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Based on the theory of small deflection bending of a thin-walled part, a mechanical model of thin-walled planar members under the action of vacuum adsorption was established. Combined with finite-element simulation and testing, the deformation mechanism and law of the thin-walled flat members was studied under the action of vacuum adsorption. Vacuum clamping caused clamping residual stresses on the upper and lower surfaces of the thin-walled flat parts and resulted in torque along the middle surface. When the vacuum clamping was unloaded, the rebound of the thin-walled flat parts that was caused by the torque was the fundamental cause for the clamping deformation. The residual stress and deformation on the surface of the thin-walled flat parts tended to increase and level off with an increase in vacuum. From the initial stage to the stable clamping stage, the radial and tangential stresses in the 200 mm × 2.2 mm workpiece increased by –10 MPa and –27 MPa, respectively, and the relative displacement in the load direction increased by 0.026 mm. Under the effect of vacuum clamping, the maximum deformation capacity of thin-walled flat parts was affected mainly by their initial surface profile error. The stiffness of the workpiece was affected mainly by its thickness; a greater thickness led to a greater stiffness, and a larger vacuum was required for the workpiece to reach a stable clamping state.

Titanium alloys are widely used in industrial fields because of their superior characteristics, but they also have disadvantages leading to fretting fatigue (FF) damage. The silver-based composite films were deposited on a Ti6Al4V alloy substrate using ion-assisted magnetron sputtering for improving the fretting fatigue (FF) resistance of a Ti6Al4V alloy. The surface morphology was characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM), and micro-structure was characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements (XPS), X-ray diffractometry (XRD), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), respectively. The bonding strength and toughness of films were analyzed using a repeated press–press test system that was manufactured in-house. The FF resistance of titanium alloy with the silver-based composite films was investigated using home-made FF devices. The results showed that the FF resistance of the titanium alloy was improved by the Ag-TiN composite films, which were fabricated with an Ag solid lubricating film doped with a hard TiN phase (60–80 at.% Ag). This is attributed to the fact that the composite films had better comprehensive strength-toughness behavior, friction lubrication property, and high bonding strength. However, when the atomic fraction of Ag in the composite film was larger than 90%, it became difficult to form the TiN phase, and it failed to improve the comprehensive strength-toughness behavior of the composite film.

Thin copper substrates with high flatness and surface integrity are highly required in precision physical experiments. Normally, fly cutting is used to fabricate the substrates. However, the flatness is difficult to be guaranteed after disassembly due to the clamping and machining stresses which are induced on the substrates. Besides, the surface integrity is hard to be improved because of the severe subsurface deformation and high residual stress. To solve the problem, a new process chain composed by double-sided lapping and chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is proposed to acquire both high flatness and surface integrity on thin copper substrates. In the new process chain, double-sided lapping is employed to achieve high flatness and uniform distribution of surface residual stress, while double-sided CMP is adopted to obtain the ultra-smooth surface without damage and maintain the flatness. The results show that flatness superior to 4 μm peak-to-valley (PV), and surface roughness less than 3 nm Ra are obtained. Moreover, both surfaces are damage-free with low surface residual stresses.

The properties of foam fluid are substantially determined by its interfacial dynamics changes during foam transport. In this research, a foam flow simulation model based on the level set method and the N–S equation with surface tension term is established to simulate the dynamic interface evolution mechanism of group foam and individual foam from various aspects such as drainage process and foam migration in porous media, coalescence and Jamin effect. The results show that the foam life decreases linearly with the logarithm of the surface tension and enhances linearly with the liquid viscosity. For foam transport in porous media, both flowing foam and trapped foam exist, and the pressure fluctuates at a certain pressure value and the best foam structure is achieved at the optimum conditions with the optimum values of gas-liquid ratio, surface tension, and porosity being 1:1˜3:2, 0.1˜0.3, and 44.4%, respectively. Besides, the temporary blocking effect of foam has been verified. During the foam coalescence, foam gradually evolves towards minimum interfacial energy with oscillating and gradually decreasing foam volume. During the process of the foam passing through the throat, the maximum pressure occurs when the front end of the foam reaches the narrowest point, and the minimum pressure occurs when half of the foam passes through the narrowest point. The maximum pressure elevates linearly with the surface tension and the inverse of the throat radius.

