Description:
Heat transfer in directly-irradiated high-temperature solid–gas flows laden with polydisperse particles is investigated using a novel transient three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model. The model couples particle–gas hydrodynamics of solid–gas flows laden with polydisperse particles, radiative heat transfer in non-grey absorbing, emitting and anisotropically-scattering multi-component participating media, conduction heat transfer in the gas phase, and interfacial convection heat transfer. The multiphase particle-in-cell method is used to predict high-fidelity solid–gas flow characteristics, such as the local discrete particle size distribution, with increased computational efficiency by combining the advantages of both Eulerian and Lagrangian methods. The multi-component radiative transfer model is implemented using an advanced collision-based Monte Carlo ray-tracing method. The number of the prescribed discrete particle components is found to be the key parameter affecting the computational accuracy and efficiency, which primarily depends on the size distribution of the particles. For the model particle–gas flow featuring free-falling Gamma-distributed ceramic particles exposed to concentrated solar irradiation, the particle volume fraction, radiative, fluid flow and thermal characteristics appear to converge with the increasing number of the discrete particle components. Five particle components are sufficient to obtain physically meaningful results. A further increase in the number of the particle components only slightly increases the accuracy of the numerical predictions at the expense of a rapidly increasing computational time. For five particle components, the particle vertical velocity at the receiver exit for particles with the diameter of 43.4
Description:
In recent years, block caving has drawn the attention of many mine enterprises due to the admired extraction rate and lower cost, which can exploit the materials via gravity inflow. At the same time, the limitation of this advanced method cannot be underestimated easily, such as surface subsidence and boulder, usually, the latter leads to the frequent secondary blast and damage of bottom structure. Thus, it is significant and crucial to evaluate the fragmentation before the implement of this method. But, traditional fragmentation assessment model suffers from the complex process of modeling and simulation. In this study, a hybrid model consists of unascertained measurement theory and information entropy was constructed to meet the requirements of this prospective mining method. Considering the influence of various parameters on rock fragmentation at the same time, twenty-three factors (i.e., uniaxial compressive strength, modulus ratio, fracture frequency, aperture, persistence, joint orientation, roughness, infilling, weathering, in situ stresses, stress orientation, stress ratio, underground water, fine ratio, hydraulic radius, undercut height, draw column height, draw points geometry, draw rate, multiple draw interaction, air gap height, broken ore density and undercut direction) were chosen to extract the main characteristics of rock mass samples from the two different mines, namely Reserve North ( Chile ), Diablo Regimiento ( Chile ) and Kemess mine ( Canada ). A new membership function (logarithm curve) was added to eliminate uncertainty results from the low level of knowledge about rock mass properties. Then, information entropy was performed to quantify the impacts of individual index. A credible degree identification criterion ( R η ) was also applied to review the sample attributes qualitatively. Ultimately, degree of fragmentation of the three samples was judged easily on the basis of a composite measurement vectors and R η . The evaluation results showed that the fragmentation grades of Reserve North , Diablo Regimiento and Kemess mine , separately, were “Good”, “Medium” and “Good”. With regard to the excellent performance of this hybrid model, it can be seen as a reliable approach to describe the fragmentation potential during the ore extraction using block caving mining method.
