimulation. Kinase inhibitors displayed cardiotoxic effects on a functional level at low concentrations. The system-integrated analysis detected alterations in beating shape as well as frequency and arrhythmic events and we provide a quantitative measure of these.
In this study, we describe the manufacturing and characterization of silk fibroin membranes derived from the silkworm Bombyx mori. To date, the dissolution process used in this study has only been researched to a limited extent, although it entails various potential advantages, such as reduced expenses and the absence of toxic chemicals in comparison to other conventional techniques. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the influence of different fibroin concentrations on the process output and resulting membrane properties. Casted membranes were thus characterized with regard to their mechanical, structural and optical assets via tensile testing, SEM, light microscopy and spectrophotometry. Cytotoxicity was evaluated using BrdU, XTT, and LDH assays, followed by live–dead staining. The formic acid (FA) dissolution method was proven to be suitable for the manufacturing of transparent and mechanically stable membranes. The fibroin concentration affects both thickness and transparency of the membranes. The membranes did not exhibit any signs of cytotoxicity. When compared to other current scientific and technical benchmarks, the manufactured membranes displayed promising potential for various biomedical applications. Further research is nevertheless necessary to improve reproducible manufacturing, including a more uniform thickness, less impurity and physiological pH within the membranes.
The predictive control of commercial vehicle energy management systems, such as vehicle thermal management or waste heat recovery (WHR) systems, are discussed on the basis of information sources from the field of environment recognition and in combination with the determination of the vehicle system condition.
In this article, a mathematical method for predicting the exhaust gas mass flow and the exhaust gas temperature is presented based on driving data of a heavy-duty vehicle. The prediction refers to the conditions of the exhaust gas at the inlet of the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) cooler and at the outlet of the exhaust gas aftertreatment system (EAT). The heavy-duty vehicle was operated on the motorway to investigate the characteristic operational profile. In addition to the use of road gradient profile data, an evaluation of the continuously recorded distance signal, which represents the distance between the test vehicle and the road user ahead, is included in the prediction model. Using a Fourier analysis, the trajectory of the vehicle speed is determined for a defined prediction horizon.
To verify the method, a holistic simulation model consisting of several hierarchically structured submodels has been developed. A map-based submodel of a combustion engine is used to determine the EGR and EAT exhaust gas mass flows and exhaust gas temperature profiles. All simulation results are validated on the basis of the recorded vehicle and environmental data. Deviations from the predicted values are analyzed and discussed.
In addition to very high safety and reliability requirements, the design of internal combustion engines (ICE) in aviation focuses on economic efficiency. The objective must be to design the aircraft powertrain optimized for a specific flight mission with respect to fuel consumption and specific engine power. Against this background, expert tools provide valuable decision-making assistance for the customer. In this paper, a mathematical calculation model for the fuel consumption of aircraft ICE is presented. This model enables the derivation of fuel consumption maps for different engine configurations. Depending on the flight conditions and based on these maps, the current and the integrated fuel consumption for freely definable flight emissions is calculated. For that purpose, an interpolation method is used, that has been optimized for accuracy and calculation time. The mission boundary conditions flight altitude and power requirement of the ICE form the basis for this calculation. The mathematical fuel consumption model is embedded in a parent program. This parent program presents the simulated fuel consumption by means of an example flight mission for a representative airplane. The focus of the work is therefore on reproducing exact consumption data for flight operations. By use of the empirical approaches according to Gagg-Farrar [1] the power and fuel consumption as a function of the flight altitude are determined. To substantiate this approaches, a 1-D ICE model based on the multi-physical simulation tool GT-Suite® has been created. This 1-D engine model offers the possibility to analyze the filling and gas change processes, the internal combustion as well as heat and friction losses for an ICE under altitude environmental conditions. Performance measurements on a dynamometer at sea level for a naturally aspirated ICE with a displacement of 1211 ccm used in an aviation aircraft has been done to validate the 1-D ICE model. To check the plausibility of the empirical approaches with respect to the fuel consumption and performance adjustment for the flight altitude an analysis of the ICE efficiency chain of the 1-D engine model is done. In addition, a comparison of literature and manufacturer data with the simulation results is presented.
