Abstract. Lidar at 1064 nm and Ka-band millimetre-wave cloud radar (MMCR) are powerful tools for detecting the height distribution of cloud boundaries and can monitor the entire life cycle of cloud layers. In this study, lidar and MMCR are employed to jointly detect cloud boundaries under different conditions. By enhancing the echo signal of lidar at 1064 nm and combining its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the cloud signal can be accurately extracted from the aerosol signals and background noise. The interference signal is eliminated from Doppler spectra of the MMCR by using the noise ratio of the smallest measurable cloud signal (SNRmin⁡) and the spectral point continuous threshold (Nts). Moreover, the quality control of the reflectivity factor of MMCR obtained by the inversion is conducted, which improves the detection accuracy of the cloud signal. We analysed three typical cases studies; case one presents two interesting phenomena: (a) at 19:00–20:00 CST (China standard time), the ice crystal particles at the cloud top boundary are too small to be detected by MMCR, but they are well detected by lidar. (b) At 19:00–00:00 CST, the cirrus cloud changes to altostratus where the cloud particles eventually grow into large sizes, producing precipitation. Further, MMCR has more advantages than lidar in detection of the cloud top boundary within this period. Considering the advantages of the two devices, the change characteristics of the cloud boundary in Xi'an from December 2020 to November 2021 were analysed, with MMCR detection data as the main data and lidar data as the assistant data. The seasonal variation characteristics of clouds show that, in most cases, high clouds often occur in summer and autumn, and the low clouds are usually in winter. The normalized cloud cover shows that the maximum and minimum cloud cover occur in summer and winter, respectively. Furthermore, the cloud boundary frequency distribution results for the whole of the observation period show that the cloud bottom boundary below 1.5 km is more than 1 %, the frequency within the height range of 3.06–3.6 km is approximately 0.38 %, and the frequency above 8 km is less than 0.2 %. The cloud top boundary frequency distribution exhibits the characteristics of a bimodal distribution. The first narrow peak lies at approximately 1.0–3.1 km, and the second peak appears at 6.4–9.8 km.

This paper describes a measurement of lubricant-film thickness in a roller bearing using a new ultrasonic pulser-receiver, which has a maximum pulse repetition rate (PRR) of 100 kHz. The experimental results show that a higher PRR can help to get more measurement points and more details of the oil-film thickness distribution. Furthermore, the influence of rotor vibration response for the oil-film thickness is discussed, which is in keeping with the simulation result. Finally, the limits of the PRR are discussed in detail and the effect of the transducer focal zone size is also observed. IntroductionThe lubricant layer is a separation between the races and the elements in a roller bearing, which reduces friction and wear and provides smooth operation and long life for machines. Therefore, the thickness and behavior of the lubricant film are important to model and measure. However, it is very difficult to measure this lubricant-film thickness directly in industrial applications as the load is carried by an extremely thin lubricant film over a very small lubricated region.Electrical and optical methods have been used to measure the lubricant-film thickness. Resistance and capacitance methods are sensitive to the surface roughness and require electrical isolation [1][2][3]. Optical methods need translucent materials so they are rarely used outside the laboratory [4,5]. Compared with the methods mentioned above, the ultrasound method [6-8] removes the requirement of electrical isolation and transparency. The reflection coefficient of longitudinal ultrasonic waves has been shown to be highly sensitive to the lubricant-film thickness [9]. This method has been applied to a range of bearings including journal and ball bearings [10][11][12].

Abstract. To further exploit atmospheres cloud-water resources (CWR), it is necessary to correctly evaluate the amount of CWR in an area. CWR are hydrometeors that have not participated in precipitation formation at the surface and are suspended in the atmosphere to be exploited to maximize possible precipitation in the atmosphere (Zhou, Y., et al. (2020)). CWR includes three items: the existing hydrometeors at a time, the influx of atmospheric hydrometeors along the boundaries of the study area, and the mass of hydrometeors converted from water vapor through condensation or desublimation, defined as condensate. Condensate is the most important part of CWR. At present, there is a lack of effective observation methods for atmospheric column condensates, so the direct observation data of CWR are insufficient. The method for detecting atmospheric column condensate in the atmosphere is proposed and presented. The formation of condensate is closely related to atmospheric meteorological parameters (e.g., temperature and vertical airflow velocity). For stratiform clouds, the amount of atmospheric column condensate can be calculated by the saturated water vapor density and the ascending velocity at the cloud base and top. Active and passive remote sensing technology are applied to detect the mass of atmospheric column condensate. Combining millimetre-wave radar (MWR), lidar and microwave radiometers can well observe the vertical velocity and temperature at the cloud boundary. The detailed detection scheme and data calculation method are presented, and the presented method can realize the deduction of atmospheric column condensate. A case of cloud layer change before precipitation was monitored, and atmospheric column condensate was deduced and obtained. This is the first application, to our knowledge, to operate observations of atmospheric column condensates, which is significant for research on the hydrologic cycle and the assessment of cloud water resources.

No abstract

A novel lateral scanning Raman scattering lidar (LSRSL) system is proposed, aiming to realize the accurate measurement of atmospheric temperature and water vapor from the ground to a height of interest and to overcome the effect of a geometrical overlap function of backward Raman scattering lidar. A configuration of the bistatic lidar is employed in the design of the LSRSL system, in which four horizontally aligned telescopes mounted on a steerable frame to construct the lateral receiving system are spatially separated to look at a vertical laser beam at a certain distance. Each telescope, combined with a narrowband interference filter, is utilized to detect the lateral scattering signals of the low- and high-quantum-number transitions of the pure rotational Raman scattering spectra and vibrational Raman scattering spectra of N2 and H2O. The profiling of lidar returns in the LSRSL system is performed by the elevation angle scanning of the lateral receiving system, in which the intensities of the lateral Raman scattering signals at each setting of elevation angles are sampled and analyzed. Preliminary experiments are carried out after the construction of a LSRSL system in Xi’an city, whose retrieval results and statistical error analyses present a good performance in the detection of atmospheric temperature and water vapor from the ground to a height of 1.11 km and show the feasibility for combination with backward Raman scattering lidar in atmospheric measurement.