Yanpeng Qu

Structural and regulating characteristics of adjustable annulus-clearance nozzle used in supercritical fluid precipitation

A new type of adjustable nozzle with an annulus clearance between the surfaces of a revolved solid and the matched hole was analyzed, which contained matching parts, regulating parts, guiding elements, and sealing part. The general regulating function of the adjustable nozzle was derived and the regulating and matching characteristics were also analyzed. Through the analysis, it was concluded that the matching-profile curve of either the revolved body or matched hole should be chosen as a straight line in order to keep the linear regulating feature. Moreover, the multi-annulus-clearance nozzle was designed, and some experiments were carried out on preparing budesonide particles with the nozzle. According to the experimental results, it was proved that the annulus nozzles is practical in preparing micro-particles by supercritical fluid precipitation method.

A Fortran implementation of isogeometric analysis for thin plate problems with the penalty method

Purpose As one of the earliest high-level programming languages, Fortran with easy accessibility and computational efficiency is widely used in the engineering field. The purpose of this paper is to present a Fortran implementation of isogeometric analysis (IGA) for thin plate problems. Design/methodology/approach IGA based on non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) offers exact geometries and is more accurate than finite element analysis (FEA). Unlike the basis functions in FEA, NURBS basis functions are non-interpolated. Hence, the penalty method is used to enforce boundary conditions. Findings Several thin plate examples based on the Kirchhoff-Love theory were illustrated to demonstrate the accuracy of the implementation in contrast with analytical solutions, and the efficiency was validated in comparison with another open method. Originality/value A Fortran implementation of NURBS-based IGA was developed to solve Kirchhoff-Love plate problems. It easily obtained high-continuity basis functions, which are necessary for Kirchhoff formulation. In comparison with theoretical solutions, the numerical examples demonstrated higher accuracy and faster convergence of the Fortran implementation. The Fortran implementation can well solve the time-consuming problem, and it was validated by the time-consumption comparison with the Matlab implementation. Due to the non-interpolation of NURBS, the penalty method was used to impose boundary conditions. A suggestion of the selection of penalty coefficients was given.

Isogeometric Analysis: The Influence of Penalty Coefficients in Boundary Condition Treatments

The NURBS-based isogeometric analysis (IGA) has been applied to wide classes of engineering problems due to its accurate geometric description. One of the major concerns with IGA is finding an efficient way to treat boundary conditions. Many studies show that the results can maintain accuracy, where the boundary conditions are enforced by the penalty method. However, the inappropriate selection of penalty coefficients may lead to significant errors. Consequently, a suggestion of penalty coefficients with different degrees and control points of IGA is given in this work through some representative numerical examples from the point of the improvement in accuracy, robustness and rate of convergence.