Recent Patents on Engineering - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2012

Brewing is a typical example of traditional biotechnology, which has been object of several studies and experiments performed by researchers and simple passionate people. The results of these activities are represented by a number of inventions concerning genetic modifications of barley, microbiological and biochemical applications, alternative raw materials and new technical solutions for processing and packaging. Most Read More

The paper reviews recent research work developed for the analysis and design of defective stiffened panels with application to marine and aerospace structures. The review is limited to recent research work evolved over the past three decades. Varieties of numerical modeling philosophies and experimental techniques are discussed. The paper addresses various types of damages such as residual stress, fatigue Read More

The tribo-electric effect consists in the electrification of certain materials after coming into contact with other materials. This effect may be used in conjunction with the electric field forces for electrostatically separating positivelyand negatively-tribo-charged granules that have otherwise similar size, density, magnetic properties and electric conductivities. Although tribo-electrostatic separation has been used for a long time, its la Read More

In the last years, Nanoindentation or Instrumented Indentation Technique has become a powerful tool to study the mechanical properties at micro/nanometric scale (commonly known as hardness, elastic modulus and the stress-strain curve). In this review, the different contact mechanisms (elastic and elasto-plastic) are discussed, the recent patents for each mechanism (elastic and elasto-plastic) are summariz Read More

Photocatalytic membrane reactor (PMR), in which photocatalysis is coupled with membrane separation process, is a new hybrid technology for water and wastewater treatment. With some unique advantages such as nontoxic and continuous running, PMR has developed rapidly in the past few years. In this work, different kinds of PMRs are compared and related patents and research progresses are briefly summarized. Ope Read More

A new design of roof-integrated water solar collector is presented. It takes advantage of new synergies found between collector and roof. Its main concept is based on the use of water redistribution for changing the roof configuration. This system is completely suitable for inclined roofs, since it is based on waterproofed plastic chambers. This design provides a universal low-cost system for household heating and natural cooling t Read More

Several linearization techniques such as predistortion, feedback, quasi feedforward and feedforward which have been proposed are suggested to improve the linearity of a laser transmitter specifically for Radio over Fibre communication system. In general, feedforward linearization technique is known to be more effective since it can achieve reduction in all orders of distortion for large bandwidth and high frequency without ne Read More

The patents annotated in this section have been selected from various patent databases. These recent patents are relevant to the articles published in this journal issue, categorized by the processes and technologies related to various disciplines of engineering sciences....