Energy saving ordinances requires that buildings must be designed in such a way that the heat transfer surface including the joints is permanently air impermeable. The prefabricated roof and wall panels in lightweight steel constructions are airtight in the area of the steel covering layers. The sealing of the panel joints contributes to fulfil the comprehensive requirements for an airtight building envelope. To improve the airtightness of steel sandwich panels, additional sealing tapes can be installed in the panel joint. The influence of these sealing tapes was evaluated by measurements carried out by the RWTH Aachen University - Sustainable Metal Building Envelopes. Different installation situations were evaluated by carrying out airtightness tests for different joint distances. In addition, the influence on the heat transfer coefficient was also evaluated using the Finite Element Method (FEM). The combination of obtained air volume flow and transmission losses enables to create an "effective heat transfer coefficient" due to transmission and infiltration. This summarizes both effects in one value and is particularly helpful for approximate calculations on energy efficiency.
Cyberspace is "the environment formed by physical and non-physical components to store, modify, and exchange data using computer networks" (NATO CCDCOE). Beyond that, it is an environment where people interact. IT attacks are hostile, non-cooperative interactions that can be described with conflict theory. Applying conflict theory to IT security leads to different objectives for end-user education, requiring different formats like agency-based competence developing games.
Die NATO definiert den Cyberspace als die "Umgebung, die durch physische und nicht-physische Bestandteile zum Speichern, Ändern, und Austauschen von Daten mit Hilfe von Computer-Netzwerken" [NATO CCDCOE]. Darüber hinaus ist es ein Medium menschlicher Interaktion. IT Angriffe sind feindselige, nichtkooperative Interaktionen, die mittels Konflikttheorie beschrieben werden können. Durch die Anwendung dieses Gedankengebäudes auf IT Sicherheit von Organisationen können eine Reihe von Verbesserungen in Unternehmen identifiziert werden.
Twee Kanten van één Medaille
(2020)
There is a broad international discussion about rethinking engineering education in order to educate engineers to cope with future challenges, and particularly the sustainable development goals. In this context, there is a consensus about the need to shift from a mostly technical paradigm to a more holistic problem-based approach, which can address the social embeddedness of technology in society. Among the strategies suggested to address this social embeddedness, design thinking has been proposed as an essential complement to engineering precisely for this purpose. This chapter describes the requirements for integrating the design thinking approach in engineering education. We exemplify the requirements and challenges by presenting our approach based on our course experiences at RWTH Aachen University. The chapter first describes the development of our approach of integrating design thinking in engineering curricula, how we combine it with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as well as the role of sustainability and social responsibility in engineering. Secondly, we present the course “Expanding Engineering Limits: Culture, Diversity, and Gender” at RWTH Aachen University. We describe the necessity to theoretically embed the method in social and cultural context, giving students the opportunity to reflect on cultural, national, or individual “engineering limits,” and to be able to overcome them using design thinking as a next step for collaborative project work. The paper will suggest that the successful implementation of design thinking as a method in engineering education needs to be framed and contextualized within Science and Technology Studies (STS).
The development of resilient technical systems is a challenging task, as the system should adapt automatically to unknown disturbances and component failures. To evaluate different approaches for deriving resilient technical system designs, we developed a modular test rig that is based on a pumping system. On the basis of this example
system, we present metrics to quantify resilience and an algorithmic approach to improve resilience. This approach enables the pumping system to automatically react on unknown disturbances and to reduce the impact of component failures. In this case, the system is able to automatically adapt its topology by activating additional valves. This enables the system to still reach a minimum performance, even in case of failures. Furthermore, timedependent disturbances are evaluated continuously, deviations from the original state are automatically detected and anticipated in the future. This allows to reduce the impact of future disturbances and leads to a more resilient
system behaviour.
To maximize the travel distances of battery electric vehicles such as cars or buses for a given amount of stored energy, their powertrains are optimized energetically. One key part within optimization models for electric powertrains is the efficiency map of the electric motor. The underlying function is usually highly nonlinear and nonconvex and leads to major challenges within a global optimization process. To enable faster solution times, one possibility is the usage of piecewise linearization techniques to approximate the nonlinear efficiency map with linear constraints. Therefore, we evaluate the influence of different piecewise linearization modeling techniques on the overall solution process and compare the solution time and accuracy for methods with and without explicitly used binary variables.
