Three-dimensional Tip Research Articles

Three-dimensional configuration tip rotor dynamics analysis

Abstract In order to analyze and study the dynamic characteristics of the 3D blade tip rotor, an aeroelastic dynamic model for a complex 3D blade tip rotor is established based on mechanics principles. The theory of medium deformation beam or large deformation beam is adopted as the blade structural dynamic model, and the quasi-steady and unsteady aerodynamic models (ONERA model) are adopted as the aerodynamic model. The rotor dynamics, aeroelastic stability and rotor loads of three-dimensional blade tip and rectangular blade tip are compared by examples. The analysis shows that both the forward and backward sweep angles have a certain effect on the rotor blade frequency, but the downward dihedral angle has little effect. The 3D tip configuration has the greatest influence on torsion mode frequency, followed by lagging mode frequency, which has little impact on flapping frequency. Reasonable design of forward and backward sweep angles and downward dihedral angles of 3D tip configuration can effectively reduce rotor loads, increase damping margin for aeroelastic stability, and improve stability.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation of Combustion Efficiency for Full-Size Upstream Flare Experiments

Methane emissions from oil and gas production can occur throughout the value chain, but for many producers, one of the most significant sources is flaring. Understanding the influence of the operating conditions and the environmental factors the combustion efficiency and destruction and removal efficiency (CE/DRE) of flares is essential if their role in methane emissions, a potent but short-lived greenhouse gas, is to be better understood and mitigated. An industry-scale experimental study was focused on the emissions of un-assisted flares commonly encountered in upstream oil and gas production. This paper simulates two un-assisted flare tips combustions by using the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software package Fluent 21R2 to augment the physical experimental testing. Two three-dimensional (3D) flare tips models are built, and the k-omega SST turbulence model and flamelet generated manifold (FGM) combustion model are applied to simulate flaring combustion. The CFD model is first validated against full-scale industry flare tests that use extractive sampling of the combustion plume. CFD results are in good agreement with measured results when the vent gas net heating value (NHV) is greater than 300 BTU/SCF. Greater uncertainty exists for both CFD results and measured data if the NHV is less than 300 BTU/SCF. Then, the CFD model is extended to include high crosswind states up to 50 m/s that cannot be readily or safely examined empirically. The results emphasize the critical role of the vent gas net heating value (NHV) on flare combustion and crosswind in reducing the CE. The comparison helps pave the way for further use of CFD simulation to improve flare designs and modes of operation and supports the use of parametric models to track and report methane losses from flaring.

Aerodynamic techniques to mitigate the 3D loss in the power coefficient of vertical axis wind turbines

The three-dimensional tip loss effect is a critical phenomenon affecting the performance of vertical-axis wind turbines. The vortices on the blades become more complex with the turbine rotation, most notable at the tips, leading to three-dimensional aerodynamic losses and decreasing the turbine power coefficient. Therefore, mitigating the aerodynamic losses at the tips could improve the technological development of these devices. However, the numerical methods to analyze the tip vortices in VAWTs have a high computational cost, and experimental data to verify them is limited. In this study, three passive flow control techniques that mitigate the three-dimensional effects of a vertical axis wind turbine Darrieus H-type have been investigated experimentally in a wind tunnel to quantify their impact on the power coefficient and validate the theoretical results found in the literature. The tested passive flow control aerodynamic designs of the blade tips consist of leading-edge serration, anhedral, and endplate techniques. The results of this work include the experimental power coefficient curves as a function of the tip speed ratio for a two-blade VAWT model without any modification and with the three passive control techniques. The experimental process characterizes the VAWT techniques in a range of Tip Speed Ratios between 0.37 and 3.1. Our results indicate that the leading-edge serration, anhedral, and endplate techniques effectively mitigate the three-dimensional losses, increasing the power coefficient by 7.1%, 14.3%, and 25%, respectively, compared to the reference model. The endplate model exhibited the best Cp improvement. However, it could cause the highest bending on the blade tips of the three tested techniques.

