Analytic sensitivity analysis technology for the boundary element method (BEM) is presented, combined with a shape optimization system for structural analysis. A shape optimization was done for an elastomer under planar stress, based on this new algorithm. A multi-object problem was studied as an illustrative example for the progranmer, using weighted summing method. The result is feasible....
Objective This study was conducted to optimize the operational parameters of anaerobic-anoxic-oxic (A2/O) processes to reduce the toxicity of municipal wastewater and evaluate its ability to reduce toxicity. Methods A luminescent bacterium toxicity bioassay was employed to assess the toxicity of influent and effluent of each reactor in the A2/O system. Results The optimum operational parameters for toxicity reduction were as follows: anaerobic hydraulic retention time (HRT) = 2.8 h,anoxic HRT = 2.8 h, aerobic HRT = 6.9 h, sludge retention time (SRT) = 15 days and internal recycle ratio (IRR) = 100%. An important toxicity reduction (%) was observed in the optimized A2/O process, even when the toluene concentration of the influent was 120.7 mg.L-1. Conclusions The toxicity of municipal wastewater was reduced significantly during the A2/Oprocess. A2/O process can be used for toxicity reduction of municipal wastewater under toxic-shock loading....
A fitted function method to describe the strain fields during forging was discussed to optimize the homogeneous distribution of strain in the axial forging zones during successive stretching. The results are verified by experiment and numerical simulation, and the devia-tions between experiment and simulation are less than 24%. Therefore, the fitted function method can be applied to optimize the stretching process for large forgings. The optimal value of feed determined by the analytic method ensures that the degree of inhomogeneity in strain in the axial ingot zone is less than 6%. This work provides a mathematic model to optimize technological parameters in stretch forging of large ingots....
3-D velocity and temperature fields of mold filling and solidification processes of large-sized castings were calculated, and the efficiency and accuracy of numerical calculation were studied. The mold filling and solidification processes of large-sized stainless steel, iron and aluminum alloy castings were simulated by using of new scheme; their casting processes were optimized, and then applied to produce castings....
Many optimization problems that involve practical applications have functional constraints, and some of these constraints are active, meaning that they prevent any solution from improving the objective function value to the one that is better than any solution lying beyond the constraint limits. Therefore, the optimal solution usually lies on the boundary of the feasible region. In order to converge faster when solving such problems, a new ranking and selection scheme is introduced which exploits this feature of constrained problems. In conjunction with selection, a new crossover method is also presented based on three parents. When comparing the results of this new algorithm with six other evolutionary based methods, using 12 benchmark problems from the literature, it shows very encouraging performance. T-tests have been applied in this research to show if there is any statistically significance differences between the algorithms. A study has also been carried out in order to show the effect of each component of the proposed algorithm....
A new simulation strategy is proposed for the starting process of missile turbojet engine windmill. The starting process of windmill before ignition is simulated using a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) , and the accelera- tion process after ignition which model is a set of nonlinear equations is solved using a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The introduction of PSO helped to tackle the problem of divergence caused by traditional iteration methods. The calculated result is in a great agreement with test data, which shows that the presented model has a high accuracy. The starting processes are simulated at different ignition times, and the results are analyzed synthetically. The analysis shows how the ignition time affects the starting performance of engine windmill. The method offers a useful tool for ignition time optimization as well as engine starting performance analysis....
The question existed in the displacement of platinum and palladium from Au reduced solution was analyzed. The process optimization scheme was put forward and adopted to practice and has achieved a good result....
