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Reduction in friction ensures fuel economy, control on emissions and durability of components in internal combustion engines. A modern gasoline internal combustion engine was instrumented to determine the friction values at the cam–roller interface considering the effects of surface treatment and engine operating state. A series of tests under different operating speeds and lubricant inlet temperatures were undertaken using both an original surface roller and a Wonder Process Craft (WPC) surface-treated engine roller. The results clearly revealed a substantial reduction in friction magnitude for the WPC surface-treated engine roller in comparison to the original roller while operating under similar conditions, indicating their strong potential for employment in engines. An increase in friction with the rise in temperature was also observed for both types of rollers, whereas increased lubricant entraining velocity due to higher operating speed had the opposite impact. A considerable reduction in frictional drive torque ranging from 8% to 28% was observed by employing the WPC-treated roller in comparison to original/untreated roller at various operating conditions, which signifies the strong potential for employment of WPC surface treatment in the roller/follower valve train engines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, the mechanisms of end-grain corrosion of 304L NAG tubes in boiling 9M HNO3-containing Cr (VI) ions are reported to sustainably manage the corrosion of nuclear fuel reprocessing plant components. Specific heat treatments were applied to as-received specimens to produce phosphorus and/or sulphur intergranular segregation. End-grain corrosion on heat-treated specimens and the effect of a Cr (VI) concentration on a 304L NAG tube (as-received) were investigated. It has been reported that an increase in Cr (VI) ions leads to the acceleration of end-grain corrosion due to high electrochemical potential. After systematic heat treatments on the 304L NAG specimens, it is concluded that the primary causes of heat-induced end-grain corrosion are phosphorus or sulphur segregation to the grain boundaries. The key findings of this research are highly significant in terms of understanding the corrosion mechanisms and controlling the end-grain corrosion of NAG steel in boiling HNO3 environments. This research will help to sustainably reduce power plant maintenance costs and will have a significant impact on the delivery of long-term, clean, secure, and tenable energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial waste has been rapidly increased day by day because of the fast-expanding population which inappropriately dumps the waste resulting in environmental pollutions. It has been recommended that the disposal of industrial waste would be greatly reduced if it could be incorporated into concrete production. The basic objective of this investigation is to examine the characteristics of concrete using marble slurry as binding material in proportions 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 30% by weight of cement. Many properties have been reviewed in the current paper; the results observed from the various studies depict that replacement of marble slurry to a certain extent enhances strength properties of the concrete but simultaneously decreases the slump value with the increase of replacement level of marble slurry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance and durability of tribological components in roller follower valve train is governed mainly by the roller rotational behaviour. Pure rolling of roller on the camshaft surface is essential to achieve the optimum valve train efficiency. The increase in roller slip can lead to high valve train power loss due to increase in sliding friction and can increase the wear rate of mating surfaces of camshaft and roller. In this research work, a modern gasoline engine having end-pivoted roller finger follower valve train configuration has been instrumented to investigate the effects of Wonder Process Craft surface treatment on roller slip. Comprehensive test programme has been undertaken at transient camshaft speeds by employing the New European Drive Cycle under different oil temperatures and pressures. Remarkable reduction in roller slip was recorded for Wonder Process Craft surface treated roller as compared to the original unmodified roller indicating its strong potential of employment in engine valve train. The test rig, surface treatment of roller, instrumentation, experimentation, results and discussion have been presented in detail in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the veracity, velocity, values, and size of data are growing exponentially. In fact, the data is growing beyond the capacity of current hardware facilities. This resulted in high cost of storing the data. Perhaps, some of the data stored are not very useful and create problems when mining the data, to make some sense out of it. Feature selection is a step forward towards reducing the unnecessary huge amount of the stored data. In this study, Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) along with its binary version (BFPA) are used for feature selection on some medical datasets. The results obtained is in favor of the BFPA with better classification accuracy of over 90% on some of the datasets and fewer number of features compared to FPA, improved harmony search with rough set together with particle swarm optimization with rough set. Hence, the experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of BFPA as the best technique among the evaluated methods for feature selection particularly on medical datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]