Determining the structures of nanoparticles at atomic resolution is vital to understand their structure–property correlations. Large metal nanoparticles with core diameter beyond 2 nm have, to date, eluded characterization by single-crystal X-ray analysis. Here we report the chemical syntheses and structures of two giant thiolated Ag nanoparticles containing 136 and 374 Ag atoms (that is, up to 3 nm core diameter). As the largest thiolated metal nanoparticles crystallographically determined so far, these Ag nanoparticles enter the truly metallic regime with the emergence of surface plasmon resonance. As miniatures of fivefold twinned nanostructures, these structures demonstrate a subtle distortion within fivefold twinned nanostructures of face-centred cubic metals. The Ag nanoparticles reported in this work serve as excellent models to understand the detailed structure distortion within twinned metal nanostructures and also how silver nanoparticles can span from the molecular to the metallic regime.

Bridge influence line (BIL) is a promising tool for the real applications in the fields of bridge weight-in-motion (BWIM), model updating, damage identification, and load carrying capacity evaluation. The key of such applications is how to obtain the accurate results of BIL. To accurately identify BIL based on bridge dynamic responses induced by a moving vehicle, two critical problems, including how to construct a general representation function of BIL and how to deal with the ill-posed inverse problem, should be properly resolved. This paper proposes a novel approach based on the adaptive B-spline basis dictionary and sparse regularization technique for BIL identification. A representation of basis function is first established to construct BIL, and then integrated with a redundant B-spline basis dictionary to ensure the sparsity of solution. A curvature-based adaptive node optimization method is proposed to automatically adjust the spatial arrangement of nodes according to the shape of BILs. Numerical and experimental validations are conducted to verify the accuracy and robustness of the proposed approach. The identified BIL results are accurate, indicating that the proposed node-adaptive optimization and sparse regularization techniques are effective to improve the quality of BIL identification. It is also shown that the proposed approach is not sensitive to the noise interference and configuration of testing vehicle. Through the robustness testing, it is proved that the proposed approach has the merits of high accuracy and strong robustness. KEYWORDS adaptive optimization, BIL identification, B-spline basis dictionary, inverse problem, sparse regularization

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To improve heat transfer performance of shell side of double-pipe heat exchanger with helical fins on its inner tube, some vortex generators (VGs) were installed along the centerline of the helical channel. Heat transfer performance and pressure drop characteristic of the enhanced heat exchangers were investigated using air as the working fluid and steam as the heating medium. The helical fins were in the annulus and span its full width at different helical pitch. Wing-type VGs (delta or rectangular wing) and winglet-type VGs (delta or rectangular winglet pair) were used to combine with helical fins. The friction factor and Nusselt number can be well correlated by power-law correlations in the Reynolds number range studied. In order to evaluate the thermal performance of the shell side enhanced over the shell side without enhancement, comparisons were made under three constraints: (1) identical mass flow rate, IMF; (2) identical pressure drop, IPD and (3) identical pumping power, IPP. The results show the shell side enhanced by the compound heat transfer enhancement has better performance than the shell side only enhanced by helical fins at shorter helical pitch under the three constraints.

OH radical in the corona discharge with pipe-nozzle-plate electrode has been diagnosed by optical emission spectroscopy. Spatial variations of OH radical emission in discharge gap have been measured. Relative intensity of OH radical emission spectroscopy increases with increasing water vapor flux injected into the reactor or intensity of electric field supported. In positive pulsed corona discharge, relative intensity is higher than that in positive DC corona discharge and lower than that in negative DC corona discharge. Strongest intensity of OH radical spectrum appears within the range of 5 mm near the discharge nozzleelectrode. In addition, it is proved that the efficiency of desulphurization from flue gas by pulsed corona discharge plasma processes can be improved when OH radical is produced in the reactor.

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