Small diameter thin-walled pipes, typically with a diameter less than 20 mm and a ratio of outer diameter to wall thickness is 20 or above, have increasingly become a key value adding factor for a ...number of industries including medical applications, electronics and chemical industries. In high-energy physics experiments, thin-walled pipes are needed in tracking detector cooling systems where the mass of all components needs to be minimised for physics measurement reasons. The pipework must reliably withstand the cooling fluid operation pressures (of up to 100 bar), but must also be able to be reliably and easily joined within the cooling system. Suitable standard and/or commercial solutions combining the needed low mass and reliable high-pressure operation are poorly available. The following review of literature compares the various techniques that exist for the manufacture and joining of thin-walled pipes, both well-established techniques and novel methods which have potential to increase the use of thin-walled pipes within industrial cooling systems. Gaps in knowledge have been identified, along with further research directions. Operational challenges and key considerations which have to be identified when designing a system which uses thin-walled pipes are also discussed.
The Outer Tracker of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of the large experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, will consist of about 13,200 modules, each built up of two silicon sensors. The ...modules and support structures include thousands of parts that contribute to positioning and cooling the sensors during operation at -30 °C. These parts should be low mass while featuring high thermal conductivity, stiffness and strength. Their thermal expansion coefficient should match that of silicon to avoid deformations during cooling cycles. Due to their unique thermal and mechanical properties, aluminium-carbon fibre (Al/C
) Metal Matrix Composites are the material of choice to produce such light and stable thermal management components for High Energy Physics detectors. For the CMS Outer Tracker, about 500,000 cm
of Al/C
raw material will be required to be produced through a reliable process to guarantee consistent properties throughout parts manufacturing. Two Al/C
production routes are currently considered: liquid casting by gas-pressure infiltration and a powder metallurgy process based on continuous semi-liquid phase sintering. The dimensional stability of the resulting material is of paramount importance. Irreversible change of shape may be induced by moisture adsorption and the onset of galvanic corrosion at the discontinuous interfaces between C
and Al. This paper presents the results of an extensive investigation through Computed Microtomography, direct microscopical investigations, analysis of the interfaces and metrology measurements aimed at comparing and interpreting the response to different environments of the respective products. The results obtained confirm the suitability of the two investigated Al/Cf MMCs for application to components of the CMS Outer Tracker, requiring tight geometrical control and microstructural stability over time. However, for PM parts sintered through the semi-liquid phase process, a multilayered protective noble metal coating is necessary the make them impervious to moisture, allowing dimensional stability to be guaranteed and the onset of corrosion phenomena to be avoided, while the product obtained by gas-pressure infiltration has shown less sensitive even to extreme temperature-humidity cycles and may be used uncoated.
Small-diameter, thin-walled pipes have applications in a wide range of industries including high-energy physics, heat transfer, nuclear, medical and communications. However, there are currently no ...standards that exist for permanently joining these components either via welding (melting the base material) or soldering. As such it is difficult to determine the likely performance of a thin-walled pipe connection. Porosity is largely inevitable in soldered joints and is a determining factor in the performance of a connection.
This study focused on characterisation of failure initiation and propagation within soft soldered CuNi thin-walled pipe joints under cyclic internal pressure loading. A step-stress accelerated life testing regime (SSALT) was developed to simulate the loads the joints would experience over their operational lifetime, in a shorter timescale.
10 soldered joints were studied in total, with varying levels of porosity within the soldered joints prior to testing. Pressurised Nitrogen gas was used to internally pressurise the samples, with cyclic loading between atmospheric conditions and a prescribed maximum pressure value.
The results of the SSALT showed that the soldered samples experienced early failure through crack initiation and propagation through the solder. Cracks, or failures, were seen to initiate from existing voids, or porosity, within the soft-soldered joints.
From this work, it can be concluded that the performance of soft-soldered joints under cyclic, internal pressure loading is strongly influenced by the presence of voids that are created during the manufacture of such soldered connections.
