Pitch Layout Research Articles

Exploring the Effects of Pitch Layout on Learning a New Musical Instrument

Although isomorphic pitch layouts are proposed to afford various advantages for musicians playing new musical instruments, this paper details the first substantive set of empirical tests on how two fundamental aspects of isomorphic pitch layouts affect motor learning: shear, which makes the pitch axis vertical, and the adjacency (or nonadjacency) of pitches a major second apart. After receiving audio-visual training tasks for a scale and arpeggios, performance accuracies of 24 experienced musicians were assessed in immediate retention tasks (same as the training tasks, but without the audio-visual guidance) and in a transfer task (performance of a previously untrained nursery rhyme). Each participant performed the same tasks with three different pitch layouts and, in total, four different layouts were tested. Results show that, so long as the performance ceiling has not already been reached (due to ease of the task or repeated practice), adjacency strongly improves performance accuracy in the training and retention tasks. They also show that shearing the layout, to make the pitch axis vertical, worsens performance accuracy for the training tasks but, crucially, it strongly improves performance accuracy in the transfer task when the participant needs to perform a new, but related, task. These results can inform the design of pitch layouts in new musical instruments.

Beneficial design of unbaffled shell-and-tube heat exchangers for attachment of longitudinal fins with trapezoidal profile

A parametric variation followed with Kern’s method of design of extended surface heat exchanger has been made for an unbaffled shell-and-tube heat exchanger problem. For this analysis, the rectangular and trapezoidal fin shapes longitudinally attached to the fin tubes are taken. In comparison with the attachment of trapezoidal fins, it is found that the heat transfer rate was lesser than the rectangular cross section by keeping a constant outer diameter of the shell along with all other constraints of a heat exchanger design, namely, number of passes, tube outer diameter, tube pitch layout, etc. But when the total volume of the fin over a tube was kept constraint, using trapezoidal fins the heat transfer rate is found to be increased and consequently the pressure drop decreases much more than in the case of fins with rectangular cross section. This optimization has shown beneficial results in all the cases of different constraints of heat exchanger design analysis.

Comparative experimental performance of high-finned tubes in staggered equilateral and equivelocity layouts

This paper evaluates the effect of the geometry pattern used in the equivelocity layout on the thermal hydraulic performance of a bank of high-finned tubes of the type used in air-cooled heat exchangers. Wind tunnel tests show a decrease in both the Colburn and friction factors for this layout compared with the traditional equilateral arrangement. In particular, test results show an average decrease of 19% in heat transfer coefficient and of 36% in pressure drop between the two layouts, compared on the basis of face velocity. The current literature correlations, which are available only for geometries with lower finning factors, predict an increase in both Colburn and friction factors for the same geometry. It is also shown that for high-finned tubes in this layout the Colburn and friction factors do not change significantly after the third row of tubes. A comparison with data for an expanded transverse pitch layout is included.