Effects of high-temperature operating conditions on the through-plane gas permeability of gas diffusion layers used in PEFCs

In order to simulate the effects of high-temperature operating conditions on the through-plane gas permeability of gas diffusion layers (GDLs) used in polymer electrolyte fuel cells, uncoated and coated GDLs were heated at various temperatures (i.e. 200, 500 and 800 °C). The results show that the through-plane gas permeability of the uncoated GDLs generally increases after higher temperature treatment. However, the coated GDL displays a different trend: the through-plane gas permeability increases with increasing temperature treatment to 200 and 500 °C, but then decreases after heat treatment at 800 and 1000 °C. With the assistance of SEM images, the above results are discussed.

Performance analysis on series and parallel circuit configurations of a four-cell thermoelectric generator module design

This study presents a technique in recovering energy from low-grade waste heat of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC). The goal is to study the functionality and performance using a multiple cell thermoelectric generator (TEG) module. The test bench consists of a heating element, a test section, and a cooling section. The heating element supplies a hot stream temperature of 53°C and 58°C that represents the waste heat from an actual PEMFC stack. The module comprises four TEG cells with heat pipes coupled with a heat sink system. The main variables were the TEG cooling modes of natural convection (0 m/s) and forced convection (at 5 m/s and 10 m/s) and the series and parallel circuit configurations of the module. At 58°C waste heat temperature, forced convection cooling at 10 m/s gave the highest voltage and power output of 140 mV and 1960 µW. The outputs of the series circuit was 159% higher than the parallel circuit. This initial simple TEG module design has shown that it has a good prospect to compensate for the ultra-low waste heat temperature of a PEMFC. Future designs of the modules need to identify a more optimized approach to improve the outputs and contribute to the long-term sustainability of PEMFC systems.

Implementation of a damage calculation in a numerical wheel-rail contact simulation

Railways can transport cargo and persons a great distance. The combination of high axle loads, and the rigid wheels and rails made of steel results in high stresses at the wheel-rail contact. These high stresses cause rolling contact fatigue. To prevent and to forecast the rolling contact fatigue, the knowledge of the stresses and their effect on the local damage are important. One possible way to achieve results of the stresses is based on a finite element analysis. The calculation of the rolling contact fatigue is conducted subsequently. This paper will present one possibility to implement the damage calculation into a finite element software and use the post-processing to enable a fast assessment of rolling contact fatigue on the surface and the adjacent volume of a rail.

Nondimensional translational characteristics of elastomer components

Elastomer components are used in both primary and secondary spring stages in bogies of rail vehicles. The design of spring components of a bogie requires knowledge of the calculation of the elastic properties of these components. An elastomer spring component is typically analyzed in the dimension to be investigated. Calculated force-displacement curves are directly related to the material and dimension of the component itself. The objective of this paper is to establish generalized or, in other words, universally valid force-displacement characteristics by breaking the entanglement with component size. The advantage of this approach is the extended validity of the results for a specific spring shape of any size. The simulations are performed only once for each shape and may be converted to any other size using the proposed methodology. A numerical study of a layer spring with rectangular cross-sectional area and fixed edges on both top and bottom sides serves as a reference example.

Car exhaust waste heat recovery using hexagon shaped thermoelectric generator

Heat recovery technology using thermoelectric has attracted many research intentions mainly for its ability to generate power passively. The automotive engine usually produces waste heat ranging from 30-40% due to the thermodynamic limit. The use of thermoelectric generator (TEG) for waste heat recovery and power generation could increase the efficiency of the internal combustion engine system. This research developed and investigated a heat recovery system using a thermoelectric generator (TEG) for power generation. A thermoelectric generator (TEG) consisted of thermoelectric modules, hexagonal pipe connector and heat sinks was built and connected to an exhaust pipeline. A theoretical model was developed to access the thermal and electrical performance of the TEG system. The theoretical model consisted of the heat transfer mechanism including the thermal resistance networks from the flue gas to TEG and the heat sink. The electrical power output was determined using the Seebeck principle. The early stage of finding reveals that the system was able to produce an open circuit voltage of 0.13 V for a small temperature gradient of 3ᵒC between the cold and hot surface of the TEG. The further improvement of the system is currently under investigation for producing higher power. In the future, this system hopefully could replace the car battery for charging the alternator as well as increasing the overall efficiency of the engine system.

CFD analysis of thermal comfort in hospital operation room with different air distribution design and operative temperature

The operation room is one of the most critical regions in hospital that require extra attention in air ventilation and prevention of dangerous pollutants contamination. A good level of ventilation will help to raise the productivity of workers in terms of performance and ensuring a safe surgery operation. It is obvious that today's operation rooms are completely equipped with mechanical ventilation systems. However, despite the fact that they meet the acceptable comfort standards, surgical workers have complained about thermal discomfort during operation which gives negative impact on their performance. Thermal comfort can be achieved by controlling the temperature, relative humidity and air movement. In this study, the operation room models are simulated to analyze the comfort conditions of surgical workers under 3 different air velocities at 0.2 ms-1, 0.25 ms-1 and 0.35 ms-1 and under 5 different temperatures between 16℃ to 20℃. Additionally, there are two 3D models created with different position of exhaust vent. The thermal comfort of surgical workers is measured using Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied (PPD) approaches using CBE Thermal Comfort Tool. The PMV and PPD results show that most surgical workers were outside the acceptable range value of -0.5 to +0.5 stated in ASHRAE Standard 55-2020. According to thermal scale index, most of the surgical workers were in a cool and slightly cool state despite the fact that the computational analysis shown an acceptable simulation validated with previous research studies. Finally, it has been discovered that clothing insulation, metabolic rate, mechanical equipment and air distribution design play a significant influence in providing comfort to the surgical workers.

