Academic literature on the topic 'Two Stage Clonal Expansion Model'

We considered a Bayesian approach to nonlinear inverse problems in which the unknown quantity is a high dimension spatial field. The Bayesian approach contains a natural mechanism for regularization in the form of prior information, can incorporate information from heterogeneous sources and provides a quantitative assessment of uncertainty in the inverse solution. The Bayesian setting casts the inverse solution as a posterior probability distribution over the model parameters. Karhunen-Lo'eve expansion and Discrete Cosine transform were used for dimension reduction of the random spatial field. Furthermore, we used a hierarchical Bayes model to inject multiscale data in the modeling framework. In this Bayesian framework, we have shown that this inverse problem is well-posed by proving that the posterior measure is Lipschitz continuous with respect to the data in total variation norm. The need for multiple evaluations of the forward model on a high dimension spatial field (e.g. in the context of MCMC) together with the high dimensionality of the posterior, results in many computation challenges. We developed two-stage reversible jump MCMC method which has the ability to screen the bad proposals in the first inexpensive stage. Channelized spatial fields were represented by facies boundaries and variogram-based spatial fields within each facies. Using level-set based approach, the shape of the channel boundaries was updated with dynamic data using a Bayesian hierarchical model where the number of points representing the channel boundaries is assumed to be unknown. Statistical emulators on a large scale spatial field were introduced to avoid the expensive likelihood calculation, which contains the forward simulator, at each iteration of the MCMC step. To build the emulator, the original spatial field was represented by a low dimensional parameterization using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), then the Bayesian approach to multivariate adaptive regression spline (BMARS) was used to emulate the simulator. Various numerical results were presented by analyzing simulated as well as real data.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Existing spatial keyword query methods usually evaluate text relevancy according to the frequency of occurrence of query keywords in the text information associated to spatial objects, without considering the degree of preference of users to different query keywords, and without considering semantic relevancy. To deal with the above problems, this chapter proposes an interactive personalized spatial keyword querying approach which is divided into two stages. In the offline processing stage, Gibbs algorithm is adopted to estimate the thematic probability distribution of text information associated to spatial objects, and then an LDA model is used for semantic expansion of spatial data set.

This chapter examines Shakespeare’s contemporary dramatic influences to contextualize both the presence of nostalgic discourse in the emergent English public theatre and Shakespeare’s own dramatic innovation in how he used that discourse. Literary scholars have not only been increasingly interested in the relationship between Shakespeare’s plays and the Queen’s Men’s repertory, but in the troupe itself as providing a foundation for public drama’s expansion at the end of the sixteenth century. This chapter first analyses two history plays adapted by Shakespeare – The Famous Victories of Henrie the Fifth and The True Tragedy of Richard III– before turning to Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great and the Queen’s Men’s Selimus. The chapter concludes with a brief analysis of the Queen’s Men’s The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England and Shakespeare’s King John to demonstrate how Shakespeare incorporates this past-resistant model into his own work. These plays use temporal consciousness—an explicit awareness of past, present, and/or future— rhetorically, making that consciousness both ethical and political. These plays all stage a temporal consciousness that highlights the limits of the past and insists on concentrating on the future—that is, the Elizabethan present.

As the result of increasingly strict emission regulations and demand of fuel reduction, current light and medium duty engines are being highly boosted with complex two-stage turbocharging systems. The purpose of this work is to investigate the influence of two-stage turbocharging system parameters on the engine performance and the optimization of these parameters. An analytical pre-design model of the series two-stage turbocharging system for an internal combustion engine was developed, which builds the relationship between total pressure ratio, total expansion ratio and other two-stage turbocharging system parameters. Considering total expansion ratio as a function of expansion ratio between HP and LP turbine, minimum total expansion ratio can be determined using this model. The ratio of total pressure ratio to total expansion ratio, engine brake thermal efficiency and total heat exchange of coolers are considered as the parameters for engine performance evaluation. Influence of two-stage turbocharging system parameters, such as efficiency of compressors and turbines, cooling water temperature, cooler efficiency, pressure loss of coolers, EGR rate and bypass gas rate of wastegate, etc., on engine performance was analyzed respectively. Results show that the performance of a two-stage turbocharging engine is impacted mainly by LP turbocharger efficiency, intercooler performance and air filter performance.