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is a particle physics experiment situated on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Switzerland. The CMS upgrade (planned for 2025) involves installing a new ...advanced sensor system within the CMS tracker, the centre of the detector closest to the particle collisions. The increased heat load associated with these sensors has required the design of an enhanced cooling system that exploits the latent heat of 40 bar CO2. In order to minimise interaction with the incident radiation and improve the detector performance, the cooling pipes within this system need to be thin-walled (~100 μm) and strong enough to withstand these pressures. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the microstructure and mechanical properties of thin-walled cooling pipes currently in use in existing detectors to assess their potential for the tracker upgrade. In total, 22 different pipes were examined, which were composed of CuNi, SS316L, and Ti and were coated with Ni, Cu, and Au. The samples were characterised using computer tomography for 3D structural assessment, focused ion beam ring-core milling for microscale residual stress analysis, optical profilometry for surface roughness, optical microscopy for grain size analysis, and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy for elemental analysis. Overall, this examination demonstrated that the Ni- and Cu-coated SS316L tubing was optimal due to a combination of low residual stress (20 MPa axial and 5 MPa hoop absolute), low coating roughness (0.4 μm Ra), minimal elemental diffusion, and a small void fraction (1.4%). This result offers a crucial starting point for the ongoing thin-walled pipe selection, development, and pipe-joining research required for the CMS tracker upgrade, as well as the widespread use of CO2 cooling systems in general.
A list of authors and their affiliations appears at the end of the paper New-particle formation is a major contributor to urban smog
, but how it occurs in cities is often puzzling
. If the growth ...rates of urban particles are similar to those found in cleaner environments (1-10 nanometres per hour), then existing understanding suggests that new urban particles should be rapidly scavenged by the high concentration of pre-existing particles. Here we show, through experiments performed under atmospheric conditions in the CLOUD chamber at CERN, that below about +5 degrees Celsius, nitric acid and ammonia vapours can condense onto freshly nucleated particles as small as a few nanometres in diameter. Moreover, when it is cold enough (below -15 degrees Celsius), nitric acid and ammonia can nucleate directly through an acid-base stabilization mechanism to form ammonium nitrate particles. Given that these vapours are often one thousand times more abundant than sulfuric acid, the resulting particle growth rates can be extremely high, reaching well above 100 nanometres per hour. However, these high growth rates require the gas-particle ammonium nitrate system to be out of equilibrium in order to sustain gas-phase supersaturations. In view of the strong temperature dependence that we measure for the gas-phase supersaturations, we expect such transient conditions to occur in inhomogeneous urban settings, especially in wintertime, driven by vertical mixing and by strong local sources such as traffic. Even though rapid growth from nitric acid and ammonia condensation may last for only a few minutes, it is nonetheless fast enough to shepherd freshly nucleated particles through the smallest size range where they are most vulnerable to scavenging loss, thus greatly increasing their survival probability. We also expect nitric acid and ammonia nucleation and rapid growth to be important in the relatively clean and cold upper free troposphere, where ammonia can be convected from the continental boundary layer and nitric acid is abundant from electrical storms
.
About half of present-day cloud condensation nuclei originate from atmospheric nucleation, frequently appearing as a burst of new particles near midday. Atmospheric observations show that the growth ...rate of new particles often accelerates when the diameter of the particles is between one and ten nanometres. In this critical size range, new particles are most likely to be lost by coagulation with pre-existing particles, thereby failing to form new cloud condensation nuclei that are typically 50 to 100 nanometres across. Sulfuric acid vapour is often involved in nucleation but is too scarce to explain most subsequent growth, leaving organic vapours as the most plausible alternative, at least in the planetary boundary layer. Although recent studies predict that low-volatility organic vapours contribute during initial growth, direct evidence has been lacking. The accelerating growth may result from increased photolytic production of condensable organic species in the afternoon, and the presence of a possible Kelvin (curvature) effect, which inhibits organic vapour condensation on the smallest particles (the nano-Köhler theory), has so far remained ambiguous. Here we present experiments performed in a large chamber under atmospheric conditions that investigate the role of organic vapours in the initial growth of nucleated organic particles in the absence of inorganic acids and bases such as sulfuric acid or ammonia and amines, respectively. Using data from the same set of experiments, it has been shown that organic vapours alone can drive nucleation. We focus on the growth of nucleated particles and find that the organic vapours that drive initial growth have extremely low volatilities (saturation concentration less than 10(-4.5) micrograms per cubic metre). As the particles increase in size and the Kelvin barrier falls, subsequent growth is primarily due to more abundant organic vapours of slightly higher volatility (saturation concentrations of 10(-4.5) to 10(-0.5) micrograms per cubic metre). We present a particle growth model that quantitatively reproduces our measurements. Furthermore, we implement a parameterization of the first steps of growth in a global aerosol model and find that concentrations of atmospheric cloud concentration nuclei can change substantially in response, that is, by up to 50 per cent in comparison with previously assumed growth rate parameterizations.
