Papers by Author: Q.S. Liu

Abstract: In the construction of railways in western part of China, more and more long tunnels have been excavated these years, and several ones are under construction at the moment. Because of the complex geologies like faults, fractured zones, karst cavities as well as water bearing formations, the stability and safety of tunnels have been challenging topics in the construction process. In this regard, the advance knowledge of the location, size, and spatial information of the uncertainties ahead of the face is very important to the contractors. In this paper, by using the Tunneling Seismic Prediction (TSP) technique, site experiments are performed to predict hazardous formations ahead of face in a railway tunnel. Through interpretation of the testing data, the wave velocities and the mechanical parameters of the surrounding rock are obtained, and the faults/fractures are recognized. The study shows that compared to time-consuming core drilling method, the wave reflection based TSP method can predict major uncertain formations in long range ahead of the face in short time. The downtime, as we know, is one of the key factors in speeding the tunnel construction. For the prediction accuracy, the TSP technique is able to provide enough information due to its multiple proof-test procedure.

Abstract: This paper presents a summary of cellular and dendritic morphologies resulting from the upward directional solidification of Al – Ni alloys in a cylindrical crucible. We analysed the coupling of solid-liquid interface morphology with natural and forced convection. The influence of natural convection was first analyzed as a function of growth parameters (solute concentration, growth rate and thermal gradient). In a second step, the influence of axial vibrations on solidification microstructure was investigated by varying vibration parameters (amplitude and frequency). Experimental results were compared to preliminary numerical simulations and a good agreement is found for natural convection. In this study, the critical role of the mushy zone in the interaction between fluid flow and solidification microstructure is pointed out.

Abstract: Grinding burn is a common phenomenon of thermal damage that has been one of the main constraints in grinding in respect of high efficiency and quality. Use of acoustic emission technique for identifying grinding burn was reported before. However, the AE features of grinding burn are relatively weak and easily merged by other AE sources. This paper presents an investigation of the AE features of the thermal expansion induced by laser irradiation, which was designed to simulate grinding thermal behaviour. By means of the wavelet packet transforms, AE features at the grinding burn temperature can successfully be extracted without other mechanical interferential factors. These clean features can provide a firm foundation for analysing the real grinding burn AE features and for monitoring grinding burn.