Methodical procedure of virtual manufacturing for analysing WAAM distortion along with experimental verification

This paper deals with a principal development of virtual manufacturing (VM) procedure to predict substrate distortion induced by Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) process. In this procedure, a hollow shape is designed in a thin-walled form made of stainless steel. The procedure starts with geometrical modelling of WAAM component consisting of twenty-five deposited layers with austenitic stainless-steel wire SS316L as feedstock and SS304 as substrate material. The hollow shape is modelled based on simplified rectangular mesh geometry with identical specimen dimensions during the experiment. Material model to be defined can be retrieved directly from a database or by conducting a basic experiment to obtain the evolution of material composition, characterized using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis, and generated using advanced modelling software JMATPRO for creating new properties including the flow curves. Further, a coupled thermomechanical solution is adopted, including phase-change phenomena defined in latent heat, whereby temperature history due to successive layer deposition is simulated by coupling the heat transfer and mechanical analysis. Transient thermal distribution is calibrated from an experiment obtained from thermocouple analysis at two reference measurement locations. New heat transfer coefficients are to be adjusted to reflect actual temperature change. As the following procedure prior to simulation execution, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to find the optimal number of elements or mesh size towards temperature distribution. The last procedure executes the thermomechanical numerical simulation and analysis the post-processing results. Based on all aspects in VM procedures and boundary conditions, WAAM distortion is verified using a robotic welding system equipped with a pulsed power source. The experimental substrate distortion is measured at various points before and after the process. It can be concluded based on the adjusted model and experimental verification that using nonlinear numerical computation, the prediction of substrate distortion with evolved material property of component yields far better result which has the relative error less than 11% in a comparison to database material which has 22%, almost doubled the inaccuracy.

Conceptual design evaluation of concurrent brake actuator mechanism

The proper amount of braking force on both wheels is needed to optimize the braking performance and stability of the motorcycle. The braking effectiveness can be maximized by keeping the ideal nonlinear brake force distribution during braking. Thus the purpose of this research is to present a mechanism that can be accommodated as a Concurrent Brake Actuator (CBA) design to control the ideal nonlinear brake force distribution. In this paper, the conceptual design of the CBA mechanism is developed to be used as a based design for CBA development. Thus, two conceptual designs of the CBA mechanism have been generated. The proposed concept designs were evaluated based on Design Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (DFMEA) and SOLIDWORKS Motion Analysis. The potential failure of the CBA concept design was determined based on the risk priority number (RPN) in DFMEA. The information obtained from DFMEA was used in SOLIDWORKS Motion Analysis to identify stress performance analysis for each CBA conceptual design. Then, the best CBA concept design will be selected. The selection was made based on the highest score gained by the CBA concept design in qualitative evaluation. Based on the results, the fixed main body design with a tilted position linear slope in CBA Design I is potentially to actuate and distribute the nonlinear brake force to the front and rear brake with less potential of failure. Therefore, the proposed mechanism design will be used as a based mechanism design for CBA development.

Simulation of wire and arc additive manufacturing of 308L stainless steel with cold arc gas metal arc welding

This research focuses on the capabilities of coldArc GMAW in the behavior of heat input to the weld bead dimension. In this study, the effect of process GMAW of 308L stainless steel filler wire with a thickness of 1.2 mm and 304L stainless steel base plate, with a dimension of 120 mm x 25 mm x 10 mm (height x width x thickness) by applying WAAM. The data was collected using MATLAB of a Smart Weld Rosenthal’s Steady-State 3D Isotherms. A Taguchi response was used in the DOE method with Minitab software to analyze the effect of process parameters on height, width, and depth of weld bead dimension during GMAW. The experiments were conducted following the low, mid, and high input parameters will show the different structures of weld bead dimension, which include 70 A, 75 A, and 78 A (arc current), 15 V, 16 V, and 17 V (voltage), 400 mm/min, 600 mm/min, and 800 mm/min (welding speed). Hence, the optimum value is 75 A, 16 V, and 800 mm/min, and the most significant parameters to deposit stainless steel with coldArc GMAW were welding speed followed by arc current and voltage.

Comparison of factor of safety using different method of analysis for slope stability

Currently, the construction of slope is increasing, thus, the risk of slope to fail also increase. The series of landslide happen to the man-made slope has been recorded since in the early of 1993 until now. Many efforts such as treating the critical slope, redesigned the failed slope, and analyze the stability of the slope have been done. However, the landslide is still happening in Malaysia. The factor of safety (FOS) from the stability analysis that has been used might not be adequate to determine the safety of the slope in Malaysia. Therefore, in this study, the optimum factor of safety is obtained by using three methods of slice, Bishop’s Simplified method, Spencer method, and Morgenstern-Price method which have been used in many projects. A study place is selected in Ladang Balau, Semenyih, in Selangor and from the CIU test, the important soil parameter for slope is extracted for analysis of slope stability using SLOPE/W and manual calculation. The lambda for Spencer method and Morgenstern-Price method was generated for further discussion on the relationship between lambda and factor of safety. The data generated from both calculation method, from manual and software, were discussed and next the ideal method to achieve the optimum factor of safety determined. The factor of safety for every method basically are influenced by the interslice shear force presence but not Bishop’s Simplified method as moment equilibrium is insensitive towards interslice force function. For lambda, the factor that influenced the value is the function used; constant and half-sine function, however, for Bishop’s Simplified method, the lambda is equal to zero as the method ignored the interslice shear force. The Morgenstern-Price method has been chosen to be the best method to generate a good factor of safety.