In relation with the potential applications of CO2 foam technology on Enhanced Oil Recovery and CO2 geological storage, the foam assisted CO2 displacement process in a surfactant solution and oil pre-saturated porous medium is experimentally investigated with special attention on the dynamic foam propagation behavior in the entrance region of porous media. Computational Tomography (CT) imaging is employed to visualize the transient CO2 foam sweep process and the dual-energy CT measurement is performed to obtain the dynamic three phase saturation distributions along the sample core. Studying parameters include the comparison with N2 foam, system backpressure and the porous medium permeability. It is found foam could push most of the liquid phase in the latter part of the porous media but leaves the forepart of the sample less flooded, showing a clear entrance effect of foam flooding process. Compared to CO2 foam, N2 foam displacement process shows higher liquid phase saturation in the entrance section and presents less oil recovery rate. Elevating system backpressure to 1.0 MPa leads to less pressure drop for CO2 foam flooding process without compromising the oil phase sweep efficiency. The CO2 foam flooding process in lower permeable medium shows higher pressure drop and higher oil recovery rate. The mechanisms for the inlet behavior of the foam displacement processes have been scrutinized based on good qualitative and quantitative agreement of the experimental and numerical results with the stochastic bubble population balance model.

Rheological properties of supercritical CO 2 (ScCO 2 ) foam fluids are essential to understand foam displacement mechanisms in the research & development of efficient CO 2 -EOR and CO 2 geological storage technologies. In this paper, a systematic laboratory study concerning non-Newtonian ScCO 2 foam flow characteristics in a straight tube was carried out under different gas-liquid ratios. Through modifying experimental pressure and temperature conditions, comparative studies on liquid phase CO 2 and gaseous CO 2 foam rheology were also carried out. The experimental results show obvious shear-thickening behavior for the scCO 2 foam (45 °C and 8.0 MPa) with flow behavior index increasing from 1.03 to 1.76 with increasing foam quality. And the apparent viscosity of scCO 2 foam could reach up to 140 times of the single-phase water. The liquid phase CO 2 foam (25 °C and 8.0 MPa) also exhibits clearly the shear-thickening characteristics with flow behavior index ranging from 1.56 to 1.88. The gaseous CO 2 foam, on the other hand, behaves in a shear-thinning or pseudo-plastic manner with flow behavior index of 0.70 2 and liquid CO 2 bulk foam, which mainly contributes to the shear thickening behavior for ScCO 2 and liquid CO 2 foam fluid.

Simulative experiments were carried out for CO2 foam flooding process in homogeneous porous media prepared with the sand packing method, and the CO2 foam seepage characteristics in porous media were studied with CT technology. CO2 foam flooding experiments were carried out under different packing sand sizes, different surfactant concentrations and different gas-liquid ratios. CT technology was employed to visualize the displacement process and to obtain the water saturation data along the sample, and the pressure distribution in the sample during the foam seepage process was measured at the same time. Experimental results show that, CO2 foam flooding has higher pressure drop and lower water saturation entrance effect in the porous media with lower average grain sizes; when surfactant concentrations are higher than CMC (Critical Micelle Concentration), the generated foam is stable, without showing obvious difference for the foam displacement efficiency in the sample, and water saturation entrance effect gradually decreases with increase of surfactant concentrations; improving gas-liquid ratio can lead to higher foam seepage pressure drop, but has little effect on residue water saturation after foam displacement. Key words: CO2 flooding, CO2 foam, flooding experiment, seepage characteristics, CT technology, EOR

