Original article

Textile Research Journal

2016, Vol. 86(16) 1728–1737

Numerical study of the three-dimensional ! The Author(s) 2016

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preliminary flow field in the ring DOI: 10.1177/0040517515606349
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spinning triangle

Hui Fen Guo, Ngan Yi Kitty Lam, Feng Yan, Chenxiao Yang
and Li Li

Abstract
The spinning triangle is a critical region in ring spinning. To understand the formation principle of the triangle zone, a
dynamic mesh model with SIMPLEC algorithm is employed to study airflow around the rotating front roller-pair. The
effects of both the top roller offset and the drafting inclination angle are also discussed. The bubble-type vortex break-
down and vortices around two cylinders are observed. The bubble-type vortices will help the edge fibers to converge to
the center. A contour line with special value is defined to describe the spinning triangle. A dynamic triangle zone is also
observed with time. As the forward offset of the top roller increases, the velocities in the stream-wise (x- and y-)
directions decrease and the maximum values of the skin friction deflect gradually towards the apex of the roller.
However, the z-velocity for the 3 mm top roller offset is the largest and results in a good converging for fibers and,
consequently, increases the yarn tension. With increasing the inclination angle, the velocities increase while both the
defined triangle zones and the maximum values of the friction coefficients decrease, thus speeding up the fibers trans-
portation. The simulation results agree well with the theory analysis and experiments of spinning.

Keywords
spinning triangle, dynamic mesh, flow characteristics, top roller offset, drafting inclination angle

Ring spinning is the dominant method of yarn produc-
tion. Because of its feasibility, it can process all fibers,
even chitosan fiber with both low strength and poor
spinnability,1 and ring spun yarns are used for a wide
range of applications. In the ring spinning system, the
spinning triangle is a critical region;2 its geometry influ-
ences the distribution of fiber tension in the spinning
triangle and, thus, affects the properties of spun yarns.3
Due to the importance of the spinning triangle, vari-
ous studies have been carried out. Stalder4 confirmed
that the hairiness was reduced when the spinning tri-
angle became smaller with an increase of spinning ten-
sion. Klein5 pointed out that the spinning triangle and
spinning angle affect fiber breakage considerably, and
consequently influence yarn structure. Also, the study
shows that a long spinning triangle has a much more
uniform distribution of the forces. Considering differ-
ent extensions of fiber in the spinning triangle, Krause
et al.6 investigated theoretically the strength of the
spinning triangle in ring spinning. Based on force bal-
ance model, the twist irregularity of cotton and worsted
spun yarns on a ring spinning frame was studied,7
which showed that the height of the spinning triangle
depends on the spinning tension, the fiber distribution
at the roller nip, the fiber tensile elastic modulus and
the width of the spinning triangle. Then, the structural
transformation of the fibers at rupture was investigated
when studying the strength of fiber strands in the
spinning triangle.8 Using the principle of stationary
total potential energy, the theoretical models of the
fiber tension distribution in the spinning triangle, with
symmetric9 and asymmetric3 geometries, were presented.
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Corresponding author:
Corresponding author: Li Li, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
ST728, The Institute of Textiles and Clothing, Hunghom, Kowloon,
Hong Kong.
Email: li.lilly@polyu.edu.hk
Guo et al.
Further, according to the principle of minimum poten-
tial energy, the theoretical models of the fiber tension
distributions were proposed by considering the inclin-
ation angle of the spinning tension and the migration of
the axis fiber at the front roller nip,10 and the raised
parts at the spinning triangle,11 respectively.
Most the yarn breakages occur in the spinning tri-
angle zone, leading to a reduction in production and a
decrease in the quality of the yarn.9 To improve the
quality of ring spinning yarn by changing the spinning
triangle shape, many modified methods have been
developed. A modified yarn path, called the left diag-
onal yarn path,12,13 can produce lower hairiness than
the conventional ring spun yarn due to the reduced
distance, in which the left-hand side fibers have to
travel before reaching the convergence point in the
spinning triangle. By using modified bottom roller,
Thilagavathi’s modified yarn path system could pro-
duce various left diagonal yarn path offsets in ring spin-
ning. This system can reduce 40–75% hairiness at
60 mm left diagonal path offset compared to the
straight path yarn. Another modified ring spinning
system was developed by Tao’s group14–16 in which a
false twisting device is incorporated into a ring frame
for producing low torque and soft handle single yarns.
In this system, it is highlighted that the ratio of the ring
spindle rotational speed to the false twisting device
speed is a key spinning parameter for obtaining differ-
ent shapes of the spinning triangle.
At present, most of the information available in the
literature on the spinning triangle is based on the spin-
ning experiments and the theoretical models. However,
the formation of the triangle zone, that is, the fiber
distribution, is closely related to the fiber dynamics in
the airflow created by rotating front roller-pairs and the
air suction system, whose outlet is close to the nip of the
rollers. In this system, as the pairs of the rollers rotate
in the opposite direction and air is sucked by the nega-
tive pressure in the suction flute (the pneumatic nozzle),
the airflow will deliver the fiber bundle and remove the
fly and pieces of broken thread to form the spinning
triangle. Hence, it is important to study the airflows in
the triangle zone. It is also noted that some factors,
such as the weighting load on the top roller, the inclin-
ation of the drafting system, the offset of the top roller
and the cotton suction flute (the pneumatic nozzle),
whose outlet is close to the nip of the rollers and creates
the negative pressure, are significantly related to fluid
flow in the spinning triangle. If all factors are con-
sidered, especially the three-dimensional (3D) suction
flute, it will greatly increase the difficulties of the geo-
metrical modeling and (the converging) simulation due
to the negative pressure. In this paper, as a preliminary
study, ignoring the effect of the air suction system for
1729
the broken end collector, only the flow field caused by
rotating the roller-pair is simulated. To the authors’
knowledge, however, studies in this area are rather
scarce. Only a similar study on the flow field of two
drafting cylinders in pneumatic spinning was found.17
It is noteworthy that the rotating speed of the roller in
the literature is about 14 times more than that in this
paper.
In this paper, we restrict our attention to study the
flow fields around counter-rotating (front) rollers using
a numerical method, and expound the formation mech-
anism of the twist triangle from the fluid dynamics
view. In the spinning study, both the inclination angle
of the drafting arrangement and the forward offset of
the top roller determine the height of the spinning tri-
angle.18–20 Hence, the effects of the top roller offset and
the inclination angle of drafting (inflow direction) on
the fluid field and yarn properties are also discussed
here.
Theory
Geometrical model
For the convenience of modeling, the rollers are simpli-
fied as circular cylindrical shapes. Figure 1 shows the
profile with two rotating cylinders used in a 3D simu-
lation. The origin of the 3D Cartesian coordinate
system is located at the center of the axis of the upper
cylinder (the top roller) without the offset. The z-axis is
along the axial direction of the upper cylinder and the
y-axis is vertical pointing downwards. The x–z plane is
the horizontal plane and the x–y plane is parallel to the
cross-sections of the cylinders.
In the spinning process, the bottom rollers are posi-
tively driven whereas the top rollers are run by fric-
tional contacts with the former. Hence, the surface
speeds of the two cylinders are assumed to be equal
here. Since the drafting inclination angle (i.e., inflow
direction) and the forward offset of the front top
roller will influence the flow characteristics and hence
change the yarn properties, we considered the effects of
these parameters in this paper. To compare conveni-
ently, we changed only one design parameter at a
time. The specifications for the current series of calcu-
lations are shown in Table 1. According to the theory
and parameters of the common ring spinning
machines,18,21 the computation constants are given as
follows: the length of the two circular cylinders is
28 mm, and their diameters are 25 mm for the lower
cylinder and 28mm for the upper one, respectively.
The distance between the two cylinder centers is
26.8 mm. The rotational speed of the bottom roller
(lower cylinder) of 240 r/min is used.
1730 Textile Research Journal 86(16)

