[en] Water management is considered to be one of the main issues to be addressed for the performance improvement of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. In this paper, to investigate cathode flooding and its relationship with temperature distribution, an experimental study was carried out on cathode sides of an operating single PEM fuel cell. For the direct visualization of temperature fields and water transport in cathode flow channels, a transparent cell was designed and manufactured using quartz window. Liquid water transport and distribution in the flow channels were investigated experimentally. Also, the visualization of temperature distributions in the cathode channels was made by using an IR (infra-red) camera. Results indicate that the temperature rise near the exit of cathode flow channels was found. It is expected that this study can effectively contribute to get the detailed data on water transport linked with thermal management during the operation of a PEM fuel cell.

[en] The influence of an external magnetic field and thermal radiation on Cu-water nanofluid flow and heat transfer over a shrinking sheet with slip surface was studied. The governing partial differential equations for steady two dimensional flows are reduced to self-similar ordinary differential equations by similarity transformation technique and then solved numerically using Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg method with shooting technique. Physical interpretation of various embedding parameters is assigned through graphs and tables for the velocity and temperature profiles as well as for skin friction coefficient and Nusselt number.

[en] In this paper, we deal with residual vector generation for fault detection problems in linear systems via unknown input observer (UIO) when the so-called observer matching condition is not satisfied. Based on the relative degree between unknown input and output, a vector of the auxiliary output is introduced so that the observer matching condition is satisfied with respect to the vector. Auxiliary outputs are related to the derivatives of measured signals. However, differentiation leads to excessive amplification of measurement noise. A dynamically equivalent configuration of linear systems is developed using successive integrations to avoid differentiation. As such, auxiliary outputs are constructed without differentiation. Then, the equivalent dynamic system and its corresponding auxiliary outputs are used to generate the residual vector via an exponentially converging UIO. Fault detection in the generated residual vector is also investigated. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is shown via numerical simulation.

[en] Recently, in accordance with the increasing market demand for ultra precision technology, a high precision multi-degree-of-freedom displacement measurement technology has become important for industrial applications such as the field of manufacturing and inspection because those physical quantities, linear and angular displacements, are key parameters for keeping and improving quality control of a production system. A number of instruments capable of precise multi-degree-of-freedom measurements have been built and some novel techniques have been introduced. The current state-of-art techniques for multi-degree-of-freedom motion error measurement in a linear stage using laser encoder-implemented system are reviewed. First, we summarize the basic principles behind the measurement technology of the motion error in a stage and simple encoder system. Next, the basic design principles of practical laser encoder system are discussed using the experience of past and existing cases to refer to the important points and the major scientific results. The current trends in the field are significantly discussed, including the novel techniques under construction and advanced technologies. Lastly, the future of multi-functional laser encoder-implemented system, highlighting the kinds of new science upcoming in the next few years, is discussed.

[en] We investigate the discrete lattice effect of various forcing methods in the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to include the body force obtained from the immersed boundary method (IBM). In the immersed boundary lattice Boltzmann method (IB-LBM), the LBM needs a forcing method to involve the body force on a forcing point near the immersed boundary that is calculated by IBM. The proper forcing method in LBM is derived to include the body force, which appears to resolve problems such as multiphase flow, non-ideal gas behavior, etc. Many researchers have adopted different forcing methods in LBM to involve the body force from IBM, even when they solved similar problems. However, it is necessary to evaluate the discrete lattice effect, which originates from different forcing methods in LBM, to include the effect of the body force from IBM on the results. Consequently, in this study, a rigorous analysis of the discrete lattice effect for different forcing methods in IB-LBM is performed by solving various problems.

[en] This paper investigates various topologies and mobility of a class of metamorphic parallel mechanisms synthesized with reconfigurable rTPS limbs. Based on the reconfigurable Hooke (rT) joint, the rTPS limb has two phases which result in parallel mechanisms having ability of mobility change. While in one phase the limb has no constraint to the platform, in the other it constrains the spherical joint center to lie on a plane which is used to demonstrate different topologies of the nrTPS metamorphic parallel mechanisms by investigating various relations (parallel or intersecting) among the n constraint planes (n = 2,3,..,6). Geometric constraint equations of the platform rotation matrix and translation vector are set up based on the point-plane constraint, which reveals mobility and redundant geometric conditions of the mechanism topologies. By altering the limbs into the non-constraint phase without constraint plane, new mechanism phases are deduced with mobility change based on each mechanism topology.