Steel is the most important metallic material used in industry. This is because of the versatility of its engineering properties under different conditions. In one condition it can be very mild, soft and suitable for any forming operation. In another condition the same steel can be very hard and strong. This versatility is made possible by the different heat treatments that the steel can be subject to. One such treatment is Gas carburizing. This is the most widely used process for surface hardening of low carbon steels. In this method the surface composition of the steel changes by diffusion of carbon and or nitrogen and result in hard outer surface with good wear resistance properties. A striking feature of Gas Carburizing process is that in this process the original toughness and ductility remains unaffected even after heat treatment. 3% nickel chromium case hardened low carbon steels are widely used for critical automotive and machine applications such as rack and pinion, gears, camshaft, valve rocker shafts and axles which requires high fatigue resistance. Fatigue behaviour of case carburized parts depends to a great extent on the correct combination of Hardness Penetration Depth (HPD) and the magnitude of hardness at the surface and beneath the surface with low size and shape distortion. In order to reduce the manufacturing costs in terms of material consumption and elimination of the number of processing steps, the effect of Gas carburizing parameters on the fatigue behaviour should already be considered in the parameter design stage. Therefore it is of importance to optimize the gas carburizing process variables to attain quality products with respect to hardness and case depth. In the present paper, the evaluation of process capability was carried out through a Limit Design Concept called orthogonal array design of experiment. To optimize the process variables the influence of several parameters (Holding time,Carbon potential, Furnace temperature and Quench time) of the gas carburizing process on the micro hardness, total case depth, effective case depth and level of distortion of AISI 8620 steel were discussed....
The influence of a key process variable on the mold filling characteristics of AZ91 Mg-alloy was studied in the low pressure EPC process.The applied flow quantity of insert gas from 1 to 5 m3/h associated with the pressurizing rate in the low pressure EPC casting process was considered for rectangle and L-shape plate casting. The experimental results show that there is an optimal flow quantity of insert gas for good mold filling characteristics in AZ91 Mg-alloy low-pressure EPC process. The optimal flow quantity of insert gas for the specimens is 3 to 4 m3/h. Either less or higher than the optimal flow quantity of insert gas would lead to misrun defects or folds, blisters and porosity defects. The practice of hub casting confirmed that the low-pressure EPC process with an optimal processing variable exemplified as 4 m3/h gas flow quantity was capable of producing complicated magnesium castings without misrun defects....
The optimization of injection molding process for polycarbonate/acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (PC/ABS) blends is studied using Taguchi method and principal component analysis (PCA). Four controllable process factors are studied at three levels each in the manufacturing process. The L9 orthogonal array is conducted to determine the optimum process factor/level combination for single quality of mechanical properties. In addition, the principal component analysis is employed to transform the correlated mechanical properties to a set of uncorrelated components and to evaluate a comprehensive index for multi-response cases. Then the optimum process factor/level combination for multiple qualities can be determined. Finally, the analysis of variance is used to find out the most influential injection molding parameter for single and multiple qualities problems....
In this paper,an axial dispersion mathematical model is developed to simulate a three-phase slurry bubble column reactor for direct synthesis of dimethyl ether (DME) from syngas.This large-scale reactor is modeled using mass and energy balances,catalyst sedimentation and single-bubble as well as two-bubbles class flow hydrodynamics.A comparison between the two hydrodynamic models through pilot plant experimental data from the literature shows that heterogeneous two-bubbles flow model is in better agreement with the experimental data than homogeneous single-bubble gas flow model.Also,by investigating the heterogeneous gas flow and axial dispersion model for small bubbles as well as the large bubbles and slurry (i.e.including paraffins and the catalyst) phase,the temperature profile along the reactor is obtained.A comparison between isothermal and non-isothermal reactors reveals no obvious performance difference between them.The optimum values of reactor diameter and height were obtained at 7 m and 50 m,respectively.The effects of operating variables on the axial catalyst distribution,DME productivity and CO conversion are also investigated in this research....
The central composite design in the modeling and optimization of catalytic dehydration of ethanol to ethylene was performed to improve the ethylene yield. A total of 20 experiments at random were conducted to in-vestigate the effect of reaction temperature, Si/Al ratios of H-ZSM-5 catalyst and liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV)on the ethylene yield. The results show that the relationship between ethylene yield and the three signifi-cant independent variables can be approximated by a nonlinear polynomial model, with R-squared of 99.9% and adjusted R-squared of 99.8%. The maximal response for ethylene yield is 93.4% under the optimal condition of 328 ℃, Si/Al ratio 85, and LHSV 3.8 h-1....