Publishing and presenting: A cross-national analysis of engineering academics in Europe
- Authors: Aarrevaara, Timo , Dobson, Ian
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Global Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 15, no. 3 (2013), p. 148-154
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The international Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey was used to compare several measures of research output in participating European countries. When looking at the output of books, articles, reports and conference presentations, results indicated variations between countries and between the engineering field of education and other fields of education. European university engineering academics produced relatively more research reports/monographs written for a funded project, but tended to produce at lower rates than academics overall in the other three forms of written research output. © WIETE 2013.
An environment-aware mobility model for wireless ad hoc network
- Authors: Ahmed, Sabbir , Karmakar, Gour , Kamruzzaman, Joarder
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Computer Networks Vol. 54, no. 9 (2010), p. 1470-1489
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Simulation is a cost effective, fast and flexible alternative to test-beds or practical deployment for evaluating the characteristics and potential of mobile ad hoc networks. Since environmental context and mobility have a great impact on the accuracy and efficacy of performance measurement, it is of paramount importance how closely the mobility of a node resembles its movement pattern in a real-world scenario. The existing mobility models mostly assume either free space for deployment and random node movement or the movement pattern does not emulate real-world situation properly in the presence of obstacles because of their generation of restricted paths. This demands for the development of a node movement pattern with accurately representing any obstacle and existing path in a complex and realistic deployment scenario. In this paper, we propose a general mobility model capable of creating a more realistic node movement pattern by exploiting the concept of flexible positioning of anchors. Since the model places anchors depending upon the context of the environment through which nodes are guided to move towards the destination, it is capable of representing any terrain realistically. Furthermore, obstacles of arbitrary shapes with or without doorways and any existing pathways in full or part of the terrain can be incorporated which makes the simulation environment more realistic. A detailed computational complexity has been analyzed and the characteristics of the proposed mobility model in the presence of obstacles in a university campus map with and without signal attenuation are presented which illustrates its significant impact on performance evaluation of wireless ad hoc networks.
Scaled boundary finite element method for compressible and nearly incompressible elasticity over arbitrary polytopes
- Authors: Aladurthi, Lakshmi , Natarajan, Sundararajan , Ooi, Ean Tat , Song, Chongmin
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering Vol. 119, no. 13 (2019), p. 1379-1394
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: In this paper, a purely displacement-based formulation is presented within the framework of the scaled boundary finite element method to model compressible and nearly incompressible materials. A selective reduced integration technique combined with an analytical treatment in the nearly incompressible limit is employed to alleviate volumetric locking. The stiffness matrix is computed by solving the scaled boundary finite element equation. The salient feature of the proposed technique is that it neither requires a stabilization parameter nor adds additional degrees of freedom to handle volumetric locking. The efficiency and the robustness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by solving various numerical examples in two and three dimensions.
Effects of torsion on the behaviour of non-structural components mounted on irregular reinforced concrete multi-storey buildings
- Authors: Aldeka, Ayad , Chan, Andrew , Dirar, Samir
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Full Text: false
Vibration spectrum imaging : A novel bearing fault classification approach
- Authors: Amar, Muhammad , Gondal, Iqbal , Wilson, Campbell
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics Vol. 62, no. 1 (2015), p. 494-502
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Incipient fault detection in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions requires robust features for accurate condition-based machine health monitoring. Accurate fault classification is positively linked to the quality of features of the faults. Therefore, there is a need to enhance the quality of the features before classification. This paper presents a novel vibration spectrum imaging (VSI) feature enhancement procedure for low SNR conditions. An artificial neural network (ANN) has been used as a fault classifier using these enhanced features of the faults. The normalized amplitudes of spectral contents of the quasi-stationary time vibration signals are transformed into spectral images. A 2-D averaging filter and binary image conversion, with appropriate threshold selection, are used to filter and enhance the images for the training and testing of the ANN classifier. The proposed novel VSI augments and provides the visual representation of the characteristic vibration spectral features in an image form. This provides enhanced spectral images for ANN training and thus leads to a highly robust fault classifier.
