Recent Patents on Engineering - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2009

As a new research and technology frontier, nanofluids are used to enhance heat transfer including single-phase heat transfer, nucleate boiling heat transfer, flow boiling heat transfer and critical heat flux. This paper presents an overall review of a number of patents on nanofluid heat transfer technologies and their applications for the energy efficiency improvement in various thermal systems in recent years. Although a number of patents on nanofluids heat transfer technologies (more than 20 patents) have been invented, the fundament mechanisms of nanofluid heat transfer have not yet well understood so far. Thus, the applications of these technologies are greatly limited. According to this review, the future developments of these technologies are discussed. In order to be able to put the nanofluid heat transfer technologies into practice, fundamental studies are greatly needed to understand the physical mechanisms.

Forecasting of grain production is an important resource for establishing agriculture policy. Particle swarm optimization-based support vector machine (PSO-SVM) is applied to forecast grain production in this paper. In PSOSVM model, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used to determine free parameters of support vector machine. PSO is a new optimization method, which is motivated by social behavior of bird flocking or fish schooling. The optimization method not only has strong global search capability, but also is very easy to implement. The Chinese grain production is used to illustrate the performance of proposed PSO-SVM model. The experimental results indicate that the PSO-SVM method can achieve greater forecasting accuracy than grey model, artificial neural network in Chinese grain production forecasting. Consequently, PSO-SVM is a proper method in Chinese grain production forecasting.

The advent of GPS system and advances in computer technology have made it possible for the utility companies to implement synchronized sampling at all terminals of the protected lines. To achieve this, the phasor information of voltages and currents at different locations has to be acquired and evaluated to provide easy disturbance analysis and protection for the utility companies. This paper reviews and compares some recent patents regarding synchronous phasor measuring patents. Their possible applications are also discussed.

This work reviews the recent patents and progresses of novel membrane contactors used in gas/liquid separation. Compared with conventional separation facilities, membrane contactors will play more and more important role in waste treatment in the near future. The advantages in separation include wider operation range, higher separation efficiency, independent flow between liquid and gas, linear scale-up and compact structure, etc. The structure of hollow fiber membrane contactor are emphatically analyzed and typical gas/liquid separation process such as membrane adsorption, membrane distillation and membrane structured packing in waste treatment are investigated in detail. Some successful commercial products in use such as Liqui-Cel membrane contactor were introduced for example.

The hybrid technology of combining metallic constituents with fibre reinforced polymers in a laminated configuration has been developed over the past two decades. This paper provides an overview of the patents that have been filed worldwide on these hybrid material concepts and related manufacturing aspects.

In this paper, an improved model for the dynamic analysis of reinforced concrete plates stiffened by arbitrarily placed parallel reinforced concrete or steel beams with deformable connection taking into account the influence of creep and shrinkage effects relative with the time of the casting and the time of the loading of the plate and the beams is presented. According to the proposed model, the stiffening beams are isolated from the plate by sections in the lower outer surface of the plate, making the hypothesis that the plate and the beams can slip in all directions of the connection without separation (i.e. uplift neglected) and taking into account the arising tractions in all directions at the fictitious interfaces. These tractions are integrated with respect to each half of the interface width resulting two interface lines, along which the loading of the beams as well as the additional loading of the plate is defined. Their unknown distribution is established by applying continuity conditions in all directions at the interfaces taking into account their relation with the interface slip through the shear connector stiffness. The utilization of two interface lines for each beam enables the nonuniform distribution of the interface transverse shear forces and the nonuniform torsional response of the beams to be taken into account describing better in this way the actual response of the plate - beams system. The analysis of both the plate and the beams is accomplished on their deformed shape taking into account second-order effects. Six boundary value problems are formulated and solved using the Analog Equation Method (AEM), a BEM based method. The solution of the aforementioned plate and beam problems, which are nonlinearly coupled, is achieved using iterative numerical methods. The adopted model permits the evaluation of the shear forces at the interfaces in both directions, the knowledge of which is very important in the design of prefabricated ribbed plates. Both free and forced damped or undamped transverse vibrations are considered and numerical examples with great practical interest with patent discussion are presented.

Steganalysis and watermarking technique are two main subjects of information hiding detection field. In this paper, a review on the patents related to steganalysis and watermarking detection is given. The backgrounds and principles of all patents of steganalysis and watermarking detection are described briefly, and a short summarization about these patents is given. The challenge and potential research directions in the future are indicated.

The total pressure difference acting on a building as a result of stack action depends upon building height and the difference between temperatures inside and outside. It cannot be avoided, but the way in which it is distributed across the building enclosure and interior separations can be modified through design process because it depends upon the relative resistances to flow presented by the building components and the way in which they are distributed in the flow path. Air movement caused by stack action has many important implications related to the functional adequacy of buildings that should be recognized in both their design and operation. The tightness of architectural element that comprises a building is known to be the important parameters in minimizing the stack effect problems. The purpose of this study is to investigate the airflow patterns and patents through the building enclosure of 19 floors during the winter period and evaluate the effect of the air-tightness of the exterior wall of the building on the air infiltration in the building.

Full text available