Laminar Natural Convection From Isothermal Vertical Cylinders (open access)

Laminar Natural Convection From Isothermal Vertical Cylinders

Laminar natural convection heat transfer from the vertical surface of a cylinder is a classical subject, which has been studied extensively. Furthermore, this subject has generated some recent interest in the literature. In the present investigation, numerical experiments were performed to determine average Nusselt numbers for isothermal vertical cylinders (103 < RaL < 109, 0.5 < L/D <10, and Pr = 0.7) with and without an adiabatic top in a quiescent ambient environment which will allow for plume growth. Results were compared with commonly used correlations and new average Nusselt number correlations are presented. Furthermore, the limit for which the heat transfer results for a vertical flat plate may be used as an approximation for the heat transfer from a vertical cylinder was investigated.
Date: August 2012
Creator: Day, Jerod
System: The UNT Digital Library
Simulation Study of Tremor Suppression and Experiment of Energy Harvesting with Piezoelectric Materials (open access)

Simulation Study of Tremor Suppression and Experiment of Energy Harvesting with Piezoelectric Materials

The objective of this research is to develop a wearable device that could harvest waste mechanical energy of the human hand movement and utilize this energy to suppress wrist tremors. Piezoelectric material is used to measure the hand movement signals, and the signal of wrist tremor is filtered to be utilized to suppress the tremor. In order to conduct the experiment of energy harvesting and tremor suppression, an experimental rig was fabricated. Two types of piezoelectric materials, PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) films and MFC (macro fiber composite) films, are used to harvest mechanical energy and used as actuators to suppress hand tremors. However, due to some shortages of the materials, these two types of materials are not used as actuators to suppress the wrist tremors. Thus, we use Matlab Simulink to simulate the tremor suppression with AVC (active vibration control) algorithm.
Date: August 2012
Creator: Ou, Jianqiang
System: The UNT Digital Library