In the dc traction power supply system in subway, over-current tripping device (OCTD) is essential for air circuit breakers as backup protection. At present, current threshold value (I _th) of OCTD is adjusted by the cooperation of magnetic circuit regulating block (MCRB) and spring. Depending on MCRB is installed or not, only two-level adjustment can be realized, resulting in low adjustment accuracy of I _th. In this letter, a novel OCTD based on controllable magnetic coupling is proposed. Instead of using MCRB, an auxiliary winding wrapped on the static iron core is added, with different resistors and thyristors attached. By controlling thyristors, a wide-range and multilevel adjustment of I _th can be achieved. Benefits of the proposed method are: reducing the stiffness factor of spring from 55 to 42 N/mm, improving the adjustment accuracy from 0.66 to 0.33 kA/mm, and adjusting I _th online without power supply system interruption.

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Groundwater depletion has become increasingly challenging, and many cities worldwide have adopted drastic policies to relieve water stress due to socioeconomic growth. Located on the declining aquifer of the North China Plain, Beijing, for example, has developed plans to limit the size of the city’s population. However, the effect of population displacement under uncertain macroeconomic and climate change remains ambiguous. We adopt a sociohydrological model, with explicit consideration of the dynamics of human-water interactions, to explore the groundwater vulnerability of Beijing. We investigate how human response might shape the development trajectories of the groundwater-population-economy system under different macroscale economic and climate scenarios. Furthermore, we use a machine learning algorithm to identify the decisive factors to be considered for reducing groundwater vulnerability. Our results show that while rapid external economic development or larger annual average precipitation would enable recovery of the groundwater table in the short term, they may slacken human water shortage awareness and result in more acute groundwater depletion in the long run. Strengthening policymaker perceptions of groundwater depletion would prompt timely response policies for controlling population size. Improving the quantity and quality of labor force input to economic development would avoid downturns in the economy due to labor shortages. The outcomes of this study suggest that these strategies would effectively reduce groundwater vulnerability in the long run without causing severe socioeconomic recession. These findings highlight the importance of endogenizing human behavioral dynamics in sustainable urban water management.

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For the black start-up of DC micro-grids, three-phase charging resistors are required to limit the uncontrollable surge current. The main drawback of this start-up method is the difficulty in determining the appropriate resistance value to achieve a rapid start-up and limit the surge current with the change of grid parameters. To address this problem, this article proposes a soft start-up method for the DC micro-grid based on an improved two-level voltage source converter (VSC). Specifically, an silicon controlled rectifier and anti-parallel diode are added in each up-bridge-arm in the improved VSC. By conducting a dynamic control strategy of the firing angle on the SCRs, the start-up current can always be maintained near a given value to achieve rapid start-up. Moreover, the improved VSC has DC fault ride-through capability. The simulation results based on PSCAD/EMTDC are provided to validate the feasibility of the proposed start-up method.

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In this paper, the fabrication and thermal conductivity (TC) of water-based nanofluids using boron (B)-doped SiC as dispersions are reported. Doping B into the β-SiC phase leads to the shrinkage of the SiC lattice due to the substitution of Si atoms (0.134 nm radius) by smaller B atoms (0.095 nm radius). The presence of B in the SiC phase also promotes crystallization and grain growth of obtained particles. The tailored crystal structure and morphology of B-doped SiC nanoparticles are beneficial for the TC improvement of the nanofluids by using them as dispersions. Using B-doped SiC nanoparticles as dispersions for nanofluids, a remarkable improvement in stability was achieved in SiC-B6 nanofluid at pH 11 by means of the Zeta potential measurement. By dispersing B-doped SiC nanoparticles in water-based fluids, the TC of the as-prepared nanofluids containing only 0.3 vol.% SiC-B6 nanoparticles is remarkably raised to 39.3% at 30 °C compared to the base fluids, and is further enhanced with the increased temperature. The main reasons for the improvement in TC of SiC-B6 nanofluids are more stable dispersion and intensive charge ions vibration around the surface of nanoparticles as well as the enhanced TC of the SiC-B dispersions.

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In this paper, steel slag/steel fiber composite asphalt mixture were prepared. The effects of the addition of steel slag and/or steel fibers on the mechanical, thermal, induction heating and healing properties of asphalt mixture were investigated. The results showed that adding steel slag and/or steel fibers improves the water stability, particle loss resistance and fracture energy of asphalt mixtures. The addition of steel fibers increased the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusion of the asphalt mixture, and steel slag showed a reverse effect. Steel slag asphalt mixture cooled more slowly than steel fiber asphalt mixture, which is beneficial to crack healing of asphalt mixture. The composite of steel fibers and steel slag can enhance the induction heating speed, heating homogeneity and thus enhance the induction healing ratio of asphalt mixture. It is concluded that steel slag/steel fibers composite asphalt mixture achieves good mechanical and induction healing properties.

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It is expected that automated vehicles will gradually penetrate on public roads, resulting in mixed traffic in the next decades. This can impact traffic flow operations, especially the roadway capacity and flow stability. It is of paramount
importance to understand and predict the implications of automated driving systems on traffic flow at the early design phase to avoid disruptive impacts on traffic. String stability properties of automated vehicle platoons are a fundamental
block to understand their traffic flow stability impact. Previous reports on string stability analysis focussed on homogeneous vehicle strings and simplify the time delays in vehicle systems. This work propose an analytical approach to determine string stability conditions for non-connected vehicle platoons with heterogeneous parameters. To this end, a third-order linear vehicle dynamics model is used in the control design and Laplace transform of the spacing and speed error dynamics in time domain to frequency domain enables the determination of sufficient string stability criteria of heterogeneous vehicle strings. The analytical string stability conditions give new insights into the relationship between the string stability properties of vehicle strings in relation to the system properties of time delays and controller design parameters of feedback gains and desired time gap. Analytical results are verified via
systematic simulation of both homogeneous and heterogeneous strings. Simulations demonstrate the predictive power of the analytical string stability conditions.@en

Highly pure Al₄SiC₄ powders were prepared by carbothermic reduction at 2173 K using Al₂O₃, SiO₂, and graphite as raw materials. The obtained Al₄SiC₄ powders owned hexagonal plate-like grains with a diameter of about 200–300 μm and a thickness of about 2–6 μm. Based on the experimental results, the reaction of Al₄SiC₄ formation and grain evolution mechanisms were determined from thermodynamic and first-principles calculations. The results indicated that the synthesis of Al₄SiC₄ by the carbothermic reduction consisted of two parts, i.e., solid–solid reactions initially followed by complex gas–solid and gas–gas reactions. The grain growth mechanism of Al₄SiC₄ featured a two-dimensional nucleation and growth mechanism. The gas phases formed during the sintering process favored the preferential grain growth of (0010) and (1 ī0) planes resulting in formation of hexagonal plate-like Al₄SiC₄ grains.

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