River management and environmental water allocation in regulated ecosystems of arid and semi-arid regions – a review
- Authors: Atazadeh, Ehsan , Barton, Andrew , Shirinpour, Mozhgan , Zarghami, Mahdi , Rajabifard, Abbas
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Fundamental and Applied Limnology Vol. 193, no. 4 (2020), p. 327-345
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Rivers make a significant contribution in providing goods and services for human well-being. Today, many rivers and streams have been heavily regulated to ensure adequate provision of water resources for anthropogenic uses. Riverine ecosystems, especially those in arid and semi-arid regions, are experiencing severe stress due to the increasing demands on the ecosystem services they provide, coupled with anthropogenic catchment-scale impacts and factors associated with natural and human-induced climate variability and change. In this paper, the various flow components in regulated riverine ecosystems and the methods to determine environmental flows are reviewed. The review also focuses on the concurrent developments of eco-hydrological models and on the new opportunities for improving environmental flows of rivers by sustainably adjusting consumptive flows to fine-tune environmental flows and maximize the ecological benefit. In fact, the present paper highlights the role of consumptive flows, towards improving environmental flows, which has largely been neglected by river scientists and water managers. Indeed, consumptive flows can provide an opportunity to improve and support environmental flows in regulated riverine ecosystems. Addressing these challenges may aid water management efforts in finding sustainable solutions in riverine ecosystems by balancing environmental/ecological and human water requirements. © 2020 E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, Germany.
An adaptive borrow-and-return model for broadcasting videos
- Authors: Azad, Salahuddin , Murshed, Manzur
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Vol. 11, no. 4 (2009), p. 707-715
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Yang proposed the concept of borrow-and-return (BR) to leverage the unused server bandwidth when a group of popular videos being broadcast with the FSFC (first segment on the first channel) broadcasting schemes in order to improve the mean waiting time (MWT) of the viewers with the help of additional receiving bandwidth available at the high-end clients. The BR model borrows the bandwidth of the videos with no new-coming viewers during a timeslot to speed up the transmission of the first segments of some of the remaining videos. In this paper, we first address the relative advantage issue among various possible BR schemes by developing a parametric generic BR (GBR) scheme controlled externally by independent borrow parameters. Later, we propose a new BR (NBR) model by incorporating an efficient transmission strategy to reduce the MWT further. Finally, an optimal NBR scheme is developed by augmenting with the optimal borrow parameters, which significantly outperforms the existing and new BR schemes in terms of overall MWT.
Galvanic and acoustic vestibular stimulation activate different populations of vestibular afferents
- Authors: Bacsi, Ann M , Watson, Shaun , Colebatch, James G
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Clinical Neurophysiology Vol. 114, no. 2 (2003), p. 359-365
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: OBJECTIVE: To deduce whether similar or distinct populations of vestibular afferents are activated by acoustic and galvanic vestibular stimulation by comparing the effectiveness of 'matched' stimuli in eliciting vestibulospinal reflexes. METHODS: Twelve subjects (5 men, 7 women) underwent individual 'matching' of 2 ms tone burst and galvanic stimuli, using vestibulocollic reflexes so that corrected reflex amplitudes to tone burst and galvanic stimuli were within 10% of each other. These same intensities were then administered using 20 ms durations to determine whether they were equally effective in evoking vestibulospinal responses. RESULTS: Corrected reflex amplitudes for vestibulocollic responses to tone burst and galvanic stimulation were not significantly different for the right (P=0.45) or left (P=0.68) sides. All subjects had vestibulospinal responses to galvanic stimulation (average intensity 4.0 mA for both sides). The short latency (SL) and medium latency (ML) components of the vestibulospinal reflexes were larger after galvanic compared to tone burst stimulation in 11 of 12 subjects (P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Despite evoking equal-sized vestibulocollic reflexes, there was a clear dissociation between the magnitude of tone burst and galvanic-induced vestibulospinal reflexes. Galvanic stimulation evoked SL and ML reflexes in all subjects. Tone burst stimuli evoked only small SL reflexes and, in most cases, no ML reflexes. Acoustically-evoked vestibulocollic reflexes are likely to be due to saccular excitation. The limited effectiveness of longer tone burst stimuli to evoke ML vestibulospinal reflexes suggests that saccular afferents have, at most, only a minor role in the production of these reflexes. We conclude that galvanic stimulation is more effective in eliciting vestibulospinal reflexes than tone burst stimulation, and that the two methods activate different populations of vestibular afferents.
