The effects of the no-touch gap on the no-touch bipolar radiofrequency ablation treatment of liver cancer: A numerical study using a two compartment model

The no-touch bipolar radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for cancer treatment is advantageous primarily because of its capability to prevent tumour track seeding (TTS). In this technique, the RF probes are placed at a distance (no-touch gap) away from the tumour boundary. Ideally, the RF probes should be placed sufficiently far from the tumour in order to avoid TTS. However, having a gap that is too large can lead to ineffective ablation. This paper investigates how the selection of the no-touch gap can affect the tissue electrical and thermal responses during the no-touch bipolar RFA treatment. Simulations were carried out on a two compartment model using the finite element method. Results obtained indicated that a gap that is too large may lead to incomplete ablation and failure to achieve significant ablation margin. However, keeping the gap to be too small may not be clinically practical. It was suggested that the incomplete ablation and the insufficient ablation margin observed in some of the cases may require the placement of additional probes around the tumour. The present study stresses on the importance of identifying the optimal no-touch gap that can avoid TTS without compromising the treatment outcome.     

Component ordering strategies in assembly systems with uncertain capacity and random yield

Sourcing components in a complex global supplier network may lead to a high degree of supply uncertainty. Events, such as unexpected production defects or insufficient supplier capacity, can cause unexpected shortages of required components and halt the assembly of final products. Accordingly, the assembly enterprises must effectively manage various supply uncertainties in their component ordering decisions to avoid such component shortfalls. These issues have guided this research to investigate the optimal ordering strategies of an assembler facing the following two types of supply uncertainty: the uncertain production capacity of a standard component (component 1) and the random production yield of a core component (component 2). The assembler makes the component ordering decisions before these supply uncertainties are realized. We characterize the optimal ordering decision and find that the assembler should order components 1 and 2 according to a fixed ratio, which only depends on the random yield of component 2 and the production cost of component 1, but not on the uncertain capacity of component 1. A case study is presented to further explore the intertwined effects of these two uncertainties in an assembly system. Finally, the model is extended to consider a secondary option of buying additional component 1 s after observing some or all of the supply uncertainties, and this secondary option endows the firm with different capabilities in counteracting the supply uncertainties.     

An Improved Composite Multiscale Fuzzy Entropy for Feature Extraction of MI-EEG

Motor Imagery Electroencephalography (MI-EEG) has shown good prospects in neurorehabilitation, and the entropy-based nonlinear dynamic methods have been successfully applied to feature extraction of MI-EEG. Especially based on Multiscale Fuzzy Entropy (MFE), the fuzzy entropies of the τ coarse-grained sequences in τ scale are calculated and averaged to develop the Composite MFE (CMFE) with more feature information. However, the coarse-grained process fails to match the nonstationary characteristic of MI-EEG by a mean filtering algorithm. In this paper, CMFE is improved by assigning the different weight factors to the different sample points in the coarse-grained process, i.e., using the weighted mean filters instead of the original mean filters, which is conductive to signal filtering and feature extraction, and the resulting personalized Weighted CMFE (WCMFE) is more suitable to represent the nonstationary MI-EEG for different subjects. All the WCMFEs of multi-channel MI-EEG are fused in serial to construct the feature vector, which is evaluated by a back-propagation neural network. Based on a public dataset, extensive experiments are conducted, yielding a relatively higher classification accuracy by WCMFE, and the statistical significance is examined by two-sample t-test. The results suggest that WCMFE is superior to the other entropy-based and traditional feature extraction methods.     