Iodic acid (HIO
) is known to form aerosol particles in coastal marine regions, but predicted nucleation and growth rates are lacking. Using the CERN CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets) chamber, ...we find that the nucleation rates of HIO
particles are rapid, even exceeding sulfuric acid-ammonia rates under similar conditions. We also find that ion-induced nucleation involves IO
and the sequential addition of HIO
and that it proceeds at the kinetic limit below +10°C. In contrast, neutral nucleation involves the repeated sequential addition of iodous acid (HIO
) followed by HIO
, showing that HIO
plays a key stabilizing role. Freshly formed particles are composed almost entirely of HIO
, which drives rapid particle growth at the kinetic limit. Our measurements indicate that iodine oxoacid particle formation can compete with sulfuric acid in pristine regions of the atmosphere.
Nucleation of aerosol particles from trace atmospheric vapours is thought to provide up to half of global cloud condensation nuclei. Aerosols can cause a net cooling of climate by scattering sunlight ...and by leading to smaller but more numerous cloud droplets, which makes clouds brighter and extends their lifetimes. Atmospheric aerosols derived from human activities are thought to have compensated for a large fraction of the warming caused by greenhouse gases. However, despite its importance for climate, atmospheric nucleation is poorly understood. Recently, it has been shown that sulphuric acid and ammonia cannot explain particle formation rates observed in the lower atmosphere. It is thought that amines may enhance nucleation, but until now there has been no direct evidence for amine ternary nucleation under atmospheric conditions. Here we use the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) chamber at CERN and find that dimethylamine above three parts per trillion by volume can enhance particle formation rates more than 1,000-fold compared with ammonia, sufficient to account for the particle formation rates observed in the atmosphere. Molecular analysis of the clusters reveals that the faster nucleation is explained by a base-stabilization mechanism involving acid-amine pairs, which strongly decrease evaporation. The ion-induced contribution is generally small, reflecting the high stability of sulphuric acid-dimethylamine clusters and indicating that galactic cosmic rays exert only a small influence on their formation, except at low overall formation rates. Our experimental measurements are well reproduced by a dynamical model based on quantum chemical calculations of binding energies of molecular clusters, without any fitted parameters. These results show that, in regions of the atmosphere near amine sources, both amines and sulphur dioxide should be considered when assessing the impact of anthropogenic activities on particle formation.
Fundamental questions remain about the origin of newly formed atmospheric aerosol particles because data from laboratory measurements have been insufficient to build global models. In contrast, ...gas-phase chemistry models have been based on laboratory kinetics measurements for decades. We built a global model of aerosol formation by using extensive laboratory measurements of rates of nucleation involving sulfuric acid, ammonia, ions, and organic compounds conducted in the CERN CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets) chamber. The simulations and a comparison with atmospheric observations show that nearly all nucleation throughout the present-day atmosphere involves ammonia or biogenic organic compounds, in addition to sulfuric acid. A considerable fraction of nucleation involves ions, but the relatively weak dependence on ion concentrations indicates that for the processes studied, variations in cosmic ray intensity do not appreciably affect climate through nucleation in the present-day atmosphere.
Atmospheric new-particle formation affects climate and is one of the least understood atmospheric aerosol processes. The complexity and variability of the atmosphere has hindered elucidation of the ...fundamental mechanism of new-particle formation from gaseous precursors. We show, in experiments performed with the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets) chamber at CERN, that sulfuric acid and oxidized organic vapors at atmospheric concentrations reproduce particle nucleation rates observed in the lower atmosphere. The experiments reveal a nucleation mechanism involving the formation of clusters containing sulfuric acid and oxidized organic molecules from the very first step. Inclusion of this mechanism in a global aerosol model yields a photochemically and biologically driven seasonal cycle of particle concentrations in the continental boundary layer, in good agreement with observations.