In our previous paper, a new gas exchange concept termed Divided Exhaust Period Regulated 2-stage (DEP R2S) system has been proposed. In this system, two exhaust valves in each cylinder are separately functioned with one valve feeding the exhaust mass flow into the high pressure (HP) manifold whilst the other valve evacuating the remaining mass flow directly into the low pressure (LP) manifold. By adjusting the timing of the exhaust valves, the target boost can be controllable whilst improving the engine’s pumping work and scavenging is attainable which results in better fuel efficiency from the gas exchange perspective. This paper will continue this study by adding an appropriate knock model to examine the benefits this concept could bring to the combustion phasing. The results at full load showed that under knock limited spark advance (KLSA) and fully optimized exhaust valve timing condition, the DEP R2S system benefited from lower pumping loss and better scavenging due to the reduced backpressure and improved pulsation interference despite suffering from reduced expansion ratio and expansion work. The combustion phasing was advanced across the engine speed which is mainly attributed to the reduced residual and the reduced requirement of gross IMEP. The net BSFC was observed to improve by up to 3% depending on the engine operating points. At part load, the DEP R2S system could be used as a mechanism to extend the ‘duration’ of the exhaust valve. This will reduce the recompression effect of the exhaust residuals during the beginning and the end of the exhaust stroke compared to the original R2S model with late exhaust valve opening and early exhaust valve opening. In addition, increased internal EGR due to the increased overlap between the LP and the intake valve is also beneficial for the improved PMEP as the throttle can be further opened to reduce the corresponding throttling loss. The average net BSFC improvement is expected to be approximately 6–7%.

Volute scroll, conic diffuser and sudden expansion discharge loss account for 4–6 points of efficiency decrement in a typical centrifugal compressor stage. The flow in a volute is highly complex. It is strongly believed that understanding of the detailed flow structure in a volute will provide insights on minimizing the losses by isolating the mechanisms that contributes to entropy generation. The result will be a more efficient centrifugal compressor product for customers and users and a product at higher profitability levels for manufacturers. This paper presents the experimental and numerical investigation on the matching of two different overhung volutes to the same centrifugal compressor impeller. The experimental data were measured from flange to flange firstly, then three Kiel probes were installed on pinch position circumferentially. At the same time, a detailed numerical simulation of the performance of the two volutes has been carried out. A computational model, using the k-ε turbulence model and the wall function, has been used to predict the internal flow of the both volutes. A good agreement between experimental data and numerical simulation results is found. The overall performance of the two volutes was also discussed in detail.

Partial admission, which has the advantage of avoiding large losses while the turbine at low load operations, is widely used in regulating the power of turbomachinery. However, partial admission causes prominent unsteady flow, additional exciting forces and extra losses. Thus, it has great significance to investigate the characteristics of partial admission turbines. In this paper, efficiency and unsteady flow performance of a small two-stage subsonic axial turbine with partial admission are analyzed. Firstly, a 3-D model with four discontinuous equally-distributed nozzle blocks was built, and the computational grid, which only consisted of hexahedral mesh, was generated. Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations were solved by commercial software ANSYS-CFX and the RNG k-ε turbulence model was adopted. Secondly, to investigate the influence of admission modes, two partial admission modes (A-two diagonal valve opening; B-two adjacent valves opening) were analyzed separately and compared with the full admission situation (Mode C). Finally, the turbine performances in Mode A and B at other speeds (75% and 110% of rated speed) were analyzed and pressure distributions at three different heights (10%, 50% and 90% of the blade height) were investigated in detail. The results indicated that partial admission could cause extra mixture losses and lead to lower efficiency. Among these kinds of modes, full admission (Mode C) performed best in efficiency, and Mode B performed better than Mode A under partial admission conditions. Furthermore, strong non-uniformity was found in circumferential direction and large pressure drop occurred at the gap between two admission blocks due to expansion effects. The computational results also showed that the flow parameter fluctuations attenuated evidently in the downstream stages and the pressure vibration mainly occurred after nozzle stages. Strong vortices and backflow can be noticed at the pressure side of the active nozzle boxes. Additionally, the rotational speed has a great influence on the performance of turbine. Higher rotational speed led to bigger efficiency and smoother pressure distribution. And the alteration trend becomes slow at high speed.

