Recent Patents on Engineering - Volume 9, Issue 1, 2015

This paper focuses on a review of the recent patents of the solar air heaters which are used for drying, space heating and timber seasoning, etc. A solar air heater deals with a simple blackened absorber tray, an insulation material to prevent heat losses, one or more transparent glass covers for thermal trap, two individual ducts for air inlet and exhaust and an electric blower (for forced convection). Some novel designs of the solar air heaters from 1952 up to now have been discussed (depending on the fundamental design principles) and categorized by using a classification system. After reviewing some good patents, it has been originated that there are many comprehensive patents covering the detail design, importance of part elements functioning and performance of the air heaters. Conversely, there are a limited data available, research articles, and viable products to compare the advantages over each other. Therefore, the modification or the improvement must be focused on the design and configuration of the elements of the system. It will direct to understand the performance limitations, tradeoffs, and advantages of typical designs and components in comparison against each other. This study will improve the understanding of students, scholars, researchers and developers as well as strengthen the overall logical asset archive and the knowledge pool for the solar air heating systems.

Interest in energy storage has escalated in recent years. As energy storage devices become ingrained into our everyday lives, the need to produce increasingly effective mechanisms for the storage of energy becomes readily apparent. New materials science and an ever increasing body of energy storage knowledge have set the stage for a rapid growth in this field. This review focuses on one energy storage device now finding its way into various devices and electric vehicles; the supercapacitor. The following discusses recently patented designs and developments of supercapacitors; and more specifically, the various electrodes that utilized carbon nanotubes and other activated carbons. These devices have higher capacitances and power densities than other capacitors, but still lack the energy density necessary to compete with batteries in larger energy storage markets. However, other superior characteristics of supercapacitors have allowed them to find specific uses in area such as hybrid and electric vehicles, and offshore wind turbines.

In this paper we have developed and analyzed Minimum Average Correlation Energy Gabor Filters (MACE GF), Gabor Wavelets (GW), Discrete Cosine Transform Neural Network (DCT NN), Hybrid Spatial Feature Interdependence Matrix (HSFIM), Score Level Fusion Techniques (SLFT) for Face Recognition in the presence of various noises and blurring effects. All the 5 systems were trained in the absence of noise, blurring effect but tested by imposing different levels of noises and blurring effects. To compare the performance of MACE GF, GW, DCT NN, HSFIM, and SLFT six public face databases: IITK, ATT, JAFEE, CALTECH, GRIMACE, and SHEFFIELD are considered. Patents analyzed are “Gabor filtering and joint sparsity model-based face recognition method” “Gabor human face recognizing method based on simplified intelligent single-particle optimizing algorithm.

Nature provides us rocks with a wide variety of colors. For the natural stones which are used as decorative covering stones, the appearance is an essential parameter; to an extent that color and textural characteristics determine the market value of natural stones in construction industry. In this article, recent patents are discussed, which were used for dying natural stones, as, NNDC (nano sized natural dye colorant) was used on some type of natural stones for decorative purposes. NNDC is formed by mixing the plant and madder. NNDC solutions were prepared with fresh water. Therefore, NNDC is not harmful for human health. The solutions facilitate the penetration of the dye into pores or other openings located in the stone. Generally the dye cannot be easily removed or discolored. However, it may be removed by certain chemicals with extended contact. For this purpose; the samples of marble, limestone, travertine and basalt were collected for changing the color studies. This paper describes how the color of natural rock changes using NNDC. Desired colored rocks can be used for decorative purposes. The economic value of the rocks can be increased by converting them to the desired color using the NNDC. Method to be applied in order to be transferred to the structure of the rock for the use of color will not be of any problem. In addition, to the needs of architecture, natural colored stone will be provided.

In the present paper contour plots of the power production of the Wave Energy Converter named as Water Level Carpet (WLC) are presented for deep and intermediate water depths. WLC consists of four rectangular shaped floating modules connected flexibly in two directions by connectors and by Power Take-Off (PTO) mechanisms with known damping characteristics. Initially, patents dealing with Wave Energy Converters and more specifically with oscillating bodies are presented. Afterwards, the estimation of the power production of the WLC is assessed through spectral analysis along with linear hydroelastic analysis in frequency domain. Shoaling phenomena are included in the spectral analysis. The hydroelastic analysis is performed in frequency domain with a radiation/diffraction 3D hydroelastic model considering both the effect of the flexibility of the WLC as well as the damping forces associated with the energy extraction by the PTO mechanism. The power production of WLC obtains large meaningful values for wave frequencies close to the resonance of the generalized degrees of freedom. The WLC introduced in the present paper can be considered as a promising WEC for further future development that can be used efficiently in both deep and intermediate water depths.

In order to improve the aerodynamic performance of steam turbine nozzle, it is necessary to study the effect of blade solidity on the nozzle flow fieldas some patents designs. To carry out the numerical simulation for the blade solidity of 2.56, 2.87 and 3.05 by the CFD technology, the result of numerical simulation shows that: most of the flow in the cascade passage is two-dimensional laminar flow on the three kinds of solidity, the flow enters the 3D turbulent zone until near the trailing edge, the size of turbulent zone increases with the increasing degree of blade solidity, the total pressure loss increases with the increasing of blade solidity.

Although nearly all previous studies in the patent domain are focused on invention patents, design patents have also become more and more important because of the continuous escalating and record-breaking compensation for design patent infringement. In fact, over the past few years, the number of Design Patent Research (DPR) has increased substantially. In this study, the investigators explored the development trend of DPR by thoroughly reviewing the three major periodical index databases in the world, and they are (1) Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), (2) Science Citation Index (SCI) and (3) Engineering Index (EI). The investigators also analyzed the samples in three stages. The study results showed the development trend of global design patent research between 1998 and 2013 (for a total of 16 years). The study provides future DPR with critical reference.

This paper describes a proposal for developing an architecture for Educational Cloud based on OpenStack framework, Service Composition techniques and Semantic Web to create virtualized environments with specific features for teaching and researching environments, through the study of recent patents correlated to this system. The creation and management of the architecture and its virtualized environment are conducted through a system of service composition. Services are made available as a catalogue and their access is limited by the user’s profile type (student, teacher, or researcher). The results shown in this article are limited to the presentation and description of the system logic architecture and modeling.