Currently, we are experiencing an ever-increasing demand for high-quality transportation in the distinctive natural environment of forest roads, which can be characterized by significant weather changes. The need for more effective management of the forest roads environment, a more direct, rapid response to fire interventions and, finally, the endeavor to expand recreational use of the woods in the growth of tourism are among the key factors. A thorough collection of diagnostic activities conducted on a regular basis, as well as a dataset of long-term monitored attributes of chosen sections, are the foundations of successful road infrastructure management. Our main contribution to this problem is the design of a probe for measuring the temperature profile for utilization in stand-alone systems or as a part of an IoT solution. We have addressed the design of the mechanical and electrical parts with emphasis on the accuracy of the sensor layout in the probe. Based on this design, we developed a simulation model, and compared the simulation results with the experimental results. An experimental installation was carried out which, based on measurements to date, confirmed the proposed probe meets the requirements of practice and will be deployed in a forest road environment.

The formation of dissimilar weld joints, including Al/Ti joints, is an area of research supported by the need for weight reduction and corrosion resistance in automotive, aircraft, aeronautic, and other industries. Depending on the cooling rates and chemical composition, rapid solidification of Al/Ti alloys during laser welding can lead to the development of different metastable phases and the formation of brittle intermetallic compounds (IMCs). The effort to successfully join aluminum to titanium alloys is associated with demands to minimize the thickness of brittle IMC zones by selecting appropriate welding parameters or applying suitable filler materials. The paper is focused on the numerical simulation of the laser welding–brazing of 2.0 mm thick titanium Grade 2 and EN AW5083 aluminum alloy plates using 5087 aluminum filler wire. The developed simulation model was used to study the impact of laser welding–brazing parameters (laser power, welding speed, and laser beam offset) on the transient temperature fields and weld-pool characteristics. The results of numerical simulations were compared with temperatures measured during the laser welding–brazing of Al/Ti plates using a TruDisk 4002 disk laser, and macrostructural and microstructural analyses, and weld tensile strength measurements, were conducted. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of welded–brazed joints increases with an increase in the laser beam offset to the Al side and with an increase in welding speed. The highest UTS values at the level of 220 MPa and 245 MPa were measured for joints produced at a laser power of 1.8 kW along with a welding speed of 30 mm·s⁻¹ and a laser beam offset of 300 μm and 460 μm, respectively. When increasing the laser power to 2 kW, the UTS decreased. The results exhibited that the tensile strength of Al/Ti welded–brazed joints was dependent, regardless of the welding parameters, on the amount of melted Ti Grade 2, which, during rapid solidification, determines the thickness and morphology of the IMC layer. A simple formula was proposed to predict the tensile strength of welded–brazed joints using the computed cross-sectional Ti weld metal area.

A new cabling machine was constructed for conductor on round core (CORC)-like cable production. Its design allowed us to produce a cable with two layers in one run, each comprising four superconducting tapes. The cable of length of 40 m was made at a production rate of 6 m h ⁻¹ by this machine. It consisted of eight Furukawa-SuperPower tapes of width 4 mm and length 50 m wound in two layers on Cu tube with outer diameter 6.35 mm. To detect the influence of the cable winding technology on the superconducting tapes’ properties their critical currents were measured individually on the as-produced cable in the form of a one-layer coil. Afterwards the critical current of the one-layer coil was measured by monitoring the voltages on all tapes while increasing the coil current. The average of these voltages was utilized for coil critical current determination. Then the solenoid with four layers each containing 20 turns was created from the cable and the same measurement procedure was performed to check the influence of cable bending on the solenoid form. The results of these characterizations exclude critical current degradation for any tape of the cable used for solenoid preparation. The measured solenoid critical current of 622.8 A is lower than the simple sum 1240 A of the individual tapes’ critical currents due to the dependence of the tape critical current on the magnetic field. For all measurements the investigated object was immersed into a liquid nitrogen bath. In the case of the solenoid the bath was also cooled down to 66 K.

Joining of dissimilar Al-Ti alloys is very interesting from the point of view of weight reduction of components and structures in automotive or aerospace industries. In the dependence on cooling rate and chemical composition, rapid solidification of Al-Ti alloys during laser welding can lead to the formation of metastable phases and brittle intermetallic compounds that generally reduce the quality of produced weld joints. The paper deals with design and testing of welding parameters for preparation of weld joints of two sheets with different thicknesses from titanium Grade 2 and AW 5754 aluminium alloy. Temperature fields developed during the formation of Al-Ti butt joints were investigated by numerical simulation in ANSYS software. The influence of laser welding parameters including the laser power and laser beam offset on the temperature distribution and weld joint formation was studied. The results of numerical simulation were verified by experimental temperature measurement during laser beam welding applying the TruDisk 4002 disk laser. The microstructure of produced weld joints was assessed by light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. EDX analysis was applied to determine the change in chemical composition across weld joints. Mechanical properties of weld joints were evaluated using tensile tests and Vickers microhardness measurements.