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This paper describes a system for the measurement of the internal and external temperature profiles of PET preforms used in the Injection Stretch Blow Moulding (ISBM) process. Many works in literature highlighted the importance of these quantities to improve the production quality of PET bottles, but none addressed the development of a measuring system suitable for this scope. A measuring system based on two thermopiles for the identification of the internal temperature profile and a thermal camera for the measurement of the external one has been designed. The adopted sensors were individually calibrated and the uncertainty budget, accounting for both instrumental uncertainties and the effect of multiple reflections, was derived. A prototype of the measuring system was tested on an industrial ISBM machine. The dependence of the preforms temperature profile on the settings of the ISBM machine was investigated. Results evidenced that the minimum variations of the machine settings induced temperature differences significantly larger than the measurement uncertainty, thus proving the effectiveness of the proposed system.

The dielectric response measurement is an important technique to assess the properties of insulation materials. However, the widely used approach with contact between samples and electrodes can in some cases limit the accuracy of the measurement. In this paper, an easily fabricated design is introduced and used to perform non-contact measurements. Air-reference measurements, comparing the sample to an air-gap for improved calibration, are used for all measurements. Results obtained by contact and non-contact methods, and with the feedback of electrometer locked and unlocked are compared. The effect of the pressure applied by the electrode is also investigated for both non-contact and contact measurements. Results show that the non-contact method can be an alternative to reduce contact problems between the sample and electrodes. For air-reference measurements, the impedance measurement instrument should be forced to use the same reference component for the air and sample measurements. Results obtained by the non-contact measurements are less sensitive to the pressure compared to that by contact measurements. QC 20210621

Nonlinear modal analysis is a demanding yet imperative task to rigorously address real-life situations where the dynamics involved clearly exceed the limits of linear approximation. The specific case of geometric nonlinearities, where the effects induced by the second and higher-order terms in the strain&ndash, displacement relationship cannot be neglected, is of great significance for structural engineering in most of its fields of application&mdash, aerospace, civil construction, mechanical systems, and so on. However, this nonlinear behaviour is strongly affected by even small changes in stiffness or mass, e.g., by applying physically-attached sensors to the structure of interest. Indeed, the sensors placement introduces a certain amount of geometric hardening and mass variation, which becomes relevant for very flexible structures. The effects of mass loading, while highly recognised to be much larger in the nonlinear domain than in its linear counterpart, have seldom been explored experimentally. In this context, the aim of this paper is to perform a noncontact, full-field nonlinear investigation of the very light and very flexible XB-1 air wing prototype aluminum spar, applying the well-known resonance decay method. Video processing in general, and a high-speed, optical target tracking technique in particular, are proposed for this purpose, the methodology can be easily extended to any slender beam-like or plate-like element. Obtained results have been used to describe the first nonlinear normal mode of the spar in both unloaded and sensors-loaded conditions by means of their respective backbone curves. Noticeable changes were encountered between the two conditions when the structure undergoes large-amplitude flexural vibrations.

This letter presents a high gain slot antenna for K-band non-contact measurement systems. The proposed antenna consists of a slot antenna on a grooved metal structure with a single frequency selective surface. In addition to a high-gain characteristic, a reduced size is strongly required for easy embedding. These features are the main objectives of this antenna design. To achieve these two objectives, an optimization procedure, based on a global algorithm, is used. Both simulation and optimization are carried out by means a full-wave electromagnetic simulation tool. Eventually, to validate the proposed design, a prototype of the antenna has been manufactured and tested. More than 15 dB of gain is measured over the operating frequency range, while optimal gain can reach 17 dB at frequency 25.5 GHz. These characteristics make this antenna very suitable for non-contact measurement, i.e., radar systems. © 2017, Electromagnetics Academy. All rights reserved.

Measurement, Modeling and Evaluation of Surface Parameter Using Capacitive-Sensor-Based Measurement System Surface roughness parameter prediction and evaluation are important factors in determining the satisfactory performance of machined surfaces in many fields. The recent trend towards the measurement and evaluation of surface roughness has led to renewed interest in the use of newly developed non-contact sensors. In the present work, an attempt has been made to measure the surface roughness parameter of different machined surfaces using a high sensitivity capacitive sensor. A capacitive response model is proposed to predict theoretical average capacitive surface roughness and compare it with the capacitive sensor measurement results. The measurements were carried out for 18 specimens using the proposed capacitive-sensor-based non-contact measurement setup. The results show that surface roughness values measured using a sensor well agree with the model output. For ground and milled surfaces, the correlation coefficients obtained are high, while for the surfaces generated by shaping, the correlation coefficient is low. It is observed that the sensor can effectively assess the fine and moderate rough-machined surfaces compared to rough surfaces generated by a shaping process. Furthermore, a linear regression model is proposed to predict the surface roughness from the measured average capacitive roughness. It can be further used in on-machine measurement, on-line monitoring and control of surface roughness in the machine tool environment.