The role of interoperable data standards in precision livestock farming in extensive livestock systems : A review
- Authors: Bahlo, Christiane , Dahlhaus, Peter , Thompson, Helen , Trotter, Mark
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Computers and Electronics in Agriculture Vol. 156, no. (2019), p. 459-466
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Livestock industries are increasingly embracing precision farming and decision support tools. As a result, sensors, weather stations, individual animal tracking, feed monitoring and other sources create large data volumes, much of which is used only for a single purpose. There are unrealised potential benefits of making on farm data interoperable and accessible and federating it with public data sources. We reviewed recent literature on precision livestock farming (PLF) technologies in relation to the use of public data, open standards and interoperability. Livestock farms produce rising volumes of disparate private datasets, reflecting a variety of information needs and technological opportunities, but typically lacking interoperable formats and metadata. These as well as large amounts of accessible public datasets are currently underutilised in decision support tools. Tools that demonstrate the use of interoperable standards and bring together public and private data for decision support can enhance the value proposition and help lower barriers to the sharing and re-use of data. This review of interoperable standards in extensive livestock farming systems concludes that there is a need for not only a new type of decision support tool, but also a consensus on data exchange standards to prove the value of shared data at farm scale (commercial benefit) and a regional scale (public good). © 2018
Effects of recycled aggregate growth substrate on green roof vegetation development: A six year experiment
- Authors: Bates, Adam , Sadler, Jon , Greswell, Richard , Mackay, Rae
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Landscape and Urban Planning Vol. 135, no. (2015), p. 22-31
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Green roofs have the potential to address several of the environmental problems associated with urbanisation, and can be used as mitigation for habitats lost at ground level. Brown roofs (a type of green roof) can be used to mitigate for the loss of brownfield habitat, but the best way of designing these habitats remains unclear. This paper reports an experiment to test the effects of different types of recycled aggregate on the development of vegetation assemblages on brown roof mesocosms. Five recycled aggregates were tested: (1) crushed brick, (2) crushed demolition aggregate, (3) solid municipal waste incinerator bottom ash aggregate, (4) a 1:1 mix of 1 and 2, and (5) a 1:1 mix of 3 and 2. Each was seeded with a wildflower mix that also included some Sedum acre and vegetation development was studied over a six-year period. Species richness, assemblage character, number of plants able to seed, and plant biomass were measured. Drought disturbance was the key factor controlling changes in plant assemblage, but effects varied with substrate treatment. All treatments supported a similar plant biomass, but treatments with a high proportion of crushed brick in the growth substrate supported richer assemblages, with more species able to seed, and a smaller amount of Sedum acre. Crushed brick, or recycled aggregates with a high proportion of crushed brick, are recommended as good growth substrate materials for encouraging brown roof plant diversity. This investigation demonstrates the importance of multi-year studies of green roof development for the generation of robust findings.
Infographic : We have the programme, what next? Developing a plan of action to implement injury prevention exercise programmes in community sport
- Authors: Bekker, Sheree , Donaldson, Alex , Finch, Caroline
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British journal of sports medicine Vol. 52, no. 22 (2018), p. 1419-1420
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Exercise programmes to prevent injuries, such as lower-limb injuries that are common in community Australian Football
What are the most effective risk-reduction strategies in sport concussion?
- Authors: Benson, Brian , McIntosh, Andrew , Maddocks, David , Herring, Stanley , Raftery, Martin , Dvorak, Jiri
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Sports Medicine Vol. 47, no. 5 (2013), p. 321-326
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Aim To critically review the evidence to determine the efficacy and effectiveness of protective equipment, rule changes, neck strength and legislation in reducing sport concussion risk. Methods Electronic databases, grey literature and bibliographies were used to search the evidence using Medical Subject Headings and text words. Inclusion/ exclusion criteria were used to select articles for the clinical equipment studies. The quality of evidence was assessed using epidemiological criteria regarding internal/external validity (eg, strength of design, sample size/power, bias and confounding). Results No new valid, conclusive evidence was provided to suggest the use of headgear in rugby, or mouth guards in American football, significantly reduced players' risk of concussion. No evidence was provided to suggest an association between neck strength increases and concussion risk reduction. There was evidence in ice hockey to suggest fair-play rules and eliminating body checking among 11-years-olds to 12-years-olds were effective injury prevention strategies. Evidence is lacking on the effects of legislation on concussion prevention. Equipment self-selection bias was a common limitation, as was the lack of measurement and control for potential confounding variables. Lastly, helmets need to be able to protect from impacts resulting in a head change in velocities of up to 10 and 7 m/s in professional American and Australian football, respectively, as well as reduce head resultant linear and angular acceleration to below 50 g and 1500 rad/s2, respectively, to optimise their effectiveness. Conclusions A multifactorial approach is needed for concussion prevention. Future well-designed and sportspecific prospective analytical studies of sufficient power are warranted.