A key objective of compressor rig tests is the identification of compressor stall boundary. A complementary goal is the identification of the stalling stage based on test data. This serves two purposes: 1) Validate the pre-test prediction of the stage loading distribution, and 2) identify the weak stages, should improvements in operating range be desired in subsequent design iterations. Typically the pertinent test data is in the form of static pressure measurements. Many engineers believe that a stalling stage is accompanied by a transient upstream pressure rise coupled with a downstream pressure loss. However, inter-stage dynamics may cloud the identification of the stalling stage. To this end, an analysis of inter-stage dynamics, immediately preceding the stall event, could provide an alternate assessment of the stalling stage. This work reviews existing stall models for studying compressor dynamics. The main focus of this work is to develop ability to capture inter-stage dynamics. A 3-state equation lumped Moore-Greitzer (MG3) model is widely used to study the dynamic compressor response during surge and rotating stall transients. However the evolution of MG3 model may not provide a suitable framework for the investigation of inter-stage dynamics. On the other hand, an unsteady time marching 1-D fluid dynamic model (e.g. similar to the DynTECC formulation which includes body forces), while unable to capture the rotating stall dynamics, is sufficient for this purpose. A numerical simulation has been developed to investigate the impact of stage characteristics, as well as load distribution on the compression and expansion waves that develop prior to a surge event. Through a controlled weakening of selected stages, the time evolution of these waves is related back to the stalling stage. It is found that the weakened stage is not necessarily the stalling stage as identified via the pressure rise and downstream pressure drop pattern.

Abstract The IFBMDA is an Information-Flow-Based model for Mechanical Design Automation. This paper first analyzes the mechanical design process from the views of design methodology and cognitive model. Then, two essential assumptions about mechanical design behavior are provided. Based on the analysis and fundamental assumptions, this paper thoroughly describes five submodels which constitute the automation model IFBMDA. They are Information Flow model, Knowledge Processing model, Non-monotonic Expansion Search model, Iterative Constraint Generation and Solution model and Design Process Stage model. Then, this paper also evaluates the model in both practical and theoretical aspects and shows that it is well-developed in both aspects. Finally, the perspective of further mechanical design automation research is outlined.

Abstract After successful implementation of data analytics for steamflood optimization at the Mukhaizna heavy oil field in Oman late 2018, Occidental expanded the project to two additional areas with a total of 626 wells in 2019, followed by full field coverage of more than 3,200 wells in 2020. In 2019, two separate low-fidelity proxy models were built to model the two pilot areas. The models were updated with more features to account for additional reservoir phenomena and a larger scope. On the proxy engine side, speed and robustness were improved, resulting in reduced CPU processing time and lower cost. Because of advancements in software programing and the pilots’ encouraging production performance, full-field coverage was accelerated so the model could support the efforts in optimizing steam injection during the 2020 OPEC+ production cut, not only to comply with allotted quotas, but also to allocate the resources optimally, especially the costly steam. Good improvements have been observed in overall steamflood performance, the models’ capabilities, and the optimization workflow. The steam/oil ratio has been reduced through the increase in oil production in both expanded study areas while keeping the total steam injection volume constant. Overall field steam utilization was improved both during the 2020 OPEC+ production cuts and during the production ramp-up stage afterward. With the continuous improvement in supporting tools and scripts, most of the steam optimization process steps were automated, from preparing, checking, and formatting input data to analyzing, validating, and visualizing the model outputs. Another result of these improvements was the development of a user-friendly web application to manage the model workflow efficiently. This web app greatly improved the process of case submittals, including data preparation and QC, running models (history matching and forecasting), as well as visualization of the entire workflow. In terms of optimization workflow, these improvements resulted in less time spent by the field optimization engineer in updating, refreshing, and generating new model recommendations. It also helped reduce the time spent by the reservoir management team (RMT) to test and validate the new ideas before field implementation. This paper will describe the improvements in the proxy model and the overall optimization process, show the observed oil production increases, and discuss the challenges faced and the lessons learned.

