The present invention relates to a thermal device comprising at least one heat exchanger and at least one heat source and/or heat sink. The thermal device in the invention is designed as a combination of the first thermal device based on a vapor-compression principle contained the first heat transfer medium, and the second thermal device based on elastocaloric principle contained the second heat transfer medium. At least one deformable heat exchanger made of elastocaloric material is common to both thermal devices.
COBISS.SI-ID: 15315739
The article presents the influence of the yield-point phenomenon (YPP) on the cyclic plasticity of the uniaxial cyclically-loaded specimens based on observation of stress-strain responses and imaging of strain fields. The phenomenon and its dependence on cyclic material hardening or softening was studied through experiments conducted on the low-alloy EN 42CrMo4 steel in its normalised state (184 HV), which exhibits cyclic hardening, and in its tempered state (296 HV), which is subject to cyclic softening. The results of the study express the influence of the YPP on cyclic plasticity through inhomogeneous strain field when specimens are loaded with strain amplitudes within the yield plateau. The YPP is well expressed in uniaxial cyclic experiments of cyclically softening material.
COBISS.SI-ID: 14442011
Traditional tyre-manufacturing systems are characterised by a slow response during optimisation of the manufacturing process and insufficient adaptability to system disturbances. The objective of our research is to develop a distributed and adaptive control approach based on the concept of holonic control and IEC 61499 function blocks. A brief description of the manufacturing modules within the "green"-tyre manufacturing system is given. The architecture of distributed holonic control and implementation environment using IEC 61499 function blocks are then proposed and elaborated. Comprehensive discussion is given thereafter, including an evaluation of the distributed holonic control approach within the virtual manufacturing environment based on simulation tests for various scenarios, whereby system operation in unstable conditions is taken into account. The real-life implementation of this technology in the future is expected to increase productivity, resource utilisation and robustness in a tyre-manufacturing environment.
COBISS.SI-ID: 14793243
We optimised the automated extraction of DNA from old and contemporary skeletal remains using the AutoMate Express system and the PrepFiler BTA kit. 24 Contemporary and 25 old skeletal remains from WWII were analysed. For each skeleton, extraction using only 0.05 g of powder was performed according to the manufacturer's recommendations (no demineralisation % ND method). Since only 32% of full profiles were obtained from aged and 58% from contemporary casework skeletons, the extraction protocol was modified to acquire higher quality DNA and genomic DNA was obtained after full demineralisation (FD method). The nuclear DNA of the samples was quantified using the Investigator Quantiplex kit and STR typing was performed using the NGM kit to evaluate the performance of tested extraction methods. In the aged DNA samples, 64% of full profiles were obtained using the FD method. For the contemporary skeletal remains the performance of the ND method was closer to the FD method compared to the old skeletons, giving 58% of full profiles with the ND method and 71% of full profiles using the FD method. The extraction of DNA from only 0.05 g of bone or tooth powder using the AutoMate Express has proven highly successful in the recovery of DNA from old and contemporary skeletons, especially with the modified FD method. We believe that the results obtained will contribute to the possibilities of using automated devices for extracting DNA from skeletal remains, which would shorten the procedures for obtaining high-quality DNA from skeletons in forensic laboratories.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32335833
Aiming to detect and locate early-stage failures in slewing bearings, which is an essential prerequisite for safe, reliable, efficient and accurate operation of large-scale rolling rotational connections, a novel multivariate and multiscale statistical fault detection and diagnosis method, is proposed. The proposed method exploits the merits of the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) multivariate monitoring approach to extract and structure useful information from a large database and the benefits of the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) to handle multiscale system dynamics. The simplified EEMD-MSICA, as the proposed method was named, overcomes the complexity and time-consuming burden of the recently developed EEMD-MSICA, EEMD-MSPCA and EEMD-MSKPCA methods, which especially emerges significant when tackling massive data sets. The efficiency of the proposed method was tested through conducting an accelerated run-to-failure lifetime experiment on a purpose-built laboratory slewing bearing test stand where the role of the information carrier in regard to the slewing bearing condition was assigned to vibrations and acoustic emission (AE). In the light of the obtained positive results, the proposed method and the selected information carriers are shown to be a promising tool for tackling multivariate and multiscale data emanating from the real-world bearing applications which could represent the cumulative effect of a large number of phenomena and disturbances with various time-frequency features.
COBISS.SI-ID: 15325723