Effects of exercise and manual therapy on pain associated with hip osteoarthritis : A systematic review and meta-analysis
- Authors: Beumer, Lucy , Wong, Jennie , Warden, Stuart , Kemp, Joanne , Foster, Paul , Crossley, Kay
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: British Journal of Sports Medicine Vol. 50, no. 8 (2016), p. 458-463
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Aim: To explore the effects of exercise (water-based or land-based) and/or manual therapies on pain in adults with clinically and/or radiographically diagnosed hip osteoarthritis (OA). Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed, with patient reported pain assessed using a visual analogue scale (VAS) or the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) pain subscale. Data were grouped by follow-up time (0-3 months=short term; 4-12 months=medium term and; >12 months=long term), and standardised mean differences (SMD) with 95% CIs were used to establish intervention effect sizes. Study quality was assessed using modified PEDro scores. Results: 19 trials were included. Four studies showed short-term benefits favouring water-based exercise over minimal control using the WOMAC pain subscale (SMD -0.53, 95% CI -0.96 to -0.10). Six studies supported a short-term benefit of land-based exercise compared to minimal control on VAS assessed pain (SMD -0.49, 95% CI -0.70 to -0.29). There were no medium (SMD -0.23, 95% CI -0.48 to 0.03) or long (SMD -0.22, 95% CI -0.51 to 0.06) term benefits of exercise therapy, or benefit of combining exercise therapy with manual therapy (SMD -0.38, 95% CI -0.88 to 0.13) when compared to minimal control. Conclusions: Best available evidence indicates that exercise therapy (whether land-based or water-based) is more effective than minimal control in managing pain associated with hip OA in the short term. Larger highquality RCTs are needed to establish the effectiveness of exercise and manual therapies in the medium and long term.
Combining segmental semi-Markov models with neural networks for protein secondary structure prediction
- Authors: Bidargaddi, Niranjan , Chetty, Madhu , Kamruzzaman, Joarder
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Neurocomputing Vol. 72, no. 3943-3950 (2009), p.3943-3950
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Predicting the secondary structure of proteins from a primary sequence alone has been variously approached from either a classification or a generative model perspective. The most prominent classification methods have used neural networks, which involves mappings from a local window of residues in the sequence to the structural state of the central residue in the window, thus capturing the local interactions effectively. However, they fail to capture distant interactions among residues. The generative models based on Bayesian segmentation capture sequence structure relationships using generalized hidden Markov models with explicit state duration. They capture non-local interactions through a joint sequence-structure probability distribution based on structural segments. In this paper, we investigate a combined architecture of Bayesian segmentation at the first stage and neural network at the second stage which captures both local and non-local correlation, to increase the single sequence prediction accuracy. The combined architecture is further enhanced by using neural network optimization and ensemble techniques.
Deformation of "tunable" clay-polymer composites
- Authors: Bishop, Matthew , Kim, Sungho , Palomino, Angelica , Lee, Jong-Sub
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Applied Clay Science Vol. 101, no. (2014), p. 265-271
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Responsive clay-polymer composites are the next step in the development of polymer-modified clay materials. It has been shown at the micro-scale that these materials respond to the surrounding pore fluid environment, resulting in an alteration in fabric. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the responsive nature of these materials on the consolidation properties. Two composite types were selected to highlight the differences based on modified interparticle and interparticle/interlayer spacings: one made from a kaolinite and one from a montmorillonite. Each composite was made with polyacrylamide as the polymer. The clay-polymer composites were subjected to 1-D consolidation tests during which shear wave velocity was also measured. The pH of the saturating fluid was varied to promote composite response. Results show that the compressibility, compression index, and swelling index of the composite materials are greater than the untreated clay materials. Furthermore, these properties are pH-dependent for both types of composite materials and are consistent with the long-term conformational behavior of PAM. This apparent observation confirms that the behavior of the clay-PAM composites is controlled by the behavior of PAM. On the other hand, the shear wave velocities between the control and composite samples were not significantly different. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.
