The Vampire Lovers and Hammer's Post-1970 Production Strategy

This article firstly examines the artistic and commercial merits of The Vampire Lovers, which was adapted from the Sheridan Le Fanu novella Carmilla. The production of the film was subcontracted by James Carreras at Hammer to Fantale Films, a company established by Harry Fine, Michael Style and Tudor Gates. The article then proceeds by examining various different and competing artistic judgements that have been made about the film, and also the construction of its unusual dreamy atmosphere. It documents both its UK and US box-office performances and goes on to examine Hammer's post-1970 production strategy in more general terms and in relation to the overall financial performance of the company in the period 1967–72, just before and after The Vampire Lovers. Finally, it examines Hammer's receipt of the Queen's Award for Industry in 1968, the effect of its rolling production-line (or ‘pipeline’) model of film-making on the company's general level of profitability, and some of the consequences of Michael Carreras's assumption of managerial control at Hammer after 1970.

Determining the features of oscillations in prestressed pipelines

This paper considers the structural solution for a main above-ground pipeline with a pre-stressed winding, which makes it possible to improve the efficiency of operation and reduce material consumption. The results from studying experimentally the features in the operation of prestressed pipelines under static operating loads are given. It is shown that the radial movements of the wall of a pre-stressed pipeline are constrained by the strained winding, which prevents its deformation. It was revealed that increasing the tension force of the winding wire reduces circular stresses in the pipeline wall by 1.3...1.6 times and increases meridional ones by 1.2...1.4 times. The experimental study into the models of prestressed pipelines with free vertical and horizontal oscillations has established the dependence of frequency characteristics on the operating conditions and pre-stress parameters. It was found that the envelope amplitude on the oscillogram of free attenuated oscillations takes the shape of an exponent, which indicates the damping effect of the pre-stress. Analysis of the change in the dynamic characteristics of the models depending on the pre-stress force has revealed that the frequencies of free oscillations increase by 1.5÷1.6 times while the oscillation decrement decreases by 1.2÷1.25 times. This paper reports the results of studying the influence of pre-stress parameters on the stressed-strained state of the pipeline model under forced horizontal and vertical oscillations. It is shown that the diagrams of circular dynamic stresses and deformations in the models of a prestressed pipeline are smoother compared to similar characteristics of a conventional pipeline tested at the same experimental parameters. The study results have made it possible to quantify the features in the operation of a pre-stressed pipeline under static and dynamic influences, taking into consideration the pre-stress parameters and operating conditions.

Investigating the dynamic characteristics of the hydrostatic bearing spindle system with active piezoelectric restrictors

Studies show that active control technology can improve system performance and meet the increasing industrial demand in diverse applications. In the present study, the dynamic characteristics of the bearing-spindle system based on active piezoelectric (PZT) restrictors, including the amplitude-frequency and phase-frequency characteristics are analyzed theoretically and experimentally. In the analysis, the influence of the pipeline model on the system characteristics is studied. Then the feasibility and effectiveness of the active control method are verified through experiments. It is demonstrated that the theoretical and experimental results are consistent. The present study is expected to provide a guideline for further investigations on the structural optimization and control law design for active hydrostatic oil-film bearing spindle systems.

Pipeline Model Fidelity for Wave Energy System Models

Ocean wave energy conversion plants that use hydraulic power take-offs (PTOs) have been configured so that the working fluid must travel a significant distance (of several hundred to a few thousand meters) from the wave energy converter (WEC) located offshore to equipment onshore. With the pulsatile flow generated by the WEC having a peak period in the range of 3 to 12 seconds, the wavelengths of the excited pressure waves approach the length of the pipelines themselves. By the standards for modeling pipelines presented in popular fluid power and related textbooks, the system models for these plants should include distributed parameter models of the pipeline dynamics that capture the pressure wave delay effects. This work tests the importance of pipeline model fidelity for wave energy conversion plants. Simulations have been conducted of a simple but representative hydraulic PTO for wave energy conversion and incorporate several common lumped and distributed parameter pipeline models for comparison. These results are used to show the degree to which model fidelity effects several design metrics that are especially useful in the preliminary design phase of system development. The pipeline models used include: 1) a short line model that includes lumped resistive effects only, 2) a medium line model that also includes lumped inertial and capacitive effects for a single pipeline segment, 3) a long line model that uses repeated, lumped parameter line segments to approximate the distributed parameters of a real pipeline, 4) a simple method of characteristics solution to the one-dimensional momentum and continuity equations assuming a fixed wave speed, and 5) a discrete free-gas cavity model augmenting the simple method of characteristic pipeline model. The results suggest a relaxed standard for modeling pipelines in the case of this type of system, in which case, the recommended model is easily implemented in variable time step solvers and CAD software such as Simscape Fluids and can be used within the WEC-Sim modeling framework developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Measurement of Intima-Media Thickness Depending on Intima Media Complex Segmentation by Deep Neural Networks