Stahlbau 2
(2020)
Water suppliers are faced with the great challenge of achieving high-quality and, at the same time, low-cost water supply. Since climatic and demographic influences will pose further challenges in the future, the resilience enhancement of water distribution systems (WDS), i.e. the enhancement of their capability to withstand and recover from disturbances, has been in particular focus recently. To assess the resilience of WDS, graph-theoretical metrics have been proposed. In this study, a promising approach is first physically derived analytically and then applied to assess the resilience of the WDS for a district in a major German City. The topology based resilience index computed for every consumer node takes into consideration the resistance of the best supply path as well as alternative supply paths. This resistance of a supply path is derived to be the dimensionless pressure loss in the pipes making up the path. The conducted analysis of a present WDS provides insight into the process of actively influencing the resilience of WDS locally and globally by adding pipes. The study shows that especially pipes added close to the reservoirs and main branching points in the WDS result in a high resilience enhancement of the overall WDS.
Water distribution systems are an essential supply infrastructure for cities. Given that climatic and demographic influences will pose further challenges for these infrastructures in the future, the resilience of water supply systems, i.e. their ability to withstand and recover from disruptions, has recently become a subject of research. To assess the resilience of a WDS, different graph-theoretical approaches exist. Next to general metrics characterizing the network topology, also hydraulic and technical restrictions have to be taken into account. In this work, the resilience of an exemplary water distribution network of a major German city is assessed, and a Mixed-Integer Program is presented which allows to assess the impact of capacity adaptations on its resilience.
Biocomposite Materials Based on Carbonized Rice Husk in Biomedicine and Environmental Applications
(2020)
This chapter describes the prospects for biomedical and environmental engineering applications of heterogeneous materials based on nanostructured carbonized rice husk. Efforts in engineering enzymology are focused on the following directions: development and optimization of immobilization methods leading to novel biotechnological and biomedical applications; construction of biocomposite materials based on individual enzymes, multi-enzyme complexes and whole cells, targeted on realization of specific industrial processes. Molecular biological and biochemical studies on cell adhesion focus predominantly on identification, isolation and structural analysis of attachment-responsible biological molecules and their genetic determinants. The chapter provides a short overview of applications of the biocomposite materials based of nanostructured carbonized adsorbents. It emphasizes that further studies and better understanding of the interactions between CNS and microbial cells are necessary. The future use of living cells as biocatalysts, especially in the environmental field, needs more systematic investigations of the microbial adsorption phenomenon.
Reinforced concrete (RC) structures with masonry infills are widely used for several types of buildings all over the world. However, it is well known that traditional masonry infills constructed with rigid contact to the surrounding RC frame performed rather poor in past earthquakes. Masonry infills showed severe in-plane damages and failed in many cases under out-of-plane seismic loading. As the undesired interactions between frames and infills changes the load transfer on building level, complete collapses of buildings were observed. A possible solution is uncoupling of masonry infills to the frame to reduce the infill contribution activated by the frame deformation under horizontal loading. The paper presents numerical simulations on RC frames equipped with the innovative decoupling system INODIS. The system was developed within the European project INSYSME and allows an effective uncoupling of frame and infill. The simulations are carried out with a micro-modelling approach, which is able to predict the complex nonlinear behaviour resulting from the different materials and their interaction. Each brick is modelled individually and connected taking into account nonlinearity of a brick mortar interface. The calibration of the model is based on small specimen tests and experimental results for one bay one storey frame are used for the validation. The validated model is further used for parametric studies on two storey and two bay infilled frames. The response and change of the structural stiffness are analysed and compared to the traditionally infilled frame. The results confirm the effectiveness of the INODIS system with less damage and relatively low contribution of the infill at high drift levels. In contrast to the uncoupled system configurations, traditionally infilled frames experienced brittle failure at rather low drift levels.