Direct injection of hydrogen, oxygen and water in a novel two stroke engine
- Authors: Boretti, Alberto , Osman, Azmi , Aris, Ishak
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Hydrogen Energy Vol. 36, no. 16 (2011), p. 10100-10106
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This short communication proposes novel two stroke engine burning hydrogen in oxygen in presence of large amounts of steam as residual gases. This engine has a bowl-in-piston combustion chamber, exhaust valves only and it uses direct injection of hydrogen, oxygen and water. Diesel-like compression ignition combustion is achieved by injecting the oxygen and the hydrogen in the surrounding steam close to a continuously operated glow plug. The operation of the engine is simulated by commercial softwares. The water injection enables acceptable metal temperatures and reduced heat losses. First computational results show brake efficiencies above 55% achieved with mass of water injected about twice the mass of oxygen and hydrogen mixture and operation with a significant amount of exhaust gas recirculation. It seems reasonable to guess efficiencies of the fully optimised and developed engine approaching the 60% mark, 20% higher than those of the state-of-the-art H 2ICEs designed for operation with air using the spark-ignition engine concept as well as of those projected for Diesel engines operating with exhaust energy recovery. Worth of mention is also the much higher power density following the two stroke operation. © 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Diesel-like and HCCI-like operation of a truck engine converted to hydrogen
- Authors: Boretti, Alberto
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Hydrogen Energy Vol. 36, no. 2 (November 2011 2011), p. 15382
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: In addition to the traditional spark ignition (S1), premixed, gasoline-like and compression ignition (CI), diffusion, Diesel-like operation of internal combustion engines, premixed, homogeneous charge, compression ignition (HCCI) operation has also been proposed to improve the fuel conversion efficiency and reduce the pollutant formation. To be attractive, the operation in HCCI mode has to be coupled with the other traditional operations, being HCCI in general difficult to be controlled and limited to values of the air-to-fuel equivalence ratio
- Description: C1
Enabling global exchange of groundwater data : GroundWaterML2 (GWML2)
- Authors: Brodaric, Boyan , Boisvert, Eric , Chery, Laurence , Dahlhaus, Peter , Grellet, Sylvain , Kmoch, Alexander , Létourneau, Francois , Lucido, Jessica , Simons, Bruce , Wagner, Bernhard
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Hydrogeology Journal Vol. 26, no. 3 (2018), p. 733-741
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: GWML2 is an international standard for the online exchange of groundwater data that addresses the problem of data heterogeneity. This problem makes groundwater data hard to find and use because the data are diversely structured and fragmented into numerous data silos. Overcoming data heterogeneity requires a common data format; however, until the development of GWML2, an appropriate international standard has been lacking. GWML2 represents key hydrogeological entities such as aquifers and water wells, as well as related measurements and groundwater flows. It is developed and tested by an international consortium of groundwater data providers from North America, Europe, and Australasia, and facilitates many forms of data exchange, information representation, and the development of online web portals and tools. © 2018, The Author(s).
'VisionZero': Is it achievable for rugby-related catastrophic injuries in South Africa?
- Authors: Brown, James , Viljoen, Wayne , Readhead, Clint , Baerecke, Gail , Lambert, Mike , Finch, Caroline
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Sports Medicine Vol. 51, no. 15 (2017), p. 1106-1107
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1058737
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The Chris Burger Petro Jackson Players’ Fund (CBPJPF) was founded by Morne Du Plessis when his provincial rugby teammate—Chris Burger—was fatally injured during a match (www.playersfund.org.za). The CBPJPF aims to assist all seriously injured rugby players through donations made by individuals and organisations, including SA RUGBY. These seriously injured players form the CBPJPF ‘membership’ who often mention their appreciation for this lifeline. However, the founding member of the CBPJPF—Morne Du Plessis—is quick to say ‘we don’t want any new members’.5
Optical characterisation of alumina–mullite materials for solar particle receiver applications
- Authors: Chen, Jiangjing , Wheeler, Vincent , Liu, Boqing , Kumar, Apurv , Coventry, Joe , Lipiński, Wojciech
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells Vol. 230, no. (2021), p.