Intima Media Thickness (IMT) of the carotid artery is an important marker indicating the sign of cardiovascular disease. Automated measurement of IMT requires segmentation of intima media complex (IMC).Traditional methods which use shape, color and texture for classification have poor generalization capability. This paper proposes two models- the pipeline model and the end-to-end model using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and auto encoder–decoder network respectively. CNN architecture is implemented and tested by varying the number of convolutional layer, size of the kernel as well as the number of kernels. Auto encoder–decoder performs pixel wise classification using two interconnected pathways for identifying the boundary of lumen-intima (LI) and media adventitia (MA). This helps in reconstruction of the segmented portion for measurement of IMT. Both methods are tested using a dataset of 550 subjects. The results clearly indicate that end-to-end model has an edge over the pipeline model exhibiting lesser deviation between the automated measurement and the measurement made by the radiologist. The pipeline model however has better segmentation accuracy when the size of the image used for training is small. The convolutional neural network with auto encoder–decoder proves robust through sparse representation, and faster learning with better generalization. Also, the experimental setup is analyzed by interconnecting Tensor flow simulated result with Raspberry PI and the outcomes are analyzed.

Analysis of Hydrogen Gas Injection at Various Compositions in an Existing Natural Gas Pipeline

The lack of hydrogen (H2) transportation infrastructure restricts the development of the H2 industry. Owing to the high investment of building specific facilities, using existing natural gas (NG) pipelines to transport a blend of H2 and NG (H2NG) is a viable means of transportation and approach for large-scale long-time storage. However, variation in the thermo-physical properties of an H2NG blend will impact the performance of pipeline appliances. To address the gaps in H2 transmission via an NG system in the context of energy consumption, in the present paper, a one-dimensional pipeline model is proposed to predict the blended flow in a real existing pipeline (Shan–Jing I, China). The data of NG components were derived from real gas fields. Furthermore, the influence of H2 fractions on pipeline energy coefficient and the layout of pressurization stations are comprehensively analyzed. In addition, the case of intermediate gas injection is investigated, and the effects of injection positions are studied. This study serves as a useful reference for the design of an H2NG pipeline system. The present study reveals that with the increasing in H2 fraction, the distance between pressure stations increases. Furthermore, when the arrangement of original pressure stations is maintained, overpressure occur. Intermediate gas injection results in the inlet pressure of subsequent pressurization stations reducing. Using existing pipeline network to transport H2NG, it is necessary to make appropriate adjustment.

An ontological metamodel for cyber-physical system safety, security, and resilience coengineering

Cyber-physical systems are complex systems that require the integration of diverse software, firmware, and hardware to be practical and useful. This increased complexity is impacting the management of models necessary for designing cyber-physical systems that are able to take into account a number of “-ilities”, such that they are safe and secure and ultimately resilient to disruption of service. We propose an ontological metamodel for system design that augments an already existing industry metamodel to capture the relationships between various model elements (requirements, interfaces, physical, and functional) and safety, security, and resilient considerations. Employing this metamodel leads to more cohesive and structured modeling efforts with an overall increase in scalability, usability, and unification of already existing models. In turn, this leads to a mission-oriented perspective in designing security defenses and resilience mechanisms to combat undesirable behaviors. We illustrate this metamodel in an open-source GraphQL implementation, which can interface with a number of modeling languages. We support our proposed metamodel with a detailed demonstration using an oil and gas pipeline model.