Figure 1. Profiles of the three-dimensional model (including slices) and z-direction projection for the forward offset 3mm of the top
roller.

The time derivative term in Equation (1) can use a

Table 1. Specifications of the computation cases first-order backward difference to discrete:

1 2 3 4 5 Z
d ð VÞnþ1  ð VÞn
Offset of the 3 0 6 3 3  dV ¼ ð2Þ
dt V
t
top roller l (mm)
Drafting inclination 45 45 45 30 60
angle  ( ) where n and n+1 represent the current time and the
next time. The n+1 time on volume Vn+1 is computed
from

Method of numerical simulation dV

Ignoring the influence of the fibers or strands, air-
flow past two rotating rollers will be a classical fluid
flow problem. To perform numerical simulations
around two rotating circular cylinders, the dynamic
mesh technology22–28 is adopted. This method can be
used to model flows where the shape of the domain
changes with time due to motion on the domain
boundaries. With respect to dynamic meshes, on an
arbitrary control volume, V, the integral form of the
conservation equation for a general flux, , is writ-
ten as
Z Z
d *
 dV þ u!
 ð~ ug Þ  dA
dt V @V
Z Z
¼ ~
r  dA þ S dV
@V V
where  is the air density, u~ is a velocity vector, !
ug is the
mesh velocity of the moving mesh, is the diffusion
coefficient and S is the source term. @V is used to rep-
resent the boundary of the control volume.
Vnþ1 ¼ Vn þ
t ð3Þ
dt
where dV/dt is derivative control of time; in order to
satisfy the law of conservation of the grid, the time
derivative of the control volume is described as
n
dV X f
Vj
¼ ð4Þ
dt j