Research on dynamic characteristics of three-dimensional tip clearance with regard to blade crack depth and location of rotary blade-disk-shaft coupling system

Research on dynamic characteristics of three-dimensional tip clearance with regard to blade crack depth and location of rotary blade-disk-shaft coupling system

An analytical investigation of nonlinear response and stability characteristics of beam with three-dimensional tip mass

An analytical investigation of nonlinear response and stability characteristics of beam with three-dimensional tip mass

Understanding of tip clearance flow structure in high speed mixed flow compressor

This paper addresses the necessity to make a physical interpretation of a highly complex three-dimensional tip clearance flow field study for high-speed mixed-flow compressor having stage exit static pressure to inlet total pressure ratio of 3.8 with 39,836 rpm rotor speed. The four different tip configurations namely the constant (λ = 0.016 and 0.019) and variable (λ = 0.011 (inlet)-0.019 (exit) and 0.019 (inlet)-0.022 (exit)) tip clearances were numerically analysed using available experimental data-set. The numerical investigation reveals that in contrast to the classic jet-wake pattern, two anomalous velocity profiles formed at the impeller exit which results in pressure losses in the vaneless diffuser. Near the impeller inlet, the tip leakage flow rolls up to discrete tip leakage vortex structure for each tip clearance configuration. This results in the formation of a region of momentum deficit, recirculation zone, which gets weakened as it moves downstream. The tip clearance configuration is observed to profoundly influence the extent and vorticity of the tip leakage vortex. In the splitter blade passage, the tip leakage flow and Coriolis flow interact with passage flow, resulting in the formation of two secondary passage vortices that move downstream along the pressure and suction surface of the splitter blade. The tip clearance configuration directly influences the impeller exit jet-wake pattern by modulating the secondary passage vortices trajectory and vorticity. Moreover, off-design analysis for tip clearances λ = 0.016 and λ = 0.019, depict distinctive tip leakage vortex characteristics. When operating near the stall conditions (80% of design mass flow rate), λ = 0.019 exhibits bubble shape tip leakage vortex breakdown occurring near the impeller inlet. This result in a substantial change in the tip leakage vortex nature; expansion of the recirculation zone and early weakening of the vorticity in the tip leakage vortex. It is observed that vortex breakdown plays a vital role in characteristics of the passage flow field structure and compressor performance near the stall conditions.

Analyzing Three-dimensional Tip Near-field Scattering of Infrared Polaritons through Peak Force Scattering-type Near-field Optical Microscopy.

Analyzing Three-dimensional Tip Near-field Scattering of Infrared Polaritons through Peak Force Scattering-type Near-field Optical Microscopy.

Intelligent fault diagnosis of turbine blade cracks via multiscale sparse filtering and multi-kernel support vector machine for information fusion

For accurately identifying the crack severity of turbine blades, a novel intelligent diagnosis framework is proposed in our paper, which uses multiscale sparse filtering (MSF)-based unsupervised sparse feature learning and multi-kernel support vector machine for information fusion (MKSVMIF). To realize the technical readiness and the state-of-the-art diagnostic performance, advanced signal processing methods are used to eliminate interference and retain fault-related characteristics. Thus, the EEMD-based multiwavelet packet energy entropy (EEMD-WPEE) as an enhanced method is proposed for multi-source three-dimensional blade tip clearance signals (3D-BTC), which is used to enhance the fault-related information. Afterward, the MSF is constructed to adaptively learn multisource sparse features from EEMD-WPEE representation of 3D-BTC by an unsupervised manner. Finally, the MKSVMIF is proposed to fuse these sparse features and diagnose crack severities. To validate the effectiveness of our proposed MSF-MKSVMIF framework, Extensive experiments are conducted on a blade-rotor simulation rig, and the results show that our proposed framework is superior to other comparison methods and can quantitatively detect different blade crack severities with a relatively small number of samples.

Three-dimensional catheter tip force sensing using multi-core fiber Bragg gratings.

