Surface Integrity of Ball Burnished 316L Stainless Steel

316L is a type of austenitic stainless steel that offers a good combination of mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility. In some industrial applications, it is necessary to proceed to finish treatments to extend the lifetime of the mechanical parts. In the present chapter, ball burnishing treatment is applied to improve the surface integrity of 316L since the performance behavior of parts is directly dependant on the surface properties of the used material. Both surface topography and surface microhardness of 316L after subjection to ball burnishing are studied. The number of burnishing passes is varied by up to five to investigate its effect on the results. Optical profilometer and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to analyze the surface roughness and surface topography texture while measurements of microhardness Vickers were proceeded to investigate the changes in surface hardening.

Typical performance behavior of a Diesel cycle agricultural tractor engine with electronic injection management and turbocharger

ABSTRACT: Over the past few years, changes have been observed in the behavior of typical performance curves, after higher technology has been incorporated into the agricultural tractor engines, either to satisfy the ceiling of the new pollutant gas emission limits or to achieve better efficiency. The aim of this study was to assess the typical performance behavior of an agricultural tractor engine, possessing electronic injection management, turbocharger, aftercooler and EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) treatment system. An analysis was done of the information the manufacturers provided, in terms of nominal power, maximum power and maximum power with Booster, maximum torque and maximum torque with Booster. From the results, the percentage difference between the nominal power and maximum power were found to hover anywhere from 1.49 to 11.97%, for the same manufacturer, 0% in another manufacturer and 9% in a third manufacturer, for all the models. Similar results were noted for the data reported on the maximum torque and maximum torque with Booster, giving 0.62% as the minimum value, 7.44% as the average value and 12.65% as the maximum value for the entire series.

Performance behavior of pocketed journal bearing employing non-newtonian lubricant

This paper reports the improvement in the performance behaviors of non-Newtonian fluid lubricated journal bearings employing a rectangular pocket. Coefficient of friction and load carrying capacity of pocketed and non-pocketed bearings are reported and discussed. In the numerical approach, non-Newtonian behavior of lubricant is simulated employing the power law model. Various cases of bearings having different axial length to diameter ratios [(L/D) in the range 0.5–2.0] are considered. Lubricants of different rheology viz. pseudoplastic, Newtonian and shear thickening were employed for lubricating the bearings. Rheology of lubricant is controlled by varying the power law index n in the range 0.9–1.1. Based on the investigation, it is found that the pocketed bearing yields significantly reduced coefficient of friction and higher load carrying capacity in comparison to the non-pocketed bearing. Also, the performance of pocketed bearing improves with the increase in the power law index. Best performance of the pocketed bearing is observed for the bearing having L/D value of 0.5 at high eccentricity ratio when lubricated with the shear thickening fluid (n=1.1).

Status Quo and Influencing Factors of Family Doctors Performance in Dongguan City

BackgroundThe low-performance rate of family doctors is the most important problem in the implementation of the contract service system of family doctors in China, and improving the performance rate of family doctors has become a topic of common concern. We investigated the performance behavior of family doctors in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, to understand the current situation of family doctors performance in Dongguan, and to explore the influencing factors of their performance.ObjectivesTo understand the status quo of family doctors performance in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, and to explore the influencing factors of family doctors agreement fulfillment rate.MethodsThe multi-stage sampling method was used to randomly select family doctors in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, to investigate the status quo of family doctors performance in community health service institutions in Dongguan City. Logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the influencing factors of family doctors performance, and decision trees and associations were used to further identify the influencing factors of family doctors performance.Results100 family doctors participated in the survey, and 75% of them were generally able to perform their duties. Logistic regression analysis shows that whether a family doctor signs a contract with a resident is the influencing factor of family doctor performance behavior, and the higher the family doctor signing rate, the higher the family doctor performance rate. The results of decision tree analysis showed that the biggest influence factor of family doctors performance behavior is whether the family doctors are contracted residents or not. ROC curve was 0.860, and pAUC was 0.073 respectively. The most influential factor in decreasing the average Gini index of random forest is whether the family doctor signed a contract or not. The results of association rules showed that there was a correlation between whether the family doctor signed a contract or not and the performance of the family doctor.ConclusionsThe performance rate of family doctors in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province is relatively high. Whether family doctors sign contracts with residents is the influencing factor of family doctors performance. Improving the contract rate of family doctors is the key to improve the performance rate of family doctors.

May Philosophy Flourish: Pantheisticon, Freemasonry, and Eighteenth-Century Ritual Philosophy

In eighteenth-century Europe, ritual performance behavior was consciously used for philosophical purposes. The richest documented instances of this involved Freemasonry, a voluntary fraternal order that drew tens of thousands of men, across Europe and beyond, into a secretive ritual practice. Masons understood ritual, the core of Masonic “craft,” as a philosophical activity in itself. Supporting this claim requires a critique of the prevalent view that Freemasonry was uniquely compatible with specific Enlightenment philosophical constructs—constitutional monarchism in political thought and deistic Newtonianism in natural philosophy. Rather than expressing these specific philosophical views, Masonic ritual effectuated philosophical reflection apart from the outside world. John Toland's proto-Masonic ritual document Pantheisticon shows how early modern rituals fostered thinking in lodge settings and distinguished between Masonic and “profane” entities. On this basis it can be argued that performance in this era and beyond should be understood as the generative containment of knowledge.

Performance evaluation of intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cell-gas turbine hybrid power system

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance of the gas turbine cycle integrated with solid oxide fuel cell technology. In the present work, intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cell has been considered, as it is economical, can attain an activation temperature in a quick time, and also have a longer life compared to a high-temperature solid oxide fuel cell, which helps in the commercialization and can generate two ways of electricity as a hybrid configuration. Design/methodology/approach The conceptualized cycle has been analyzed with the help of computer code developed in MATLAB with the help of governing equations. In this work, the focus is on the performance investigation of a Gas turbine intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cell hybrid cycle. The work also analyzes the performance behavior of the proposed cycle with various design and operating parameters. Findings It is found that the power generation efficiency of the IT-SOFC-GT hybrid system reaches up to 60% (LHV) for specific design and operating conditions. The cycle calculations of an IT-SOFC-GT hybrid system and its conceptual design have been presented in this work. Originality/value The unique feature of this work is that IT-SOFC has been adopted for integration instead of HT-SOFC, and this work also provides the performance behavior of the hybrid system with varying design and operating parameters, which is the novelty of this work. This work has significant scientific merit, as the cost involved for the commercialization of IT-SOFC is comparatively lower than HT-SOFC and provides a good option to energy manufacturers for generating clean energy at a low cost.

Audio compression using transforms and high order entropy encoding

<span>Digital audio is required to transmit large sizes of audio information through the most common communication systems; in turn this leads to more challenges in both storage and archieving. In this paper, an efficient audio compressive scheme is proposed, it depends on combined transform coding scheme; it is consist of i) bi-orthogonal (tab 9/7) wavelet transform to decompose the audio signal into low &amp; multi high sub-bands, ii) then the produced sub-bands passed through DCT to de-correlate the signal, iii) the product of the combined transform stage is passed through progressive hierarchical quantization, then traditional run-length encoding (RLE), iv) and finally LZW coding to generate the output mate bitstream. The measures Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and compression ratio (CR) were used to conduct a comparative analysis for the performance of the whole system. Many audio test samples were utilized to test the performance behavior; the used samples have various sizes and vary in features. The simulation results appear the efficiency of these combined transforms when using LZW within the domain of data compression. The compression results are encouraging and show a remarkable reduction in audio file size with good fidelity.</span>