At the Kielce University of Technology a new concept of accurate measurements of sphericity deviations of machine parts has been developed. The concept is based upon measurement of roundness profiles in many clearly defined cross-sections of the workpiece. Measurements are performed with the use of typical radial measuring instrument equipped with a unit allowing accurate positioning of the ball. The developed concept required finding a solution to numerous problems relating to the principle of the radial measurement. One of the problems to be solved was matching of measured roundness profiles. The paper presents an outline of the developed concept of sphericity measurement, a mathematical model of profile matching and results of the verification of the model.

Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission data is widely used in various fields of science. GRACE explored changes of the gravity field regularly from April 2002 to June 2017. In the following research, we examine variance of signal contained in two different formats of GRACE data: standard spherical harmonics and mass concentration blocks (so-called “mascons”) solutions, both provided in the most recent releases. For spherical harmonics-based solution, we use monthly gravity field solutions provided up to degree and order (d/o) 96 by three different computing centers, i.e. the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) and the Center for Space Research (CSR). For the mass concentration blocks, we use values of total water storage provided by the CSR, JPL and the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) computing centers, which we convert to spherical harmonic coefficients up to d/o 96. We show that using the anisotropic DDK3 filter to smooth the north-south stripes present in total wate storage obtained from standard spherical harmonics solution leaves more information than common isotropic Gaussian filter. In the case of mascons, GSFC solution contains much more information than the CSR and JPL releases, relevant for corresponding d/o. Differences in variance of signal arise from different background models as well as various shape and size of mascons used during processing of GRACE observations.

Flow mechanism under roughened solar air heater is quite complex. This paper is an effort towards determining the governing equations for heat transfer and friction factor for inclined spherical balls roughened ducts. With the availability of these equations, it is easier to predict the thermal and thermohydraulic performance of such roughened solar air heaters. The governing equations are derived based on the experimental data generated under actual outdoor condition at the test rig designed and fabricated at the terrace of the Mechanical Engineering Department, the National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur in India, in terms of roughness and flow parameters. Maximum augmentation in Nusselt number and friction factor for varying relative roughness pitch, relative roughness height, spherical ball height to diameter ratio, and angle of attack was respectively found to be of the order of 2.1 to 3.54 times, 1.87 to 3.21 times, 2.89 to 3.27 times and 1.74 to 3.56 times for Nusselt number and 0.84 to 1.79 times, 1.46 to 1.91 times, 1.67 to 2.34 times and 1.21 to 2.67 times for friction factor in comparison to non-roughened duct. The optimum roughness parameters under present investigation have been found.