et al., Studying thermal transport at the nanoscale poses formidable experimental challenges due both to the physics of the measurement process and to the issues of accuracy and reproducibility. The laser-induced transient thermal grating (TTG) technique permits non-contact measurements on nanostructured samples without a need for metal heaters or any other extraneous structures, offering the advantage of inherently high absolute accuracy. We present a review of recent studies of thermal transport in nanoscale silicon membranes using the TTG technique. An overview of the methodology, including an analysis of measurements errors, is followed by a discussion of new findings obtained from measurements on both >solid> and nanopatterned membranes. The most important results have been a direct observation of non-diffusive phonon-mediated transport at room temperature and measurements of thickness-dependent thermal conductivity of suspended membranes across a wide thickness range, showing good agreement with first-principles-based theory assuming diffuse scattering at the boundaries. Measurements on a membrane with a periodic pattern of nanosized holes (135nm) indicated fully diffusive transport and yielded thermal diffusivity values in agreement with Monte Carlo simulations. Based on the results obtained to-date, we conclude that room-temperature thermal transport in membrane-based silicon nanostructures is now reasonably well understood., The work done at MIT was supported as part of the “Solid State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC),” an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. DE-SC0001299/DEFG02-09ER46577. The contribution by A.V.-F. and J. J. A.-G. was partially supported by Project 192 “Fronteras de la ciencia” and Project 251882 “Investigacion Científica Basica.” A. V.-F. also appreciates support from Conacyt through normal and mixed scholarships. MS and CMST acknowledge support from the Spanish program Severo Ochoa (Grant SEV-2013-0295), projects PHENTOM (FIS2015-70862-P) and nanoTHERM (CSD2010-00044), as well as from the EU project MERGING (309150). Z.L. and E.N.W. further acknowledge support and funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), and are grateful to program manager Dr. Ali Sayir.

Non-contact measurements can be effectively used in civil engineering to assess the variation of structural performance with time. In the last decades this approach has received considerable interests from researchers working in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM). Indeed, non-contact measurements are very attractive because it is possible to perform non intrusive and non destructive investigations even being at a significant distance from the targets. Within this context, contactless measurements of the tie-rod vibrations in the Santa Maria della Consolazione Temple in Todi (Italy) are presented in this paper. In particular, laser vibrometer and radar interferometer measurements are used to estimate natural frequencies and mode shapes. This information is crucial to obtain the tensile axial force in the tie-rods, which can be used as an indicator of structural integrity or possible failure. Furthermore, a novel approach is proposed where drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) can be successfully used to improve the effectiveness and the accuracy of the experimental activities.

The NANOMEFOS machine is capable of fast, non-contact and universal measurement of aspheres and freeforms, up to ø500 mm with a measurement uncertainty below 30 nm (2σ). It is now being applied in asphere and freeform production at TNO.

Magnetic noise in electrical machines and transformers are a large portion of the total noise of the device. Part of this magnetic noise is caused by the deformation of the ferromagnetic laminations due to the magnetic field. This effect is called magnetostriction, and it strongly depends on the applied magnetic field, the material properties and external pressure to the material. A strain gauge measurement setup has been applied before to measure the magnetostrictive behaviour of ferromagnetic materials. The results obtained by this setup suffered from some limitations such as the need to filter high-frequency harmonics. Also the measurement results for excitation below 0.8 T were not easily distinguished from the present noise. Therefore, a new setup using heterodyne laser interferometers has been built. With this new setup, on the contrary to the strain gauge setup, the sample preparation is simple. This new setup and the gradual improvements toward the optimal performance of the setup are presented in this paper.

The possibility of error minimization as a result of noncontact measurement of the distance between eddy-current converter and commutator has been shown. The problem was solved by means of adjustment in transfer constant of the device measuring channel in the process of measuring distance to arbitrary taken commutator bar according to the method proposed.

This paper shows the machine concept, the realization and the test results of the completed NANOMEFOS non-contact measurement machine for freeform optics. The separate short metrology loop results in a stability at standstill of 0.9 nm rms over 0.1 s. Measurements of a tilted flat show a repeatability of 2-4 nm rms, depending on the applied tilt, and a flatness that agrees well with the NMi measurement.