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Laser shock peening (LSP) is a relatively novel and promising surface hardening method. An absorbing layer, which is needed to protect the specimen surface from undesirable thermal effects caused by laser irradiation, should be considered as one of many varying parameters. The physical characteristics of the coating and its adhesion to the specimen surface can significantly influence the result of LSP. In this study, three commonly used absorbing coatings, namely black polyvinylchloride tape with a sticky layer, aluminum foil, and black alkyd paint were used to cover three-millimeter-thick plates of the Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy with globular or lamellar microstructures. LSP of one side of the plates was carried out with a power density of 10 GW/cm2. The hole drilling method was used to evaluate residual stresses. The aluminum foil was found to be the optimal option for LSP of the Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy. Microstructural investigations carried out using EBSD analysis suggested that no significant reduction in grain size, twinning, or dislocation density growth occurred as a result of LSP irrespective of the initial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The TiNbZr/(Ti, Nb)B metal matrix composite with 2.5 vol.% of borides was produced by vacuum arc melting. The composite was then cold-rolled to thickness strains of 10, 20, 50, or 80%. In the initial condition, the composite had a network-like microstructure consisting of the soft TiNbZr matrix (dendrites) and the rigid (Ti, Nb)B shell (interdendritic space). In comparison with the as-cast condition, cold rolling increased strength by 17–35%, depending on the thickness strain. After the maximum thickness strain of 80%, yield strength and ultimate tensile strength of the composite achieved 865 and 1080 MPa, respectively, while total elongation was found to be 5%. Microstructural analysis revealed that cold rolling to 50% resulted in the formation of crossing shear bands caused by the considerable difference in deformation behavior of the matrix and reinforcements. Cold rolling to 80% led to the formation of a lamellar-like microstructure comprising the interlayers of the (Ti, Nb)B phase between the TiNbZr laths. The maximum strain (80% cold rolling) shortened the (Ti, Nb)B fibers into nearly equiaxed particles, with a length to diameter ratio of ~2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laser shock peening (LSP) is an innovative technique that is used to enhance the fatigue strength of structural materials via the generation of significant residual stress. The present work was undertaken to evaluate the degree of plastic strain introduced during LSP and thus improve the fundamental understanding of the LSP process. To this end, electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and nano-hardness measurements were performed to examine the microstructural response of laser-shock-peened Ti-6Al-4V alloy. Only minor changes in both the shape of α grains/particles and hardness were found. Accordingly, it was concluded that the laser-shock-peened material only experienced a small plastic strain. This surprising result was attributed to a relatively high rate of strain hardening of Ti-6Al-4V during LSP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For heat rejection, small air-cooling towers are widely used in mine ventilation systems. However, the thermal efficiency of the cooling towers can be significantly affected by their geometrical arrangement and crosswind conditions. In certain ambient conditions, heated air coming from an exit of one tower can flow to intakes of other towers, which leads to a reduction in the thermal efficiency of the entire ventilation system. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of crosswind speed and tower spacing on the temperature and moisture content of intakes of cooling towers. For this purpose, a three-dimensional CFD model of the non-isothermal turbulent flow of moist air around cooling towers is proposed. The model is based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations with a standard turbulence model which are supplemented by heat transfer and moisture transport equations. The investigation of the effects of the crosswind speed and the tower spacing was carried out for two cooling towers by multiparametric numerical simulation using the CFD model. It was shown that the upstream tower protects the downstream one from the effect of the crosswind. The increase in the crosswind speed causes a rise in temperature and moisture content at the intakes of the downstream tower. The increase in the tower spacing, in general, contributes to a decrease in air temperature at the intakes of the downstream tower. However, at low crosswind speed, the heat transfer at the intakes can rise with the tower spacing due to a reduction in the protection possibilities of the upstream tower. Results of the numerical simulation of airflow around three cooling towers indicated that the increase in the number of cooling towers contributes to a rise in temperature and moisture content at the intakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an algorithm for isolating a useful acoustic signal (corresponding to damage accumulation) against the background of a signal used to model the performance of an industrial rotary equipment. Acoustic emission signals induced by deformation and fracture were studied using a uniaxial tensile test on woven laminate samples cut along the fiber and weft directions. The background signal is a random composition of acoustic pulses used to model the performance of an industrial rotary equipment. A comparison of useful and noise signals enables us to develop two algorithms based on frequency filtering of a signal and its decomposition into empirical modes. These algorithms can be used to isolate useful AE pulses against the background of all signal intensities under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulsed thermography is an active non-destructive technique which uses optical