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Alumina–mullite particles are used in high-temperature solar thermal applications such as solar particle receivers. In this study, optical properties of alumina–mullite materials with variable content of alumina and mullite are determined in the spectral range of 0.193–1.69 μm. Variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry is performed for alumina–mullite thin films, which are fabricated by magnetron sputtering. The thin films are characterised by scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and energy dispersive spectroscopy methods. The B-spline model is employed to generate ellipsometric parameters to fit the measured data and to obtain the optical properties. The investigated materials of variable content of alumina and mullite have a similar refractive index in the considered spectral range. The absorptive index of the alumina–mullite materials in the spectral range of 0.193–0.4 μm is higher than in the range 0.4–1.69 μm. The absorptive index decreases with increasing content of alumina in the spectral range of 0.193–0.4 μm. The material composed of similar proportions of alumina and mullite yields the highest absorptive index in the spectral range of 0.4–1.1 μm. The optical properties determined for the alumina–mullite materials are applied to obtain the radiative properties of spherical homogeneous particles. Mie theory is used to calculate absorption and scattering efficiency factors, as well as the scattering phase function. In addition, the scattering phase functions are obtained using the Henyey–Greenstein approximation and the transport approximation. The Monte Carlo ray-tracing method is employed to study the radiative transfer in a model one-dimensional particle curtain containing polydisperse particles exposed to high-flux solar irradiation. It is found that the overall reflectance, absorptance and transmittance of the particles only weakly depend on the optical properties of the materials investigated. © 2021 Elsevier B.V. Corrigendum to “Optical characterisation of alumina–mullite materials for solar particle receiver applications” [Solar Energy Mater. Solar Cell. 230 (2021) 111170] (Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells (2021) 230, (S0927024821002130), (10.1016/j.solmat.2021.111170)) Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Volume 231, October 2021, Article number 111225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2021.111225
- Description: Alumina–mullite particles are used in high-temperature solar thermal applications such as solar particle receivers. In this study, optical properties of alumina–mullite materials with variable content of alumina and mullite are determined in the spectral range of 0.193–1.69 μm. Variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry is performed for alumina–mullite thin films, which are fabricated by magnetron sputtering. The thin films are characterised by scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and energy dispersive spectroscopy methods. The B-spline model is employed to generate ellipsometric parameters to fit the measured data and to obtain the optical properties. The investigated materials of variable content of alumina and mullite have a similar refractive index in the considered spectral range. The absorptive index of the alumina–mullite materials in the spectral range of 0.193–0.4 μm is higher than in the range 0.4–1.69 μm. The absorptive index decreases with increasing content of alumina in the spectral range of 0.193–0.4 μm. The material composed of similar proportions of alumina and mullite yields the highest absorptive index in the spectral range of 0.4–1.1 μm. The optical properties determined for the alumina–mullite materials are applied to obtain the radiative properties of spherical homogeneous particles. Mie theory is used to calculate absorption and scattering efficiency factors, as well as the scattering phase function. In addition, the scattering phase functions are obtained using the Henyey–Greenstein approximation and the transport approximation. The Monte Carlo ray-tracing method is employed to study the radiative transfer in a model one-dimensional particle curtain containing polydisperse particles exposed to high-flux solar irradiation. It is found that the overall reflectance, absorptance and transmittance of the particles only weakly depend on the optical properties of the materials investigated. © 2021 Elsevier B.V. Corrigendum to “Optical characterisation of alumina–mullite materials for solar particle receiver applications” [Solar Energy Mater. Solar Cell. 230 (2021) 111170] (Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells (2021) 230, (S0927024821002130), (10.1016/j.solmat.2021.111170)) Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Volume 231, October 2021, Article number 111225