This brief presents the design of a double-balanced mixer for linearity-stringent communication systems. The pro- posed mixer is based on a current-mirror structure embedded with a switching pair. By utilizing the linear duplication characteristic of current mirrors, an improved linearity is achieved. The mixer is designed and fabricated in 0.18-μm 1P6M radio-frequency CMOS process, operating in the frequency band from 0.5 to 3 GHz. Measurement results indicate a peak conversion gain of 9.5 dB, a high input 3rd order intercept point (IIP3) of 10 dBm and a moderate noise figure (NF) of 16.5 dB. In addition, due to the folded structure, the mixer can be applicable in low-supply-voltage applications. The whole mixer has a compact die area of 0.1 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , and the power dissipation is 5.4 mW under 1.5-V supply voltage.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Solar chimney as a reliable renewable energy system has attracted increasing attention from engineers to conquer the current energy crisis. The main challenge of designing a solar chimney is to optimize its performance with the lowest cost. Based on literature review, thirteen key influencing factors were obtained and classified into four groups, including configuration, installation conditions, material usage, and environment. Statistics of experimental studies showed that the overall tested range is still limited which suggests more future experiments. To enhance the performance, a solar chimney is suggested with possible high cavity and solar radiation, a cavity gap of 0.2–0.3 m, equal inlet and outlet, a height/gap ratio of around 10, an inclination angle of 45–60° (for roof solar chimney considering latitude), an appropriate opening of room, double/triple glazing, a 5 cm thick insulation wall, and a solar absorber with larger absorptivity and emissivity. These optimum values may not be applicable to all configurations as they are interdependent. Although external wind shows significant influence on solar chimney, solar chimney design can be undertaken without considering the effects from wind. This review will provide a useful technical guide for researchers and professionals regarding the optimum designs of solar chimney in buildings.
Lithium-ion battery devices are essential for energy storage and supply in distributed energy generation systems. Robust battery management systems (BMSs) must guarantee that batteries work within a safe range and avoid the damage caused by overcharge and overdischarge. The state-of-charge (SoC) of Li-ion batteries is difficult to observe after batteries are manufactured. The hysteresis phenomenon influences the existing battery modeling and SoC estimation accuracy. This research applies a terminal sliding mode observer (TSMO) algorithm based on a hysteresis resistor-capacitor (RC) equivalent circuit model to enable accurate SoC estimation. The proposed method is evaluated using two dynamic battery tests: the dynamic street test (DST) and the federal urban driving schedule (FUDS) test. The simulation results show that the proposed method achieved high estimation accuracy and fast response speed. Additionally, real-time battery information, including battery output voltage and SoC, was acquired and displayed by an automatic monitoring system. The designed system is valuable for all battery application cases.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Recently, curved double-skin façades (CDSFs) have been increasingly used in buildings due to the advantages of aesthetics and structure. However, existing studies mainly focus on planar double-skin facades (PDSFs) and barely address the thermal and ventilation performance of CDSFs. In this study, the influences of geometric parameters, glass material and solar radiation on the thermal and ventilation performance of the CDSF are studied with a CFD model validated by a reduced-scale experiment. The results show that the optimal cavity gap ranges from 0.75 m to 1 m, and the optimal ellipse aspect ratio is 0.5. Moreover, glass material shows a significant influence on the ventilation performance of the CDSF – an enhancement of 8.20%–21.31% more cavity velocity is found by replacing the clear glass with a low-e glass. Further analysis shows that the ventilation performance is more sensitive to the optical properties of glass material, and a higher absorptivity is more conducive to natural ventilation. Solar radiation – solar radiation intensities and solar incident angles - show predominant impacts on the cavity velocities of CDSFs with non-linear relationships. Because of the surface's non-uniformity distribution of solar radiation, solar radiation shows more impact on the cavity velocities of CDSFs than PDSFs. The influence of solar incident angles is found to be more sensitive, especially in the regions of big solar incident angles - the variation rates of cavity velocities for the CDSF under high solar incident angles (>45°) are much larger than that under low solar incident angles (<45°).
Silicon carbide (SiC) aerogels are a promising insulation material due to their light weighting and chemical stability. However, the current high-strength SiC is accompanied by the problem of high thermal conductivity. Therefore, how to make SiC aerogels possess both mechanical strength and excellent thermal insulation properties is a challenge. Here, we report a multi-scale assembly strategy for the preparation of SiC aerogels. This strategy not only improves the strength of SiC aerogel, but also keeps the porosity of the material at a high level, so that the material has better thermal insulation performance. The compressive strength of the material can reach to 8.54 MPa. The material with a thickness of 5mm was sprayed continuously with a butane spray gun for 20 min, and the temperature on the back of the material increased to 153.3 oC. Therefore, the high-strength, high-insulation C/SiC composites ceramic aerogel prepared by this strategy provide a feasible way for the application of aerogels in enhancing fire resistance and building insulation.
A novel thermal energy storage unit (TESU) that can store the heat from lower solar radiation during daytime and preheat air in winter during nighttime for areas with poor solar resources is proposed. To achieve an efficient operation of this TESU for poor solar conditions, this study proposed a structure that innovatively combines tube bundle and spiral tube heat exchangers to enhance heat transfer with paraffin wax as the phase change material (PCM). The thermal performance of the TESU is then evaluated by experimental measurements and a three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model. The numerical modelling provides details of the solidification behavior of the PCM and the two heat transfer processes - thermal heat extracted from PCM and the effective discharging process. Results show that the pure conduction model can suitably describe the solidification process of PCM. The possible maximum amount of heat extraction of 4.68 MJ can be achieved during the discharging process in 20h. Moreover, an air outlet temperature of 11.5 °C is considered the lowest effective temperature. The effective heat extraction efficiency is about 89.74% till the lowest effective temperature is reached.
Solar chimney has been frequently adopted in buildings to save energy by enhancing the natural ventilation. Although its optimization studies have been frequently taken previously, most of them have focused on the configuration of solar chimney but ignored the air inlet, even though its significant influence has already been confirmed. The interaction between the air inlet and room openings (e.g. window and door) is critical to improving the solar chimney performance, but the related interaction mechanism is still not known. Interaction of room opening and air inlet on solar chimney performance was analysed under both natural ventilation and smoke exhaustion modes. Numerical results of 19 scenarios were first validated by reduced-scale experiment tests. Another 25 numerical scenarios for full-scale solar chimney room with different heights of air inlet (0.1–2.3 m) and window (0.6–1.8 m) were analysed. It was known from numerical results that the height of window shows limited influence on flow rate under natural ventilation mode but the obvious effect on both flow rate at the air inlet and the total flow rate (both window and air inlet) under smoke exhaustion mode, especially when the window centre is higher than wall centre. Scenario, when both the window and air inlet are at the vertical centre of the wall, shows the best performance of both natural ventilation and smoke exhaustion. An empirical model was also developed to predict the flow rate through the air inlet under smoke exhaustion. Critical conditions for air inlet to exhaust smoke were determined which happens when the neutral plane is almost no lower than the window centre.