Stahlbetonrahmentragwerke mit Ausfachungen aus Mauerwerk weisen nach Erdbeben häufig schwere Schäden auf. Gründe hierfür sind die Beanspruchungen der Ausfachungswände durch die aufgezwungenen Rahmenverformungen in Wandebene und die gleichzeitig auftretenden Trägheitskräfte senkrecht zur Wandebene in Kombination mit der konstruktiven Ausführung des Ausfachungsmauerwerks. Die Ausfachung wird in der Regel knirsch gegen die Rahmenstützen gemauert, wobei der Verschluss der oberen Fuge mit Mörtel oder Montageschaum erfolgt. Dadurch kommt es im Erdbebenfall zu lokalen Interaktionen zwischen Ausfachung und Rahmen, die in der Folge zu einem Versagen einzelner Ausfachungswände oder zu einem sukzessiven Versagen des Gesamtgebäudes führen können. Die beobachteten Schäden waren die Motivation dafür, in dem europäischen Forschungsprojekt INSYSME für Stahlbetonrahmentragwerke mit Ausfachungen aus hochwärmedämmenden Ziegelmauerwerk innovative Lösungen zur Verbesserung des seismischen Verhaltens zu entwickeln. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt die im Rahmen des Projekts von den deutschen Projektpartnern (Universität Kassel, SDA-engineering GmbH) entwickelten Lösungen vor und vergleicht deren seismisches Verhalten mit der traditionellen Ausführung der Ausfachungswände. Grundlage für den Vergleich sind statisch-zyklische Wandversuche und Simulationen auf Wandebene. Aus den Ergebnissen werden Empfehlungen für die erdbebensichere Auslegung von Stahlbetonrahmentragwerken mit Ausfachungen aus Ziegelmauerwerk abgeleitet.
Masonry is used in many buildings not only for load-bearing walls, but also for non-load-bearing enclosure elements in the form of infill walls. Many studies confirmed that infill walls interact with the surrounding reinforced concrete frame, thus changing dynamic characteristics of the structure. Consequently, masonry infills cannot be neglected in the design process. However, although the relevant standards contain requirements for infill walls, they do not describe how these requirements are to be met concretely. This leads in practice to the fact that the infill walls are neither dimensioned nor constructed correctly. The evidence of this fact is confirmed by the recent earthquakes, which have led to enormous damages, sometimes followed by the total collapse of buildings and loss of human lives. Recently, the increasing effort has been dedicated to the approach of decoupling of masonry infills from the frame elements by introducing the gap in between. This helps in removing the interaction between infills and frame, but raises the question of out-of-plane stability of the panel. This paper presents the results of the experimental campaign showing the out-of-plane behavior of masonry infills decoupled with the system called INODIS (Innovative decoupled infill system), developed within the European project INSYSME (Innovative Systems for Earthquake Resistant Masonry Enclosures in Reinforced Concrete Buildings). Full scale specimens were subjected to the different loading conditions and combinations of in-plane and out-of-plane loading. Out-of-plane capacity of the masonry infills with the INODIS system is compared with traditionally constructed infills, showing that INODIS system provides reliable out-of-plane connection under various loading conditions. In contrast, traditional infills performed very poor in the case of combined and simultaneously applied in-plane and out-of-plane loading, experiencing brittle behavior under small in-plane drifts followed by high out-of-plane displacements. Decoupled infills with the INODIS system have remained stable under out-of-plane loads, even after reaching high in-plane drifts and being damaged.
Armiranobetonske (AB) zgrade sa zidanom ispunom
se izvode u mnogim zemljama širom sveta. Iako se
zidana ispuna posmatra kao nekonstruktivni element, ona
značajno utiče na promenu dinamičkih karakteristika AB
ramovskih konstrukcija u toku zemljotresnog dejstva.
Odskora, značajan napor je utrošen na istraživanje
izolovanih ispuna, koje su odvojene od okolnog rama
obično ostavljanjem prostora između rama i ispune. U
ovom slučaju deformacija rama ne aktivira ispunu i na taj
način ispuna ne utiče na ponašanje rama. Ovaj rad
predstavlja rezultate istraživanja ponašanja AB
ramovskih zgrada sa INODIS sistemom koji izoluje ispunu
u odnosu na okolni ram. Uticaj izolovane ispune je prvo
ispitan na jednospratnim i jednobrodnim ramovima. Ovo
je iskorišćeno kao osnova za parametarsku analizu na
višespratnim i višebrodnim ramovima, kao i na primeru
zgrade. Promena krutosti i dinamičkih karakteristika je
analizirano kao i odgovor pri zemljotresnom dejstvu.
