Background: Efficient production and reliable availability of electricity requires comprehensive understanding of load demand trends to plan and match production with consumption. Although electricity demand depends on a combination of cultural and economic conditions, weather conditions remain as the major driver. With increased capabilities of accurate predictions of weather, the importance of investigating and quantifying its impact on electricity demand becomes obvious. The electrical system in Jordan has been facing several challenges including the failure to respond to increased demands induced by extreme temperatures. This paper covers a clear gap in literature through presenting a detailed investigation of the electricity consumption trends and in identifying the susceptibility of these trends to weather. Methods: This study relies on the statistical processing and analysis, through modeling of hourly electricity demands in Jordan in the period of 10 years between 2007 and 2016. Actual weather data was used employing the degree-day approach. The monthly, daily, and hourly seasonal variation indices were determined. Optimally formulated piecewise functions were used to track the thermal comfort zone and rate of increase in electricity demand for temperatures beyond it for each year. Moreover, the elasticity of polynomial functions was adopted to identify saturation points to thermally map the electricity consumption. Results: The developed models successfully described the relationship between the daily electricity demand and the mean daily ambient temperature. The average comfort zone width was 4°C and the average mean base temperature was 17.9°C. The sensitivity of electricity demand to both high and low temperatures has increased on average, with 11% and 16.4% to hot and cold weather, respectively. Finally, the electricity demand in cooling was found to saturate at 32.9°C, whereas it saturates for heating at 4.7°C. Conclusions: The electricity demand in Jordan observes seasonal trends in a consistent and predictable manner. An optimally formulated piecewise function successfully tracked the thermal comfort zone and the rate of increase in electricity demand for temperatures beyond it for each year of the study period. Finally, saturation heating and cooling temperatures were acquired from the elasticity of the daily electricity demands modeled against daily HDD and CDD.

Increasing the efficiency of internal combustion engines is of major interest for reduced greenhouse gas emission. A significant improvement potential is given with the reduction of friction losses. Here, especially the friction between the piston ring and the cylinder liner is of interest. This article describes a study with the target to enhance the piston ring–cylinder liner conformation through increasing the roundness of the deformed liner during the warm operation state. The approach is based on the assumption that a non-circular liner in the cold state can deform due to thermal and mechanical stresses toward a circular shape under typical hot operation conditions. To test this hypothesis, a computational model for a gasoline engine was built and simulated using advanced finite element methods. The simulation describes the deformation process of the liner from the thermal and mechanical stresses. First, the deformation of a circular liner is simulated, showing asymmetric deformations of up to 30 µm in the warm state for the cylinder positioned at the end of the four-cylinder bank. As experimental data are readily available, a comparison was possible, showing good agreement. Then, three liner configurations with non-circular shape in the cold stage are investigated. For an elliptically shaped configuration, a nearly circular-shaped liner is reached under typical operation conditions. This numerical approach shows the potential for reduced friction of the piston–liner arrangement within internal combustion engines. The planned next step is the extension of this method to three-dimensional shape aspects and the application to the geometry of our test engine of our lab where friction can be measured in detail with a floating-liner measurement system.

This paper presents a study which analyzes the energy security in Jordan in light of several regional conflicts for the period . We apply an event study method to assess the direct and indirect effects of six regional conflicts on the energy sector in Jordan based on a proposed energy security framework developed from an infusion of frameworks found in literature. The conflicts include the 6 days war, Lebanese civil war, Iraq-Iran war, First Gulf war, Iraq Invasion, and Egyptian revolution. It was found that the energy sector in Jordan is too sensitive to the regional conflicts due to the lack of diversity of energy suppliers throughout the period of study. Other aspects taken into consideration included strategic storage adequacy, supply chain protection, economic integration, energy demands and prices. The study concludes with a proposed energy policy aiming the reduction of those effects.

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