[en] In this paper, the unsteady 3-D turbulent flow fields in an end-suction centrifugal pump with a vaneless volute are studied numerically at three different rotation speeds. The unshrouded impeller of the pump, as a reduced diameter version of the original full-size impeller, has five backswept blades and five pump-out blades. The results show that the flow rate and pressure vary with the rotational speed according to the similarity law, and the normalized internal flow fields at all speeds are very similar. Due to the reduced impeller diameter, the pump efficiency is relatively low. Flows discharged from the front and back blade passages interfere with each other and swirling motion exists in the volute. The pressure fluctuations on the casing wall near the impeller outlet are extracted, and their spectra show that the component at the blade passing frequency was prominent. This study sheds some light on the characteristics of the internal unsteady flow of a centrifugal pump at different rotational speeds, and forms a basis for future study of flow induced pump vibration and noise.

[en] We investigated the cavitating flows around different axisymmetric bodies based on experiments and numerical simulation. In the numerical simulation, the multiphase Reynolds averaged Navier Stokes equations (RANS) were solved via the commercial computational fluid dynamics code CFX. The modified k-wSST turbulence model was used along with the transport equation-based cavitation model. In the experiments, a high-speed video technique was used to observe the unsteady cavitating flow patterns, and the dynamic force measurement system was used to measure the hydrodynamics of the axisymmetric bodies under different cavitation conditions. Results are shown for the hemisphere bodies, conical bodies and blunt bodies. Reasonable agreements were obtained between the computational and experimental results. The results show that for the hemispherical body, the cavity consists of quasi-steady transparent region and unsteady foggy water-vapor mixture region, which contains small-scale vortices and is dominated by bubble clusters, causing irregular disturbances at the cavity interfaces. The curvature at the front of the conical body is larger, resulting in that the flow separates at the shoulder of the axisymmetric body. The cavity stretches downstream and reaches to a fixed cavity length and shape. For blunt bodies, the incipient cavitation number is larger than that for the hemispherical body. A large cloud cavity is formed at the shoulder of the blunt body in the cores of vortices in high shear separation regions and the re-entrant jet does not significantly interact with the cavity interface when it moves upstream. As to the dynamic characteristics of unsteady cavitating flows around the axisymmetric bodies, the pulsation frequency for the hemispherical body is larger than that for the blunt body. For the hemispherical body, the pulsation is mainly caused by the high-frequency, small-scale shedding at the rear end of the cavity, while for the blunt body, the main factor for the pulsation frequency is the periodically shedding of large-scale vortex cavities.

[en] We present a design method to characterize uniform flows in a microreactor for high performance surface plasmon resonance (SPR) a general-purpose biosensor chips. The shape of the microreactor is designed based on an approximate pressure drop model. The number of micro-pillars and the slopes of the inlet and outlet linear chambers are two dominant parameters used to minimize the velocity difference in the microreactor. The flow uniformity was examined quantitatively by numerical and experimental visualization methods. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis demonstrates that the designed microreactor has a fairly uniform velocity profile in the reaction zone for a wide range of flow rates. The velocity field in the fabricated microreactor was measured using the micro-particle image velocimetry (μ-PIV) method, and the flow uniformity was confirmed experimentally. The performance of the uniform flow microreactor was verified using the fluorescence antibody technique.

[en] Friction welding is a solid state joining process in which the quality of welded joint is influenced by the input parameter setting. The objective of the present study is to conduct experimental investigation of the bond strength and hardness of the friction welded joints involving AA 6061 and AA 6351 alloys by conducting experiments designed by Taguchi's L_9 orthogonal matrix array. A systematic approach becomes essential to find the optimal setting of friction welding parameters. Hence a new approach named grey-principal component analysis (G-PCA) is presented in which the principal component analysis (PCA) is used to generate weights for the grey relational coefficients obtained in the grey relational analysis (GRA). The results of the confirmation experiment conducted with the optimal setting predicted by the G-PCA have shown improvements in the performance characteristics. Hence G-PCA can be used for experimental welding optimization.