Abstract The effect of operating point on the aerodynamic excitation that causes forced response vibrations in turbomachinery blading is studied numerically. For this purpose, a novel method for rapid assessment of large operating point variations on the mode excitability is introduced. This method includes a surrogate modeling approach based on Kriging interpolation in combination with an adaptive sampling technique. The data for the model is predicted by means of unsteady Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations with the Nonlinear Harmonic (NLH) method in the frequency domain. The concept of an excitation map describing the excitation as a function of rotational speed and expansion ratio is introduced. Excitation maps for the blade passing frequency are obtained for ten mode shapes and two total inlet temperatures in a radial turbine stage. The analysis of the excitation maps has shown that the aerodynamic excitation can be reduced similarly to a performance map and used for different inlet conditions. The effect of the rotational speed appears largely mode dependent and without a clear trend. On the other hand, an increase of the expansion ratio leads to higher excitation for all mode shapes. A study of the harmonic pressure field causing the aerodynamic excitation showed that these dependencies are driven by changes in the velocity triangle and pressure at the rotor inlet. Considering the relatively short computational time to obtain multiple excitation maps, the presented approach is considered suitable to be used for optimizing turbine designs with respect to minimizing the aerodynamic excitation.

Abstract This work presents a simple method for determination of linear thermal expansion coefficients (LTEC) of thin films with a compact microstructure. The microstructure comprises of a pair of cantilever beams with different lengths connected by a short tip. By heating the microstructure, the thermal strain causes two beams to deflect each other, thereby magnifying the deflection, which is measured by the tip directly under an optical microscope with the specimen placed in a heating stage. An analytical model is derived to relate the measured displacement to thermal strain, therefore, LTEC of thin films can be calculated. The analytical model is free from any correction factor. Furthermore, the accuracy of LTEC measurement is significantly enhanced because the measured displacement is independent of some physical values, namely the Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratios and thickness of the substrate and the thin film, and the LTEC of the substrate. Finite element model is also used to support the analytical model and to perform nonlinear analysis. Experimental results with SiO2 films as well as undoped LPCVD polysilicon films are used herein to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Background to the topic: Early tomato fruit development is executed via extensive cell divisions followed by cell expansion concomitantly with endoreduplication. The signals involved in activating the different modes of growth during fruit development are still inadequately understood. Addressing this developmental process, we identified SlFSM1 as a gene expressed specifically during the cell-division dependent stages of fruit development. SlFSM1 is the founder of a class of small plant specific proteins containing a divergent SANT/MYB domain (Barg et al 2005). Before initiating this project, we found that low ectopic over-expression (OEX) of SlFSM1 leads to a significant decrease in the final size of the cells in mature leaves and fruits, and the outer pericarp is substantially narrower, suggesting a role in determining cell size and shape. We also found the interacting partners of the Arabidopsis homologs of FSM1 (two, belonging to the same family), and cloned their tomato single homolog, which we named SlFSB1 (Fruit SANT/MYB–Binding1). SlFSB1 is a novel plant specific single MYB-like protein, which function was unknown. The present project aimed at elucidating the function and mode of action of these two single MYB proteins in regulating tomato fruit development. The specific objectives were: 1. Functional analysis of SlFSM1 and its interacting protein SlFSB1 in relation to fruit development. 2. Identification of the SlFSM1 and/or SlFSB1 cellular targets. The plan of work included: 1) Detailed phenotypic, histological and cellular analyses of plants ectopically expressing FSM1, and plants either ectopically over-expressing or silenced for FSB1. 2) Extensive SELEX analysis, which did not reveal any specific DNA target of SlFSM1 binding, hence the originally offered ChIP analysis was omitted. 3) Genome-wide transcriptional impact of gain- and loss- of SlFSM1 and SlFSB1 function by Affymetrix microarray analyses. This part is still in progress and therefore results are not reported, 4) Search for additional candidate partners of SlFSB1 revealed SlMYBI to be an alternative partner of FSB1, and 5) Study of the physical basis of the interaction between SlFSM1 and SlFSB1 and between FSB1 and MYBI. Major conclusions, solutions, achievements: We established that FSM1 negatively affects cell expansion, particularly of those cells with the highest potential to expand, such as the ones residing inner to the vascular bundles in the fruit pericarp. On the other hand, FSB1 which is expressed throughout fruit development acts as a positive regulator of cell expansion. It was also established that besides interacting with FSM1, FSB1 interacts also with the transcription factor MYBI, and that the formation of the FSB1-MYBI complex is competed by FSM1, which recognizes in FSB1 the same region as MYBI does. Based on these findings a model was developed explaining the role of this novel network of the three different MYB containing proteins FSM1/FSB1/MYBI in the control of tomato cell expansion, particularly during fruit development. In short, during early stages of fruit development (Phase II), the formation of the FSM1-FSB1 complex serves to restrict the expansion of the cells with the greatest expansion potential, those non-dividing cells residing in the inner mesocarp layers of the pericarp. Alternatively, during growth phase III, after transcription of FSM1 sharply declines, FSB1, possibly through complexing with the transcription factor MYBI serves as a positive regulator of the differential cell expansion which drives fruit enlargement during this phase. Additionally, a novel mechanism was revealed by which competing MYB-MYB interactions could participate in the control of gene expression. Implications, both scientific and agricultural: The demonstrated role of the FSM1/FSB1/MYBI complex in controlling differential cell growth in the developing tomato fruit highlights potential exploitations of these genes for improving fruit quality characteristics. Modulation of expression of these genes or their paralogs in other organs could serve to modify leaf and canopy architecture in various crops.

