Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel is considered the most promising candidate for artificial cartilage because of its good lubricity and low permeability. However, the efficacy of single-network PVA hydrogels under variable loads has not yet been determined. In this study, a one-step physical-cross-linking method was used to compose PVA/PEG double-network composite hydrogels. We changed the polyethylene glycol (PEG) content of the composite gel and tested the frictional-wear performance under different loads and speeds. With the mass fraction of PEG at 30 wt.%, the hardness of the PVA/PEG composite gel increased to 167.7% that of pure PVA. Under dry-friction conditions, the average coefficient of friction was approximately 0.14 and the wear rate on the surface of the hydrogel was insignificant. The cross-linking between PVA and PEG greatly enhanced the stability of the composite hydrogel polymer network. The structure of the composite gel was analyzed by a variety of standard methods. The hydrogel has excellent biocompatibility and self-healing ability and is a self-lubricating, self-healing candidate material for articular-cartilage repair.
The knitting needle cylinder is one of the core parts of a hosiery machine. The operation of its needles can directly affect the production quality and efficiency of the hosiery machine. To reduce the production loss of a hosiery machine caused by knitting needle faults, a knitting needle fault detection system for hosiery machines based on a synergistic combination of laser detection and machine vision is proposed in this paper. When the system was operating normally, a photoelectric detector collected the laser signal reflected by the knitting needle and the system monitored the operation of the knitting needle using the ratio of adjacent peak-to-peak distances of the signals. When a fault signal was detected, the hosiery machine was stopped by the system immediately, and a charge-coupled device camera was used to take an image of the faulty knitting needle. After image preprocessing, the faulty knitting needle could be identified quickly and accurately using an image region size classifier based on a decision tree. The experimental results showed that a single image classification by the classifier could be performed in as little as 0.002 s.
It has been observed that the geometry of a brush seal has a significant effect on the sealing performance. However, the relationship between rotordynamic coefficients and geometry factors of the brush seal itself are rarely considered. In this article, the rotordynamic coefficients of a typical single-stage brush seal for different geometries and operating conditions were numerically analyzed using CFD RANS solutions coupled with a non-Darcian porous medium model. The reaction force which plays an essential role in rotordynamic coefficients was obtained by integrating the dynamic pressure distribution. The influence of the bristle pack thickness, fence height, clearance size and other working condition parameters on aerodynamic force, stiffness coefficients, and damping coefficients of brush seal were presented and compared. In addition, the effects of various geometric configurations on pressure and flow features were also discussed.
The number of phase wraps that result from the carrier component can be completely eliminated or reduced by first applying a fast Fourier transform (FFT) to the image and then shifting the spectrum to the origin. However, because the spectrum can only be shifted by an integer number, the phase wraps of the carrier component cannot be completely reduced. In this paper, an improved carrier frequency-shifting algorithm based on 2-FFT for phase wrap reduction is proposed which allows the spectrum to be shifted by a rational number. Firstly, the phase wraps are reduced by the conventional FFT frequency shift method. Secondly, the wrapped phase with residual carrier components is filtered and magnified sequentially; the amplified phase is transformed into the frequency domain using an FFT, and then, the wrapped phase with the residual carrier components can be further reduced by shifting the spectrum by a rational number. Simulations and experiments were conducted to validate the efficiency of the proposed method.
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