Jo Dec 29, 2024
Airlift pumps, fluid machines for raising liquids or slurries through a vertical pipe by compressed air injected into the pipe near its mid position or lower end part, are widely used in the fields of deep seawater upwelling and seabed mining due to the advantages of simple structure, high reliability, convenient maintenance and low cost.
Therefore, many experimental studies have been conducted to clarify the air-water-solid three-phase flow characteristics of airlift pumps. Numerical and analytical studies have also been carried out to predict the performance of airlift pumps.
Rim Un Ryong, a researcher at the Faculty of Shipbuilding and Ocean Engineering, has carried out a numerical analysis of steady air–water–solid three-phase flow as well as water–solid two-phase flow in the airlift pump, based on a one-dimensional multi-fluid model.
He calculated the depth distributions of 8 physical quantities such as volumetric fractions and axial velocities of all phases of gas, liquid and solid, air density and pressure by the governing equations or by integrating the vector form of nonhomogeneous ordinary differential equations for three-phase and two-phase flow intervals, respectively.
He applied the proposed method to the seabed mining in water depth of 2 000 meters and obtained the calculation results.
For further information, please refer to his paper “Numerical analysis of air–water–solid three-phase flow in airlift pump for seabed mining” in “Ocean Engineering” (SCI).
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Jo Dec 27, 2024
Nowadays, the numerical simulation method is an essential tool in the stability analysis of mining engineering, and it is important to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the mining engineering design to construct a numerical model used as a more realistic representation of the in situ situation.
Numerical simulation programs widely used for stability analysis of geotechnical and mining engineering structures are FLAC3D and ANSYS, etc.
Han Un Chol, a researcher at the Science Engineering Institute, has proposed a fast and convenient modeling technique by combining ANSYS and FLAC3D with unique advantages for numerical calculation and SURPAC suitable for 3D modeling.
First, he examined the relationships between the data structures of the model files for SURPAC, ANSYS and FLAC3D, and established the transformation technique of an integrated 3D solid model via Excel.
Then, he applied the proposed method to the analysis of the pillar stability for sublevel open stope method in the target mine.
Finally, he verified the validity and feasibility of the proposed model transformation technique.
You can find more information in his paper “Numerical analysis of pillar stability for safe mining of a combined mine based on three-dimensional solid model” in “CHALLENGES IN ROCK MECHANICS & ROCK ENGINEERING”, proceedings of the 15th ISRM Congress 2023 & 72nd Geomechanics Colloquium.
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Jo Dec 26, 2024
In general, convex lenses, reflectors, Fresnel lenses, and a combination of lens-reflector in the light beam-collimating system are used for floodlights, aviation obstruction lights, and lighthouse beacons. Depending on which mode is used, there are some differences in the utilization of the beam, the rate of collimating, and the resolution of the heat release problem.
According to the present study, in the cylindrical Fresnel lens used in the optical system of aviation obstruction lights, the beams going beyond the height of the Fresnel lens from the light source in the center of the cylindrical lens are not used in the collimating system, which leads to the reduction in the overall optical efficiency and shortening of the lifetime of the light source, especially in the case of high-power LEDs, due to cooling.
Ho Ji Song, a researcher at the Faculty of Electronics, has proposed a method to design a new structure of lenses that can solve the problems of light beam utilization, collimating rate, and heat release by means of a total reflection-refraction coupling.
First, he made a combination of six submodels to construct a collimating lens that can collimate light from a single LED and multiple LEDs arranged side by side on one axis in the direction of the optical axis.
Second, in order to form a whole structure, he established the relationship between the structure parameters and positions during the optimization simulation of collimating LED light into the optical axis as it is also possible for the submodels to separate from each other by changing the structure parameters.
Finally, he determined the structure parameters of optimized collimating lens using the optimization function of LightTools, an optical simulation tool.
In order to verify the effectiveness of the new method, he performed a measurement test of light intensity and divergence angle on the designed lens, and introduced a new lens into the optical system of the medium intensity aviation obstacle light.
As a result, he drew the following conclusions.
First, the paraxial lights in the light beam from the LED is collimated in parallel with the optical axis through the central part of the lens and the other lights are collimated through the TIR surface, so that the utilization of the light beam as well as the rate of collimating can be increased.
Second, the proposed method can easily increase the light intensity by layering the lenses in the lamp design, and it can realize the dispersion of the LEDs, which is effective to solve the heat release problems in the high-power lamp design.
Third, the light from a single LED can be collimated vertically and horizontally and the light from the LEDs arranged side by side on one axis can be collimated vertically.
Fourth, the proposed method can be widely used to design lenses used in optical systems that need to cast light far away, such as floodlights, aviation obstacle beacons and lighthouse beacons.
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Jo Dec 24, 2024
Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is one of the major formats for knowledge extraction, reduction, representation and analysis. FCA is formulated based on a formal context represented by a binary relation between a set of objects and a set of attributes. Formal concept lattice is the core of the mathematical theory of FCA.