Description:
Research in texture feature approximation is still in the embryonic stage because of difficulties in developing a sound theoretical model to express the unique pattern in the intensity-variation of pixels in the neighbourhood of the pixel-of-interest so that it can sufficiently discriminate different textures. Local texture descriptors are widely used in image segmentation as they comprise pixel-wise features. The Weber local descriptor (WLD) with differential excitation and gradient orientation components, inspired by Weber's Law, has been leveraged in the state-of-the-art iterative contraction and merging (ICM) image segmentation technique. However, WLD has inherent drawbacks in the formulation of the components that limit its discriminatory capability. This paper introduces a novel texture descriptor by directly modelling the distribution of intensity-variation in the parametric space of the Weibull distribution using its shape and scale parameters. A unified 'joint scale' texture property is introduced, which can discriminate textures better than the individual parameters while keeping the length of the descriptor shorter. Additionally, the accuracy of WLD's gradient orientation component is improved by using an extended Sobel operator and expressing gradients in -
Description:
With the increasing number of renewable generations, the prospects of long-distance bulk power transmission impels the expansion of point-to-point High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) grid to an emerging Multi-terminal high-voltage Direct Current (MTDC) grid. The DC grid protection with faster selectivity enhances the operational continuity of the MTDC grid. Based on the reactor voltage gradient (RVG), this paper proposes a fast and reliable fault identification technique with precise discrimination of internal and external DC faults. Considering the voltage developed across the modular multilevel converter (MMC) reactor and DC terminal reactor, the RVG is formulated to characterise an internal and external DC fault. With a window of four RVG samples, the fault is detected and discriminated by the proposed main protection scheme amidst a period of five sampling intervals. Depending on the reactor current increment, a backup protection scheme is also proposed to enhance the protection reliability. The performance of the proposed scheme is validated in a four-terminal MTDC grid. The results under meaningful fault events show that the proposed scheme is capable to identify the DC fault within millisecond. Moreover, the evaluation of the protection sensitivity and robustness reveals that the proposed scheme is highly selective for a wide range of fault resistances and locations, higher sampling frequencies, and irrelevant transient events. Furthermore, the comparison results exhibit that the proposed RVG method improves the discrimination performance of the protection scheme and thereby, proves to be a better choice for future DC fault identification.
Description:
With the increasing number of renewable generations, the prospects of long-distance bulk power transmission impels the expansion of point-to-point High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) grid to an emerging Multi-terminal high-voltage Direct Current (MTDC) grid. The DC grid protection with faster selectivity enhances the operational continuity of the MTDC grid. Based on the reactor voltage gradient (RVG), this paper proposes a fast and reliable fault identification technique with precise discrimination of internal and external DC faults. Considering the voltage developed across the modular multilevel converter (MMC) reactor and DC terminal reactor, the RVG is formulated to characterise an internal and external DC fault. With a window of four RVG samples, the fault is detected and discriminated by the proposed main protection scheme amidst a period of five sampling intervals. Depending on the reactor current increment, a backup protection scheme is also proposed to enhance the protection reliability. The performance of the proposed scheme is validated in a four-terminal MTDC grid. The results under meaningful fault events show that the proposed scheme is capable to identify the DC fault within millisecond. Moreover, the evaluation of the protection sensitivity and robustness reveals that the proposed scheme is highly selective for a wide range of fault resistances and locations, higher sampling frequencies, and irrelevant transient events. Furthermore, the comparison results exhibit that the proposed RVG method improves the discrimination performance of the protection scheme and thereby, proves to be a better choice for future DC fault identification.
Description:
Conical picks are widely used as cutting tools in shearers and roadheaders, and the mean cutting force (MCF) is one of the important parameters affecting conical pick performance. As MCF depends on a number of parameters and due to that the existing empirical and theoretical formulas and numerical modelling are not sufficient enough and reliable to predict MCF in a proficient manner. So, in this research, a novel intelligent model based on a random forest algorithm (RF) and a heuristic algorithm called the salp swarm algorithm (SSA) have been applied to determine the optimal hyper-parameters in RF, and root mean square error is used as a fitness function. A total of 188 data samples including 50 rock types and seven parameters (tensile strength of the rock
Description:
Conical picks are widely used as cutting tools in shearers and roadheaders, and the mean cutting force (MCF) is one of the important parameters affecting conical pick performance. As MCF depends on a number of parameters and due to that the existing empirical and theoretical formulas and numerical modelling are not sufficient enough and reliable to predict MCF in a proficient manner. So, in this research, a novel intelligent model based on a random forest algorithm (RF) and a heuristic algorithm called the salp swarm algorithm (SSA) have been applied to determine the optimal hyper-parameters in RF, and root mean square error is used as a fitness function. A total of 188 data samples including 50 rock types and seven parameters (tensile strength of the rock