Izvršeno je poređenje sa praznom ramovskom
konstrukcijom kao i ramovima ispunjenim ispunom na
tradicionalni način. Rezultati pokazuju da je ponašanje
ramova sa izolovanom ispunom slično ponašanju praznih
ramova, dok je ponašanje ramova sa tradicionalnom
ispunom daleko drugačije i zahteva kompleksne
numeričke modele. Ovo znači da ukoliko se primeni
adekvatna konstruktivna mera izolacije ispune, proračun
ramovskim zgrada sa zidanom ispunom se može
značajno pojednostaviti.
There is a very large number of very important situations which can be modeled with nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs) in several dimensions. In general, these PDEs can be solved by discretizing in the spatial variables and transforming them into huge systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs), which are very stiff. Therefore, standard explicit methods require a large number of iterations to solve stiff problems. But implicit schemes are computationally very expensive when solving huge systems of nonlinear ODEs. Several families of Extrapolated Stabilized Explicit Runge-Kutta schemes (ESERK) with different order of accuracy (3 to 6) are derived and analyzed in this work. They are explicit methods, with stability regions extended, along the negative real semi-axis, quadratically with respect to the number of stages s, hence they can be considered to solve stiff problems much faster than traditional explicit schemes. Additionally, they allow the adaptation of the step length easily with a very small cost.
Two new families of ESERK schemes (ESERK3 and ESERK6) are derived, and analyzed, in this work. Each family has more than 50 new schemes, with up to 84.000 stages in the case of ESERK6. For the first time, we also parallelized all these new variable step length and variable number of stages algorithms (ESERK3, ESERK4, ESERK5, and ESERK6). These parallelized strategies allow to decrease times significantly, as it is discussed and also shown numerically in two problems. Thus, the new codes provide very good results compared to other well-known ODE solvers. Finally, a new strategy is proposed to increase the efficiency of these schemes, and it is discussed the idea of combining ESERK families in one code, because typically, stiff problems have different zones and according to them and the requested tolerance the optimum order of convergence is different.
We generalize our work on Carlitz prime power torsion extension to torsion extensions of Drinfeld modules of arbitrary rank. As in the Carlitz case, we give a description of these extensions in terms of evaluations of Anderson generating functions and their hyperderivatives at roots of unity. We also give a direct proof that the image of the Galois representation attached to the p-adic Tate module lies in the p-adic points of the motivic Galois group. This is a generalization of the corresponding result of Chang and Papanikolas for the t-adic case.
The chemical industry is one of the most important industrial sectors in Germany in terms of manufacturing revenue. While thermodynamic boundary conditions often restrict the scope for reducing the energy consumption of core processes, secondary processes such as cooling offer scope for energy optimisation. In this contribution, we therefore model and optimise an existing cooling system. The technical boundary conditions of the model are provided by the operators, the German chemical company BASF SE. In order to systematically evaluate different degrees of freedom in topology and operation, we formulate and solve a Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Program (MINLP), and compare our optimisation results with the existing system.
Transport through Redox-Active Ru-Terpyridine Complexes Integrated in Single Nanoparticle Devices
(2020)
Transition metal complexes are electrofunctional molecules due to their high conductivity and their intrinsic switching ability involving a metal-to-ligand charge transfer. Here, a method is presented to contact reliably a few to single redox-active Ru-terpyridine complexes in a CMOS compatible nanodevice and preserve their electrical functionality. Using hybrid materials from 14 nm gold nanoparticles (AuNP) and bis-{4′-[4-(mercaptophenyl)-2,2′:6′,2″-terpyridine]}-ruthenium(II) complexes a device size of 30² nm² inclusive nanoelectrodes is achieved. Moreover, this method bears the opportunity for further downscaling. The Ru-complex AuNP devices show symmetric and asymmetric current versus voltage curves with a hysteretic characteristic in two well separated conductance ranges. By theoretical approximations based on the single-channel Landauer model, the charge transport through the formed double-barrier tunnel junction is thoroughly analyzed and its sensibility to the molecule/metal contact is revealed. It can be verified that tunneling transport through the HOMO is the main transport mechanism while decoherent hopping transport is present to a minor extent.