An experimental study was carried out to characterize the scavenging behavior of a cross-scavenged, piston-aspirated, two-stroke, natural gas engine to aid in the development of computationally inexpensive simple scavenging models for onboard engine control by (1) studying the effects of changing operational parameters on the engine's scavenging performance, and (2) identifying the underlying phenomena driving the observed effects. Tracer based methods were used to quantify the scavenging and trapping performance of the engine - CO2 was used as a tracer for combustion products and pre-mixed fuel was used as a fresh charge tracer. CO2 concentration was measured on a crank angle resolved basis both in the engine cylinder and exhaust using portable NDIR sensors, while unburned fuel concentration was measured in the exhaust using the FID module of a standard five gas analyzer. It was found that scavenging took place in three stages, an initial perfect displacement type stage, followed by a short-circuiting, and a perfect mixing type stage. Engine speed and load changes were found to have the strongest effects on the trapping and scavenging performance of the engine; spark timing effects were less significant. Changes in measured scavenging and trapping efficiencies at different operating points resulted from a combination of influences, namely (1) reduced time for gas exchange at high speeds, (2) higher expansion and scavenging pressures at high loads and retarded spark timings, and (3) phasing of the reflected 'scavenging' and 'plugging' pulses in the exhaust pipe relative to BDC and EPC, respectively. Increasing engine load made the engine scavenge significantly better and increasing engine speed resulted in a larger fraction of the delivered air being trapped. The combined effect of these scavenging changes and changes in the engine's fuel conversion efficiency resulted in the engine running leaner at high speeds (more air delivered and higher trapping efficiency) and at low loads (higher trapped residuals). The results were then used to gauge the performance of the simple scavenging model (the hybrid model) developed in phase II of the project. While encouraging results were obtained at high speed, the trapped air mass was overestimated at medium speed; suggesting the need for adding a low scavenging efficiency sub-model. Recommendations have been made about adding a short-circuiting zone to address this limitation of the model.