Awareness of catheter tip interaction forces is a crucial aspect during cardiac ablation procedures. The most important contact forces are the ones that originate between the catheter tip and the beating cardiac tissue. Clinical studies have shown that effective ablation occurs when contact forces are in the proximity of 0.2N. Lower contact forces lead to ineffective ablation, while higher contact forces may result in complications such as cardiac perforation. Accurate and high resolution force sensing is therefore indispensable in such critical situations. Accordingly, this work presents the development of a unique and novel catheter tip force sensor utilizing a multi-core fiber with inscribed fiber Bragg gratings. A customizable helical compression spring is designed to serve as the flexural component relaying external forces to the multi-core fiber. The limited number of components, simple construction, and compact nature of the sensor makes it an appealing solution towards clinical translation. An elaborated approach is proposed for the design and dimensioning of the necessary sensor components. The approach also presents a unique method to decouple longitudinal and lateral force measurements. A force sensor prototype and a dedicated calibration setup are developed to experimentally validate the theoretical performance. Results show that the proposed force sensor exhibits 7.4mN longitudinal resolution, 0.8mN lateral resolution, 0.72mN mean longitudinal error, 0.96mN mean lateral error, a high repeatability, and excellent decoupling between longitudinal and lateral forces.

Dynamic modeling of rotary blade crack with regard to three-dimensional tip clearance

To investigate the dynamic characteristics of the three-dimensional blade tip clearance (3D-BTC) of rotary blade cracks, a novel dynamic model of the rotary blade crack with regard to the 3D-BTC is derived based on the Timoshenko beam theory. In this model, the modal shape functions of the blade are derived based on the transfer matrix method, and the axial and circumferential aerodynamic loads are introduced to better obtain the dynamic responses of the blade vibration. Then, a breathing crack model of the blade trailing edge crack is established by considering the coupling effects of the centrifugal stress, axial bending stress, and circumferential bending stress. The crack opening width is introduced into the breathing crack model to comprehensively depict the crack together with the crack depth and crack location. Moreover, a numerical calculation method for the 3D-BTC is proposed for the rotary blade with cracks. The dynamic model is validated by comparing it with the finite element model and the experiment. Finally, the effects of the blade trailing edge crack on the 3D-BTC are analyzed. The results show that the cracked blade's first-order natural frequency decreases with the crack depth increase, and it increases first and then decreases slightly when the crack location moves away from the blade root. The effects of crack opening width on the first-order natural frequency are relatively small due to its small size. In the meantime, the nonlinear damage indicators (NDIs) of the 3D-BTC are calculated. The results show that the NDIs can reflect the severity of the blade crack, and the proposed model can comprehensively analyze the effects of rotary blade crack on the 3D-BTC, which is beneficial for the diagnosis method for blade cracks based on the 3D-BTC.

Dynamic Characteristics Analysis of 3D Blade Tip Clearance for Turbine Blades with Typical Cracks

As well known, the crack is a typical fault of turbine blades, which is difficult to detect due to the weak fault features contained in the rotor vibration. Although some fault diagnosis methods based on blade tip timing (BTT) are proposed to detect blade cracks, the limited fault features can be extracted because the BTT signals contain only one-dimensional fault information. Based on the dynamic analysis, the cracked blade undergoes three-dimensional (3D) deformation so that it would be reflected in the changes of the three-dimensional blade tip clearance (3D-BTC). Therefore, the dynamic characteristics of the 3D-BTC of turbine blades with typical cracks should be investigated to obtain its change rule and achieve a more comprehensive diagnosis of blade cracks. In this paper, the 3D finite element model of the turbine blisk is established, and the fluid-thermal-solid coupling analysis is implemented to calculate the blade deformation. Then, a novel dynamic computation method is proposed to calculate the 3D-BTC based on the blade deformation. The typical blade cracks are taken into consideration, and the dynamic characteristics of the 3D-BTC regarding the typical cracks are analyzed to obtain its change rule. The results show that abundant crack fault information can be obtained based on the 3D-BTC, which can facilitate the comprehensive diagnosis of turbine blade cracks.

