Mechanical Engineering reports
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Item Open Access Development of guidelines for the construction of wind turbines using scrap material(Elsevier, 2016) Rodrigues, R.; Piper, J.; Bhattacharya, S.; Wilson, S.; Birzer, C.; Vidan, A.; Shoag, D.Worldwide, approximately 2 billion people lack access to reliable electricity. This results in limited access to refrigerated foods and medicines, emergency hospital facilities, and lighting. A lack of lighting alone is known to prevent education of children, especially girls. Providing reliable access to electricity is essential in raising the quality of life for 2 billion people. However, electricity generation is usually expensive, or has high capital costs and requires a high degree of technical knowledge. To help address this issue, a set of guidelines for the development and manufacture of different wind power generation systems has been written. The guidelines are designed such that the users can build wind turbines based on the scrap material that they have available. To ensure the guidelines were suitable, four proof-of-concept devices were made and tested in the field and in a wind tunnel. The results show that power generation is possible with limited equipment and technical capability. However, further work is required to optimise the manufacturing processes.Item Metadata only Carbon nanodot decorated graphitic carbon nitride: new insights into the enhanced photocatalytic water splitting from ab initio studies(Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015) Gao, G.; Jiao, Y.; Ma, F.; Jiao, Y.; Waclawik, E.; Du, A.Interfacing carbon nanodots (C-dots) with graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) produces a metal-free system that has recently demonstrated significant enhancement of photo-catalytic performance for water splitting into hydrogen [Science, 2015, 347, 970-974]. However, the underlying photo-catalytic mechanism is not fully established. Herein, we have carried out density functional theory (DFT) calculations to study the interactions between g-C3N4 and trigonal/hexagonal shaped C-dots. We find that hybrid C-dots/g-C3N4 can form a type-II van der Waals heterojunction, leading to significant reduction of band gap. The C-dot decorated g-C3N4 enhances the separation of photogenerated electron and hole pairs and the composite's visible light response. Interestingly, the band alignment of C-dots and g-C3N4 calculated by the hybrid functional method indicates that C-dots act as a spectral sensitizer in hybrid C-dots/g-C3N4 for water splitting. Our results offer new theoretical insights into this metal-free photocatalyst for water splitting.Item Metadata only An application of breakage mechanics for predicting energy-size reduction relationships in comminution(Elsevier, 2016) Zhang, C.; Nguyen, G.; Kodikara, J.Abstract not available.Item Metadata only Inability to calculate clamped beam and plate mode shapes with Matlab(School of Mechanical Engineering, 2006) Howard, Carl Quentin; School of Mechanical EngineeringItem Metadata only Thermoacoustic refrigeration for the automotive industry(School of Mechanical Engineering, 2005) Howard, Carl Quentin; Zander, Anthony Charles; Cazzolato, Benjamin Seth; Zoontjens, Luke; School of Mechanical Engineering