Optimal Sensor Placement Method Considering the Importance of Structural Performance Degradation for the Allowable Loadings for Damage Identification

Considering the importance of damage for the structural performance and for decreasing the identification error, this paper proposes an optimal sensor placement method based on a weighted standard deviation norm (WSDN) index. The standard deviation of the identified damage parameters is solved using the series expansion theory and probabilistic method to quantify the effect of a measurement error on damage identification. The damage estimation weight (DEW) index, which can reflect the importance of each element in the structural capabilities, is established based on a performance-damage curve. A significant DEW for a specified element indicates that the element is important for the structure and that its identification error should be small. The WSDN index is obtained from the Hadamard product of the standard deviations (SDs) and DEWs. Thus, the identification error of the entire structure is measured using the weighting coefficient. The optimal sensor placement (OSP) procedure is performed by minimizing the WSDN index. The proposed method can clearly decrease the uncertainties of the identification results for the important elements. Other OSP criteria, including the condition number, information entropy, and standard deviation norm, which aim to decrease the identification error, are discussed in this paper for comparison with the proposed method. Two numerical examples and an experiment, which pertain to the deformation performance, buckling features, and dynamic characteristics, are discussed to verify the advantages of the proposed method.     

Relationship between the radial dynamics and the chemical production of a harmonically driven spherical bubble

The sonochemical activity and the radial dynamics of a harmonically excited spherical bubble are investigated numerically. A detailed model is employed capable to calculate the chemical production inside the bubble placed in water that is saturated with oxygen. Parameter studies are performed with the control parameters of the pressure amplitude, the forcing frequency and the bubble size. Three different definitions of collapse strengths (extracted from the radius vs. time curves) are examined and compared with the chemical output of various species. A mathematical formula is established to estimate the chemical output as a function of the collapse strength; thus, the chemical activity can be predicted without taking into account the chemical kinetics into the bubble model. The calculations are carried out by an in-house code exploiting the high processing power of professional graphics cards (GPUs).The results shown that chemical activity can be approximated qualitatively from the values of relative expansion. This could be helpful in order to optimise chemical output of sonochemical reactors either from measurement data or simulations as well.     

Probing the multifunctional behaviour of barium zirconate/barium titanate/epoxy resin hybrid nanodielectrics

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - In this study, thermodynamic analysis of a supercritical closed Brayton cycle integrated with parabolic trough solar collectors operating with various...     

Modelling and nanoscale force spectroscopy of frequency modulation atomic force microscopy

In this paper, a simulation model for frequency modulation atomic force microscopy (FM-AFM) operating in constant amplitude dynamic mode is presented. The model is based on the slow time varying function theory. The mathematical principles to derive the dynamical equations for the amplitude and phase of the FM-AFM cantilever-tip motion are explained and the stability and performance of its closed-loop controller to keep the amplitude at constant value and phase at 90° is analysed. Then, the performance of the theoretical model is supported by comparison of numerical simulations and experiments. Furthermore, the transient behaviour of amplitude, phase and frequency shift of FM-AFM is investigated and the effect of controller gains on the transient motion is analysed. Finally, the derived FM-AFM model is used to simulate the single molecule/nanoscale force spectroscopy and study the effect of sample viscosity, stiffness and Hamaker constant on the response of FM-AFM.     

Dynamic modeling and analysis of wind turbine drivetrain considering the effects of non-torque loads

With the increase of the rotor diameter and the deterioration of operating conditions, modern wind turbines suffer from more and more significant time-varying non-torque loads, which increases the burden of turbine structures especially the gearbox. Based on an aeroelastic loose coupling approach and assembly of the finite element method, an integrated drivetrain coupling analysis model including blade module, aerodynamic module, and gearbox module is established in this study. This proposed model is validated by comparing the calculation results with previous literature. Taking National Renewable Energy Laboratory 5-MW wind turbine as the research object, the gearbox vibration responses, gear meshing forces and bearing forces under non-torque loads caused by blade gravity, wind shear (WS), tower shadow (TS) and yawed inflow are studied in detail. Results show that the y-direction displacements of the gearbox, sun gear 1, sun gear 2 and gear are larger than those in x-direction because F_y or M_x generated by blade gravity, WS and TS dominates the non-torque loads. The non-torque loads lead to a non-uniform planet load sharing especially for the planetary gear stage 1. Because of the fluctuations of non-torque loads, not only the rotation frequencies of the corresponding carrier but also the multiple frequencies of the carrier 1 are observed in the frequency spectrums. The non-torque loads are mainly borne by carrier 1 bearings. Except for the blade gravity, the bearing forces caused by other unsteady inflows have obvious fluctuations.