Study on the throwing mechanism and loss characteristics of three-dimensional disturbance comb

To reduce rice harvest loss and explore the performance of different combs for threshing prior to cutting, a three-dimensional tip disturbance comb and a three-dimensional bionic disturbance comb were designed. Based on high-speed camera technology and bench tests, the throwing mechanisms, distribution characteristics and loss rates of three kinds of combs, including primitive plane angular combs, were explored. Through comparative analysis of the material diffusion angle and throwing mechanism, it was obtained that the average material diffusion angle of the three combs decreased gradually with increasing rotating speed and that the material diffusion angle and stability of the three-dimensional bionic disturbance comb performed best. At the same rotating speed, the fitting slope ratio of the three-dimensional bionic disturbance comb was the largest, and the effect of throwing and transporting materials was the best. The total loss rates of three kinds of comb teeth were obtained by analyzing the falling grain loss rate and uncombed loss rate: three-dimensional tip disturbance comb > primitive plane angular comb > three-dimensional bionic disturbance comb; the corresponding minimum total loss rates were 6.17 %, 5.76 % and 2.71 %.

A Bottom-Up Volume Reconstruction Method for Atom Probe Tomography.

This paper describes a reconstruction method for atom probe tomography based on a bottom-up approach accounting for (i) the final tip morphology (which is frequently induced by inhomogeneous evaporation probabilities across the tip surface due to laser absorption, heat diffusion effects, and inhomogeneous material properties), (ii) the limited (and changing) field of view, and (iii) the detector efficiency. The reconstruction starts from the final tip morphology and reverses the evaporation sequence through the pseudo-deposition of defined small reconstruction volumes, which are then stacked together to create the full three-dimensional (3D) tip. The subdivision in small reconstruction volumes allows the scheme to account for the changing tip shape and field of view as evaporation proceeds. Atoms within the same small reconstruction volume are reconstructed at once by placing atoms back onto their possible lattice sites through a trajectory-matching process involving simulated and experimental hit maps. As the ejected ion trajectories are simulated using detailed electrostatic modeling inside the chamber, no simplifications have been imposed on the shape of the trajectories, projection laws, or tip surface. We demonstrate the superior performance of our approach over the conventional reconstruction method (Bas) for an asymmetrical tip shape.

Robustness Analysis on the Aerothermal Performance of Turbine Blade Squealer Tip

Abstract An improved efficient uncertainty quantification (UQ) analysis framework is proposed by the combination of sparse polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) and universal Kriging (UK) metamodel to obtain the surrogate model (UK-PCE). Moreover, a challenging analytical test function and an engineering test are considered to investigate the response performance of UK-PCE method. The results show that the UK-PCE method reduces the computational cost by more than 70% in comparison to the typical PCE method. Then this method was applied to the UQ of the aerodynamic and heat transfer performance of GE-E3 rotor blade squealer tip. Additionally, a series of uncertainty quantities visualization methods based on the data mining method, parallel computing method, and Delaunay triangulation method is proposed to reveal more enlightening uncertainty phenomena in the actual operation. The results of UQ show that under the influence of uncertain inputs, the leakage flow rate and downstream entropy increase will be significantly increased. The statistical average of tip heat flux has increased by 8.56% relative to the design value, and the probability of it deviating from the design value by 10% is as high as 43.27%. In addition, the three-dimensional tip heat flux deviation distributions calculated by the proposed uncertainty quantities visualization method reveal a coupling of the hot corrosion and thermal fatigue of the squealer tip. It is also indicated that under the influence of the uncertain inputs, there is a marked increase in blade tip flux, and the blade tip flux deviation has been maintained at a high value, about 13.0%. The results of sensitivity analysis show that the largest contributor to the uncertainty of the blade tip aerodynamic performance is the tip clearance deviation and its variance index to the uncertainty of leakage flow rate and downstream entropy increase is as high as 88.21% and 62.63%. Therefore, the geometric accuracy of the tip clearance should be strictly ensured in the turbine blade assembly and marching process. The influence of the inlet total temperature deviation on the uncertainty of the heat transfer performance of the squealer tip must also be taken into account. So a satisfactory control system should be designed in the actual operation of the gas turbine to make sure that the fluctuation of inlet total temperature can be attenuated rapidly.