To investigate their effect on fretting fatigue (FF) resistance of a Ti-6Al-4V alloy, hard solid lubricating composite films of TiN with varying silver contents (TiN-Ag) were deposited on a Ti-6Al-4V alloy using ion-assisted magnetron sputtering. The surface morphology and structure were analyzed by atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffractometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The hardness, bonding strength, and toughness of films were tested using a micro-hardness tester, scratch tester, and a repeated press–press test system that was manufactured in-house, respectively. The FF resistance of TiN-Ag composite films was studied using self-developed devices. The results show that the FF resistance of a titanium alloy can be improved by TiN-Ag composite films, which were fabricated using hard TiN coating doped with soft Ag. The FF life of Ag0.5, Ag2, Ag5, Ag10 and Ag20 composite films is 2.41, 3.18, 3.20, 2.94 and 2.87 times as great as that of the titanium alloy, respectively. This is because the composite films have the better toughness, friction lubrication, and high bonding strength. When the atomic fraction of Ag changes from 2% to 5%, the FF resistance of the composite films shows the best performance. This is attributed to the surface integrity of the composite film is sufficiently fine to prevent the initiation and early propagation of FF cracks.

In relationship with the potential application of nanoparticle (NP) foam technology in CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and greenhouse geological storage in tight reservoirs, the rheological properties of the NP-stabilized CO2 foam with surfactant (α-olefin sulfonate-AOS) solution were experimentally investigated. The foam was treated as a power-law non-Newtonian fluid, and the relationships between the shear stress and shear rate as well as the apparent viscosity of foam and foam quality were determined under influential parameters including the NP additive, internal gas type, salinity, and oil presence. Critical foam quality values in the range 91–96% were observed for the NP-stabilized foam, whereas no such values were obtained for the corresponding AOS-CO2 foam. The results show the NP-AOS-CO2 foam has lower viscosity compared to the NP-AOS-N2 foam, and the solution salinity decreases the viscosity of the NP-AOS-CO2 foam, whereas oil presence has no obvious effect on the foam viscosity.

To investigate their effect on the fretting wear (FW) and fretting fatigue (FF) resistance of a Ti6Al4V alloy, the diamond-like carbon (DLC) and graphite-like carbon (GLC) films were deposited on a Ti6Al4V alloy substrate using closed field unbalanced magnetron sputtering. The basic film properties, such as surface morphology, micro-structure, micro-hardness, bonding strength, and toughness were investigated by atomic force microscopy, X-ray photoelecton spectroscopy, nano-hardness testing, scratch testing and by a home-made repeated press-press test system, respectively. The FW and FF resistance was studied using home-made devices. The results show that DLC and GLC films can reduce the friction factor while the FW and FF resistance of the titanium alloy were improved significantly. However, the FW and FF resistance of the DLC film on the titanium alloy was better than that of the GLC film. This was attributed to the excellent properties of bonding strength and toughness of the DLC film. Moreover, the effect of bonding strength and toughness is more important than that of friction factor in improving the FW and FF resistance.

Low wear resistance and high sensitivity to fretting fatigue (FF) damage limit the application of titanium alloys. In order to improve its wear resistance, surface plasma Zirconium (Zr) alloying is a candidate through solution strengthening with its property of infinite solid solution with [Formula: see text]–Ti and [Formula: see text]–Ti. In this work, the plasma Zr metallurgy technique was used to improve the FF resistance of Ti6Al4V alloy combined with shot peening (SP), which is different from the combined treatments of the surface modification with high hardness and SP, and may explain the impacts of ductility and strength in improving FF resistance. The results indicate that the Zr metallurgy layer is composed of a Zr–Ti solid solution with low surface hardness and density, which induce the reduction of the fretting wear (FW) resistance and FF resistance of the Ti6Al4V alloy. Instead, when SP was used as the post treatment, the FW and FF behavior of the titanium alloy were increased obviously after prior plasma Zr metallurgy, especially to high cycle fatigue. This indicates that residual stress introduced by SP is beneficial for improving both FW and resistance.