excitation source to stimulate heating of the object under investigation. This work is devoted to the simulation of the pulsed thermography method in a steel plate with a ceramic coating containing artificial defects of various depths and sizes. The simulation has been carried out on the base of a model which takes into account complex heat exchange of the sample with the surrounding by convection, conduction and radiation. Comparison of the temperature contrast with the experimental data has shown that the results are in a good qualitative and quantitative agreement in all stages of the cooling process. Due to the fact that the temperature contrast is often susceptible to surface noise of various nature the Kalman-based signal processing technique was developed. The comparative analysis has shown that the proposed filtration technique provides a better signal-to-noise ratio in comparison to the considered well-known techniques of signal reconstruction when proper calibration of the filtration parameters is carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of energy balance at crack tip could give comprehensive information for estimation of durability and reliability cracked construction under cyclic loading. The first step for estimation energy balance is monitoring of dissipated part of energy (heat generation). One of the most effective techniques for investigation of temperature evolution on the surface of deformed body is infrared thermography. The work is devoted to the experimental study of energy dissipation in cracked samples made of titanium Grade 2 under multiaxial cyclic loading. To explain the experimentally obtained correlation between fatigue crack rate and power of heat dissipation we developed a phenomenological model describing the evolution of plastic work at the crack tip under arbitrary loading. The theoretical and experimental data about heat dissipation exhibit a good quantitative agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work is devoted to the investigation of a caprock integrity during oil production by steam-assisted gravity drainage method. An originally proposed thermo-hydro-mechanical model was used for the evaluation of mechanical loading acting on the over-burden. The model includes mass conservation laws, the energy conservation law and the linear momentum balance. Filtration of each phase of the three-phase flow (steam, oil and water) is described by Darcy's law. Effective stress concept is used to take into account the effect of pore pressure on the stress-strain state. Inelastic deformations are described by the phenomenological viscoplastic model based on Drucker-Prager yield criterion. Two qualitatively and quantitatively different scenarios of porosity evolution are considered. The first scenario corresponds to the case of the pore compression while the second one describes increase in porosity induced by the volumetric strains. The obtained stress-strain state in the reservoir was used for the assessment of the caprock integrity for both cases of porosity evolution. In addition, the effect of the porosity evolution on the oil production rate is studied. It has been shown that the oil production rate strongly depends on the prevailing physical mechanism of the porosity evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental and numerical studies investigating fatigue crack growth were conducted on flat samples made of stainless steel AISE 304 and titanium alloy Grade 2. The heat flux from the crack tip caused by plastic deformation localization was measured using the contact heat flux sensor previously developed by the authors. This provides a possibility to find a correlation between energy dissipation and crack propagation rate under fatigue uniaxial loading with constant stress intensity factor and under biaxial loading with constant stress amplitude. The experiments with constant stress intensity factor have shown a decrease in energy dissipation at constant crack rate and stress ratio R=σmin/σmax=-1 (R=0). A theoretical analysis of the stress field at the fatigue crack tip has been carried out to explain this phenomenon. Based on the obtained results, the heat flux from the crack tip is represented as the sum of two functions describing energy dissipation in monotonic and reversible plastic zones separately. It has been shown that dissipation in a reversible plastic zone is a function of the applied stress amplitude only. This causes a decrease of energy dissipation at constant stress intensity factor. The proposed phenomenology was successfully verified by testing both materials under biaxial loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work is devoted to experimental study of heat flux evolution at the fatigue crack tip during biaxial loading with a goal to relate the heat flux to the rate of crack propagation under different loading conditions. The plane samples of titanium alloy (Grade 2) 1 mm thick were weakened by notch to initiate fatigue crack at their centers. Infrared thermography and the contact heat flux sensor, which is based on the Seebeck effect, were used to monitor the dissipated thermal energy. The samples were subject to cyclic loading with constant stress amplitude at different biaxial coefficients. The experimental results confirmed the previous conclusions of the authors about two regime of energy dissipation at fatigue crack tip under Paris regime. At the first stage, the power of heat flux is proportional to the product of the crack rate by the crack length. The second stage is characterized by a traditional linear relationship between the crack rate and the heat flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrasonic vibrothermography is an effective and non-destructive method, which can be used for a quick detection of coating defects on large surfaces. Mechanical excitation of a layered structure induces inelastic deformation and, as a consequence, energy dissipation in the defective area and local heating. In this work, a three-dimensional numerical simulation of this process is applied to the bi-metallic layered structure with an edge crack. Two