Abstract

For more than a century, it has been believed that all hydraulic jumps are created due to gravity. However, we found that thin-film hydraulic jumps are not induced by gravity. This study explores the initiation of thin-film hydraulic jumps. For circular jumps produced by the normal impingement of a jet onto a solid surface, we found that the jump is formed when surface tension and viscous forces balance the momentum in the film and gravity plays no significant role. Experiments show no dependence on the orientation of the surface and a scaling relation balancing viscous forces and surface tension collapses the experimental data. Experiments on thin film planar jumps in a channel also show that the predominant balance is with surface tension, although for the thickness of the films we studied gravity also played a role in the jump formation. A theoretical analysis shows that the downstream transport of surface tension energy is the previously neglected, critical ingredient in these flows and that capillary waves play the role of gravity waves in a traditional jump in demarcating the transition from the supercritical to subcritical flow associated with these jumps.

In order to suppress chronic inflammation while supporting cell proliferation, there has been a continuous surge toward development of polymers with the intention of delivering anti-inflammatory molecules in a sustained manner. In the above backdrop, we report the synthesis of a novel, stable, cross-linked polyester with salicylic acid (SA) incorporated in the polymeric backbone and propose a simple synthesis route by melt condensation. The as-synthesized polymer was hydrophobic with a glass transition temperature of 1 °C, which increases to 17 °C upon curing. The combination of NMR and FT-IR spectral techniques established the ester linkages in the as-synthesized SA-based polyester. The pH-dependent degradation rate and the rate of release of salicylic acid from the as-synthesized SA-based polymer were studied at physiological conditions in vitro. The polyester underwent surface erosion and exhibited linear degradation kinetics in which a change in degradation rate is observed after 4-10 days and 24% mass loss was recorded after 4 months at 37 °C and pH 7.4. The delivery of salicylic acid also showed a similar change in slopes, with a sustained release rate of 3.5% in 4 months. The cytocompatibility studies of these polyesters were carried out with C2C12 murine myoblast cells using techniques like MTT assay and flow cytometry. Our results strongly suggest that SA-based polyester supports cell proliferation for 3 days in culture and do not cause cell death (<7%), as quantified by propidium iodide (PI) stained cells. Hence, these polyesters can be used as implant materials for localized, sustained delivery of salicylic acid and have applications in adjuvant cancer therapy, chronic wound healing, and as an alternative to commercially available polymers like poly(lactic acid) and poly(glycolic acid) or their copolymers.

The year 2020 has seen the emergence of a global pandemic as a result of the disease COVID-19. This report reviews knowledge of the transmission of COVID-19 indoors, examines the evidence for mitigating measures, and considers the implications for wintertime with a focus on ventilation.

Cleaning by a horizontal water jet, impinging onto a soiled Perspex vertical plate, is described. The plate, the substrate, was coated with PVA or petroleum jelly, the soil. The substrate was either (i) fixed, for batch tests in which the cleaned area, roughly circular, grew with time, or (ii) the substrate moved vertically up or down in its own plane, the water jet remaining fixed; this reproduced the effect of a jet moving across a surface for cleaning, as found in real tank cleaning operations. In the batch experiments, growth of the radius a of the cleaning area is well described, at early times t, by a 5-a o 5 = K 5 (t-t o), a o being the initial radius of the cleaned area at time t o ; K is a constant. At later times with petroleum jelly, the cleaning front reached a maximum value, when the outward momentum of the radially flowing water film balanced the strength of the soil. This maximum value is modelled as a ramp of viscoplastic soil inclined at angle χ to the substrate surface, where χ was found to vary from 7 to 25. In the tests of continuous cleaning of petroleum jelly, a lengthening cleaned area, of width w c , was observed on the moving substrate. Near the jet was a stationary clean front, whose shape looked like half an ellipse. This shape, and the width w c , are well described by theory (Wilson et al Chem. Eng. Sci. 2015, 123, 450-459) using parameters from the abovementioned batch experiments. This establishes a good link between batch and continuous cleaning experiments.

When a liquid jet impinges on a vertical wall it forms a thin film which flows radially away from the point of impingement until a point where the outward momentum is balanced by surface tension and a film jump is formed. The model for the location for the film jump presented by Wilson et al. (Chem. Eng. Sci, 2012, Vol. 68, pp 449-460) is revised to include the development of laminar and turbulent boundary layers in the thin film. The criterion for film jump formation is also revisited, and the analysis explains why the location is insensitive to the nature of the wall material at high flow rates. The model is compared with published data for velocity profiles in the thin film, the transition to turbulence, and new experimental data where the average velocity in the thin film was estimated from the initial growth of the radial flow pattern for flow rates of 1.95 to 4.01 dm 3 s-1 , corresponding to jet Reynolds numbers of 15 500 to 32 000. Very good agreement with the published and measured data is obtained, with no adjustable parameters, for jets impinging perpendicularly as well as at an oblique angle. The model shows that the parabolic velocity profile assumed by Wilson et al. gives a reasonable estimate of the average velocity, but it is not able to predict phenomena such as the observed transition to turbulence.

No abstract

No abstract