Visualizing Nanobio-Interfaces by In-Liquid Frequency Modulation Atomic Force Microscopy

Frequency modulation atomic force microscopy (FM-AFM) allows atomic-scale imaging at the solid-liquid interface regardless of the conductivity of the sample. In addition, combined with a three-dimensional (3D) tip scanning technique, it allows direct visualization of 3D distributions of mobile water (i.e., hydration structures) and flexible molecular chains. These unique features open up various possibilities in the nanoscale or even subnanoscale studies on the biological interfaces and phenomena. Here, we present an overview of the basic principle of these in-liquid AFM techniques and their applications to the studies on biological systems such as lipid membranes, proteins, and exosomes.

Robotic Intracellular Electrochemical Sensing for Adherent Cells.

Nanopipette-based observation of intracellular biochemical processes is an important approach to revealing the intrinsic characteristics and heterogeneity of cells for better investigation of disease progression or early disease diagnosis. However, the manual operation needs a skilled operator and faces problems such as low throughput and poor reproducibility. This paper proposes an automated nanopipette-based microoperation system for cell detection, three-dimensional nonovershoot positioning of the nanopipette tip in proximity to the cell of interest, cell approaching and proximity detection between nanopipette tip and cell surface, and cell penetration and detection of the intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). A robust focus algorithm based on the number of cell contours was proposed for adherent cells, which have sharp peaks while retaining unimodality. The automated detection of adherent cells was evaluated on human umbilical cord vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) and NIH/3T3 cells, which provided an average of 95.65% true-positive rate (TPR) and 7.59% false-positive rate (FPR) for in-plane cell detection. The three-dimensional nonovershoot tip positioning of the nanopipette was achieved by template matching and evaluated under the interference of cells. Ion current feedback was employed for the proximity detection between the nanopipette tip and cell surface. Finally, cell penetration and electrochemical detection of ROS were demonstrated on human breast cancer cells and zebrafish embryo cells. This work provides a systematic approach for automated intracellular sensing for adherent cells, laying a solid foundation for high-throughput detection, diagnosis, and classification of different forms of biochemical reactions within single cells.

A comprehensive analysis of blade tip for vertical axis wind turbine: Aerodynamics and the tip loss effect

Vertical axis wind turbines are receiving renewed attention due to the challenges faced by horizontal axis wind turbines in recent years. To achieve commercial applications, a key aspect is to improve the relatively low power coefficient of vertical axis wind turbines. Among several factors that affects output efficiency, the three-dimensional tip loss effect is essential because each vertical axis wind turbine blade has two tops (e.g., the H-type wind turbine). Although several blade tips have been designed, a comprehensive and fair analysis is necessary to find a suitable one. Therefore, in this paper, a total of 20 blade tips have been analyzed using the three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic method. The results indicate that the improved winglet and endplate we proposed are relatively optimal when the synthetic performance of aerodynamic efficiency, structural loads and start-up torque is considered. However, the improvement mechanisms of these two tips are different. Based on the performance curves and the fluid fields at specific tip speed ratios, we find that the endplate increases the blade torque in the upwind region by reducing the spanwise flow, but its negative effect in the downwind region partially counteracts the improvement. For the improved winglet, it reduces the tip loss in the upwind region and suppress separation in the downwind region at the appropriate tip speed ratio, thus significantly improving its performance in one rotor revolution. The winglet also contributes to the reduction of rotor thrust. In addition, the influence of the blade tip on wake is not remarkable and is mainly concentrated in the tip area affected by the tip vortex.