The improvement and mechanism of the fatigue resistance of TC21 high-strength titanium alloy with a high velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) sprayed WC-17Co coating was investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and the corresponding stress measurement instrument, a surface roughness tester, a micro-hardness tester, and a scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used to determine the properties of the HVOF WC-17Co coating with or without shot peening. The fatigue behavior of the TC21 titanium alloy with or without the WC-17Co coating was determined by using a rotating bending fatigue testing machine. The results revealed that the polished HVOF sprayed WC-17Co coating had almost the same fatigue resistance as the TC21 titanium alloy substrate. This resulted from the polishing-induced residual surface compressive stress and a decrease in the stress concentration on the surface of the coating. Moderate-intensity shot peening of the polished WC-17Co coatings resulted in significant improvement of the fatigue resistance of the alloy. Furthermore, the fatigue life was substantially higher than that of the substrate, owing to the deep distribution of residual stress and high compressive stress induced by shot peening. The improved surface toughness of the coating can effectively delay the initiation of fatigue crack propagation.

Foam fluid has found wide applications in oilfield development, such as profile control, water plugging, gas channeling control, fracturing, and so on. As a non-Newtonian fluid, the successful application of foam is significantly influenced by its structure. The foam texture, however, is complex and irregular, and becomes even more complicated in porous media by the boundary effects. Therefore, the description of dynamic foam structure is crucial and a quantitative description method for foam fluid is worth exploring. In this paper, the fractal characteristics of foam in porous media are verified and combined with foam microdisplacement experiment, and the fractal rule of foam is found. The relationship between fractal dimension and pressure is also discussed. The results show that foam has dynamic fractal characteristics during transport in porous media and the box-counting fractal dimension ranges from 1 to 2. Furthermore, the dynamic change of foam fractal dimension during transport in porous media could be divided into three stages. In the first stage when no foam forms, the fractal dimension is about 2; in the second unsteady foam stage, the fractal dimension is reduced from 1.9 to 1.6; the last one is the steady stage and the fractal dimension is almost constant (about 1.6). Besides, the fractal dimension of foam fluid is closely related to displacement pressure. Low pressure corresponds to higher fractal dimension, and high pressure corresponds to lower fractal dimension. Pressure is negatively linearly correlated with fractal dimension. These results are expected to enrich the understanding of the foam dynamic characteristics in their advanced applications.

Summary Carbon dioxide (CO2) foam has been widely studied in connection with its application in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). This paper reports an experimental study concerning CO2 foam propagation in a surfactant-saturated Bentheim sandstone core and the subsequent liquid injection with the aid of X-ray computed tomography (CT). The experiments were carried out under various system backpressures. It is found that CO2 foam flows in a characteristic front-like manner in the transient stage and that the water saturation keeps at relatively high level at the outlet of the porous media because of CO2 solubility and capillary end effect. The subsequent surfactant solution injection shows a significant fingering behavior, accompanied by a low flow resistance over the core. It is also found that CO2 foam flow shows higher liquid saturation near the outlet and lower pressure drops under higher system backpressures. This can be attributed to the solubility of CO2 in the liquid phase. The results indicate the advantage of using foam in EOR processes such as water alternating foam (WAF), in which foam flow has higher sweep efficiency and stronger mobility control ability compared, for instance, to water alternating gas (WAG). Nevertheless, care should be taken during the water-injection stage in order not to favor the fingering.

A metallurgical zirconium nitride (ZrN) layer was fabricated using glow metallurgy using nitriding with zirconiuming prior treatment of the Ti6Al4V alloy. The microstructure, composition and microhardness of the corresponding layer were studied. The influence of this treatment on fretting wear (FW) and fretting fatigue (FF) behavior of the Ti6Al4V alloy was studied. The composite layer consisted of an 8-μm-thick ZrN compound layer and a 50-μm-thick nitrogen-rich Zr–Ti solid solution layer. The surface microhardness of the composite layer is 1775 HK0.1. A gradient in cross-sectional microhardness distribution exists in the layer. The plasma ZrN metallurgical layer improves the FW resistance of the Ti6Al4V alloy, but reduces the base FF resistance. This occurs because the improvement in surface hardness results in lowering of the toughness and increasing in the notch sensitivity. Compared with shot peening treatment, plasma ZrN metallurgy and shot peening composite treatment improves the FW resistance and enhances the FF resistance of the Ti6Al4V alloy. This is attributed to the introduction of a compressive stress field. The combination of toughness, strength, FW resistance and fatigue resistance enhance the FF resistance for titanium alloy.