models of energy dissipation are considered (hysteretic damping model and visco-elastic Maxwell's model) for simulation of energy dissipation in a crack tip area under ultrasonic loading. The models allow us to study the effects of the loading frequency, loading direction and location of the coating defects on the heat dissipation and propose optimal regimes for the ultrasonic vibrothermography of bi-metallic layered structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adhesion of industrially important bacteria to solid carriers through the example of actinobacterium Rhodococcus ruber IEGM 342 adhered to polystyrene was studied using real-time methods, such as infrared (IR) thermography and thermometry with platinum resistance (PR) detectors. Dynamics of heat rate and heat production was determined at early (within first 80 min) stages of rhodococcal cell adhesion. Heat rate was maximal (1.8 × 10−3-2.7 × 10−3 W) at the moment of cell loading. Heat production was detected for the entire length of adhesion, and its dynamics depended on concentration of rhodococcal cells. At high (1 × 1010 CFU/ml) cell concentration, a stimulative (in 1.7 and 1.4 times consequently) effect of polystyrene treatment with Rhodococcus-biosurfactant on the number of adhered rhodococcal cells and cumulative heat production at rhodococcal cell adhesion was revealed. The values of heat flows (heat rate 0.3 × 10−3-2.7 × 10−3 W, heat production up to 8.2 × 10−3 J, and cumulative heat production 0.20-0.53 J) were 5-30 times higher than those published elsewhere that indicated high adhesive activity of R. ruber IEGM 342 towards polystyrene. To analyze experimental results and predict effects of boundary conditions on the temperature distribution, a mathematical model for heating a polystyrene microplate with distributed heat sources has been developed. Two independent experimental methods and the numerical modeling make it possible to verify the experimental results and to propose both contact and non-contact techniques for analyzing kinetics of bacterial adhesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an experimental study of the mechanical and thermal behavior of titanium samples (Grade 2 and Grade 4) with different grain sizes under cyclic loading. The self-heating test demonstrates that the structure of the material has a strong effect on the dissipation ability of titanium. The threshold of energy dissipation corresponding to the transition through the fatigue limit is shown for coarse-grained titanium. On contrary, submicrocrystalline samples exhibit the dependence of continuous energy dissipation on the applied stress amplitude. Analysis of the fatigue properties of titanium in a gigacyclic regime provides evidence that grain grinding improves substantially the fatigue properties of the material. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This work is devoted to the development of a theoretical approach for the calculation of entropy in metals under plastic deformation. The thermodynamic analysis of the plastic deformation process allowed us to obtain the expression for determination of the entropy production. The value of the entropy production in an Armco iron specimen under plastic deformation as calculated the basis of the proposed technique and infrared thermography data. This method also lets us define the inelastic strain caused by the initiation and growth of the defects which was used as the internal variable in the considered thermomechanical model from the experimental data. In order to verify the obtained results a theoretical analysis of the modeled situation was carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immobilization of microorganisms on/in insoluble carriers is widely used to stabilize functional activity of microbial cells in industrial biotechnology. We immobilized Rhodococcus ruber, an important hydrocarbon degrader, on biosurfactant-coated sawdust. A biosurfactant produced by R. ruber in the presence of liquid hydrocarbons was found to enhance rhodococcal adhesion to solid surfaces, and thus, it was used as a hydrophobizing agent to improve bacterial attachment to a sawdust carrier. Compared to previously used hydrophobizers (drying oil and n-hexadecane) and emulsifiers (methyl- and carboxymethyl cellulose, poly(vinyl alcohol), and Tween 80), Rhodococcus biosurfactant produced more stable and homogenous coatings on wood surfaces, thus resulting in higher sawdust affinity to hydrocarbons, uniform monolayer distribution of immobilized R. ruber cells (immobilization yield 29-30 mg dry cells/g), and twofold increase in hydrocarbon biooxidation rates compared to free rhodococcal cells. Two physical methods, i.e., high-resolution profilometry and infrared thermography, were applied to examine wood surface characteristics and distribution of immobilized R. ruber cells. Sawdust-immobilized R. ruber can be used as an efficient biocatalyst for hydrocarbon transformation and degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work is devoted to the experimental investigation of the effect of laser shock peening (LSP) on the thermo-mechanical properties of metals. ARMCO iron was chosen as the model material for the study. Samples were subjected to LSP, and were tested following the procedure of the self-heating (Risitano) technique. To investigate the damage that was induced by heating, the fatigue tests were coupled with infrared thermography measurements. The results of the study showed that the LSP procedure qualitatively changes the temperature evolution in ARMCO iron during cyclic loading. The heating (energy dissipation) of the LSP treated specimen was several times higher than that of the specimen in the initial state. To explain the structural mechanisms of energy dissipation, the microstructure of the specimens was examined using transmission (TEM) and scanning (SEM) electron microscopy, as well as electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD). The results of the structural investigation confirm the qualitative change of defect evolution caused by LSP treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]