Effect of Le Fort I Maxillary Repositioning on Three-Dimensional Nasal Tip Rotation: A Comparative Study with Implication for the Asian Nose

Background: Le Fort I maxillary repositioning influences nasal morphology. In Asian cultures, upward nasal tip rotation with increased nostril exposure is considered aesthetically unpleasant and can have psychosocial consequences. This three-dimensional imaging–based study evaluated the effect of different Le Fort I maxillary movements on nasal tip rotation. Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent two-jaw orthognathic surgery (n = 107) were enrolled. To achieve a standard head orientation, preoperative and 1-week and 12-month postoperative cone-beam computed tomography–derived three-dimensional craniofacial models were superimposed. Tip rotation angle was calculated according to the Frankfort horizontal plane for all three-dimensional digital models. The final tip rotation angle change was defined as 12-month postoperative value minus preoperative value. Translational maxillary movement types (advancement versus setback and intrusion versus extrusion), postoperative maxillary segment locations (anterosuperior, anteroinferior, posterosuperior, or posteroinferior), and actual linear maxillary changes were noted. Results: Advancement (1.79 ± 5.20 degrees) and intrusion (2.23 ± 4.96 degrees) movements demonstrated significantly larger final tip rotation angle changes than setback (−0.88 ± 5.15 degrees) and extrusion (0.09 ± 5.44 degrees) movements (all p < 0.05). Postoperative anterosuperior location (2.95 ± 4.52 degrees) of the maxillary segment demonstrated a significantly larger final tip rotation angle change than anteroinferior (0.48 ± 5.65 degrees), posterosuperior (−1.08 ± 4.77 degrees), and posteroinferior (−0.64 ± 5.80 degrees) locations (all p < 0.05). Translational maxillary movement and actual linear maxillary change were not correlated with final tip rotation angle change. Conclusion: Effects of Le Fort I maxillary repositioning on nasal tip rotation depend on movement types and maxillary segment location. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, III.

A Novel Intelligent Fault Diagnosis Approach for Early Cracks of Turbine Blades via Improved Deep Belief Network Using Three-Dimensional Blade Tip Clearance

Aero-turbines usually work in various non-stationary and harsh operating environments. Its blades easily appear early crack faults in long-time operation, and it is difficult to dig out discriminant features of early crack. To solve these problems, in the paper, a novel intelligent approach for early crack diagnosis of turbine blades using three-dimensional blade tip clearance is presented. In order to improve feature learning ability to obtain better generalization ability, the paper firstly develops a novel deep learning method based on deep belief networks (DBNs). Considering the fact that the feature degradation easily occurs in deeper layers because of the change of the distribution in each layer’s outputs with the increase of the layers, it is hard to decide which layer to learn features is useful for fault diagnosis. Accordingly, in the pre-training process, the global back-reconstruction (GBR) mechanism is introduced into DBNs to optimize the feature learning ability. The GBR mechanism can be realized between the input layer and hidden layers by “shortcut connection”, and the layer to learn more discriminant features can be determined automatically without prior knowledge. Moreover, due to three-dimensional blade tip clearance (3-DBTC) acquired from three different directions of turbine blades contains much more useful crack failure multiscale information, it is suitable to be used as an input from which to extract multiscale discriminant features. Eventually, in the supervised training, the softmax regression model is employed to classify the health conditions of turbine blades using these sensitive features learned from 3-DBTC. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively identify the crack of turbine blades with fairly high diagnostic accuracies and significantly outperform other methods considered in the paper.

Aerodynamic performance of three-dimensional wing tip high Reynolds number turbulence with jet control

In this paper, the wing tip jet is proposed to improve the aerodynamic performance of the three-dimensional ONERA M6 wing at high Reynolds numbers. The CFD method is used to perform numerical simulation with the SST k-ω two-equation model. To verify present numerical model, ONERA M6 wing at the attack angle(α) of 2° is selected and the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data. The flow around the airfoil at high Reynolds number is simulated at 0°-14° attack angle, and the critical attack angle is 11° without jet. Finally, the influence of the jet on the aerodynamic characteristics of the airfoil at different attack angle are studied and it is found that the lift coefficient and lift-drag ratio of the airfoil increase with jet.