Applying FCA methods to large formal contexts could bring many challenges, because the algorithm to extract formal concepts can have an exponential complexity in the worst case. Hence, the determination problem has been widely discussed in many scientific works ever since, which leads to the development of many efficient algorithms. In general, these algorithms can be divided into two categories, i.e. batch algorithms and incremental algorithms. Batch algorithms usually construct the lattice in a bottom-up (or top-down) approach, while incremental algorithms compute the lattice by adding objects (or attributes) to a given context one by one.
Among all types of lattice construction algorithms, incremental algorithms have a unique advantage. The input formal context may not be fixed in a realistic application of FCA, which means the present lattice has to be updated or a new lattice should be computed from scratch. Obviously, computing the corresponding changes only and updating the current lattice should be a better choice, which can be handled by incremental algorithms.
Generating all extents of the generalized one-sided concept lattice by the incremental algorithm is usually based on the operation of Galois connection, and the operation needs to scan the formal context. This becomes a significant computing overhead, especially when the formal context is large.
With respect to the description problem, the researcher who formulated FCA mentioned that the most communicative description is given by Hasse diagrams. However, it is difficult to autonomously understand the hierarchy of the concepts from Hasse diagrams for any information retrieval software. Thus, Pak Chol Hong, a researcher at the Faculty of Applied Mathematics, has proposed methods of describing the hierarchy of a concept lattice by using a hierarchy-matrix, estimating the connectivity of concepts by the hierarchy-matrix and describing the Hasse diagram via a hierarchy-matrix.
If there is a method of determining the generalized one-sided concept lattice and describing its Hierarchy-matrix sequentially, the more useful software with autonomous intelligence, which is based on FCA from the generalized one-sided formal context, can be built. On this basis, he has presented a new efficient incremental algorithm that performs the operation of Galois connection for determining the generalized one-sided concept lattice only once and describes its hierarchy-matrix sequentially. In addition, he has evaluated the feature and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
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Jo Dec 22, 2024
Mg-Al alloys are widely used in various fields such as architecture and aviation due to their low density, high specific strength, good corrosion resistance and ease of processing. The components applied to special vehicles need to have high temperature creep resistance. The addition of a small amount of rare earth elements in the Mg-Al alloy can meet this requirement.
The research group led by Jang Pok Nam, an institute head at the Faculty of Metal Engineering, has already worked on the preparation of Mg-Al-La master alloy by chloride-fluoride molten salt electrolysis in MgCl2-KCl-AlF3-La2O3 system. In this method, AlF3 exists in a solid state in molten salts and it is consumed through chemical reactions going with electrolysis. However, the separation of this solid fluoride and the resulting master alloy is not easy and evaporation loss of chlorides is big due to relatively high electrolytic temperature.
Therefore, the research group has proposed a method of preparing Mg-Al-La master alloy by chloride electrolysis to reduce electrolytic temperature and facilitate the separation of electrolytes and alloys.
No studies have been reported on the preparation of Mg-Al-La master alloys by molten salt electrolysis in MgCl2-KCl-AlCl3 molten salts.
After preparing the Mg-Al-La master alloy by molten salt electrolysis in MgCl2-KCl-AlCl3 ternary molten salt, they have investigated the factors affecting the element contents and current efficiencies in the production of Mg-Al-La master alloy, such as electrolysis temperature, cathode current density and electrolysis time.
He has found that increasing electrolytic temperature favors the increase in the contents of Al and La in the alloy, and the optimum electrolytic temperature is 600-650℃, and that as cathodic current density and electrolytic time increase, the content of Mg in the alloy also increases steadily but the content of La decreases.
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Jo Dec 20, 2024
Research for new deposits using the satellite image analysis method has already been carried out by many previous researchers. Studies to predict mineral prospecting sites by satellite image analysis have been mostly conducted to identify mineralized alteration zones and to detect linear structures.
Satellite image analysis generally begins with remote sensing. The integrated data is prepared for the user. In this stage, the integrated data is interpreted by various methods. In data interpretation, images are interpreted to identify various phenomena with regard to their importance.
It is widely accepted that hydrothermal alteration plays an important role in ore formation. The desirable distribution of alteration zones around the limited borders of an ore body facilitates outdoor exploration activities. Generally, hydrothermal alteration processes lead to emanation of clay and other silicate minerals, including kaolinite, sericite, quartz, chlorite, epidote, and calcite. The application of both spectral and statistical analyses of remotely sensed data can identify the above-mentioned minerals and explore the buried deposits. Hydrothermal alteration zones can be recognized from the spectral characteristics of main mineral assemblages.
Based on the spectral characteristics of main mineral assemblages, Ra Chung Yol, a section head at the Faculty of Earth Science and Technology, has determined the distribution of the hydrothermal alteration zone in the study area, using band-ratio analysis, principal component analysis, and colorimetric synthesis methods.
He has concluded that the hydrothermal alteration zone in the study area was widely distributed over an area of 2 000m×200m above the surface under the control of the ore-bringer structure, especially at the contact with the alkaline rock mass.
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