t
where nf is the number of faces on the control volume
and where Vj is the volume swept out by the control
volume face j over the time step
t.
The computational procedure is simplified by limit-
ð1Þ ing the deformations to the two rotating cylinder
domains and grids, in which all the computational
domains are set as stationary domains. The mesh
updates are obtained through systematic implementa-
tions of spring-based smoothing23–25 and local remesh-
ing.21,25,28 In the spring-based smoothing method, the
edges between any two mesh nodes are idealized as a
Guo et al.
network of interconnected springs. Based on Hooke’s
!
law, the force, Fi , on a mesh node can be written as
! X ni
Fi ¼ kij ð
!
xj 
!
xi Þ ð5Þ
j
where
! xi and
! xj are the displacements of node i and
its neighbor j, ni is the number of neighboring nodes
connected to node i, and kij is the spring constant (or
stiffness) between node i and its neighbor j.
When the boundary displacement is large compared
to the local cell sizes, the cell quality can deteriorate or
the cells can become degenerate. This will invalidate the
mesh (e.g., result in negative cell volumes) and, conse-
quently, will lead to convergence problems when the
solution is updated to the next time step. To circumvent
this problem, the cells or faces that violate the skewness
or size criteria are locally re-meshed.23,25,28
The solutions of the transport equations require spe-
cification of boundary conditions on the computational
domain. Due to the inclination of the drafting system
with respect to the horizontal plane, and rotation of the
middle and back roller-pair, an inclination inflow with
low velocity is set in all cases. The pressure outlet con-
dition with ambient pressure is specified. At the walls of
the two rollers, no-slip boundary conditions are applied.
A flow past two rotating cylinders is generally gov-
erned by three normalized flow parameters: Reynolds
number, Re, gap spacing between the two cylinders, g,
and the ratios of the rotational speed, , which are
defined as
Di U1 cos  Di !i
Rei ¼ i ¼
 2U1 cos 
ð6Þ
d  r1  r2
gi ¼ i ¼ 1, 2
Di
where xi are constant angular velocities of the cylin-
ders’ rotation, U1 is the oncoming free stream velocity,
n is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid, d is the distance
of two cylinder centers and Di and ri (i ¼ 1, 2) are the
diameter and radius of the cylinders, respectively.
Corresponding to Equation (6), in our simulation, the
three normalized parameters are different with different
offsets of the top roller and different inclination angles.
For example, according to the insurface velocity and
diameter of the bottom roller, Re ¼ 120,  ¼ 3.2 and
g ¼ 0.012 are used for case 2 (l ¼ 0 mm and  ¼ 45 ).
In the present computation, the finite-volume code
Fluent is used. Due to the dynamic mesh method, the
first-order implicit is adopted to discretize the time
term. For the pressure–velocity coupling, the
SIMPLE and SIMPLEC29 algorithms are available.
The SIMPLEC procedure is similar to the SIMPLE
1731
procedure. The only difference lies in the expression
used for the face flux correction. The use of this mod-
ified correction equation can accelerate convergence.
Hence, the SIMPLEC method is used to solve the pres-
sure–velocity coupling here. In the spinning triangle,
the gravity should be considered because of the inclin-
ation of the drafting system. The body-force-weighted
interpolation scheme for pressure is used in order to
take into account the gravity. The other (momentum)
conservation equations are solved using the second-
order upwind (SOU) scheme to increase the precision.
Results and discussion
Flow structure
Figure 2 shows the flow structures at different planes
for Case 1. It is necessary to point out that the stream-
lines in the figures are on two velocity components that
are orthogonal to the corresponding plane. As shown in
Figure 2, the velocity is maximum near the circular
cylinders and the streamlines around the cylinders
form a tapered envelope along the different stream-
wise directions, which will form a triangle zone (ST).
The bubble-type vortex breakdowns are generated
along the x- and y-directions (Figures 2(a) and (b)).
The internal structure of the bubble shows approxi-
mately symmetric spiral-like vortices rotating in oppos-
ite directions that reveal a start of the transition from
bubble to spiral breakdown. This is in qualitative agree-
ment with previous swirl motion experiments by
Brücker and Althaus.30 These bubble-type vortices
will help the edge fibers to converge to the center,
which form a triangle zone. It is observed from
Figures 2(c) and (d) that the vortex rotates in a counter-
clockwise direction along the z-axis (i.e., the axis of the
cylinder), and its position and size are changed. These
show that the vortex arrangement along the z-axis is
’turn’. At the center of the cylinders, the vortex,
which lies to the front upper of the top roller, has
little effect on the transportation of the fibers owing
to the fiber bundle located in the nip of the front rollers
(Figure 2(c)). Seen from Figure 2(d), near the end of the
cylinder, the vortex behind the bottom roller prolongs
the residence time of the fibers and may prevent the
edge fibers from being completely incorporated into
the yarn body and form the fly. This also explains the
causes of the fly in the twist angle from fluid dynamics.
During a rotation period of the bottom roller, the
flow structures at the plane x ¼ 0 cm, with the com-
puted streamlines and contours, are similar
(Figure 3). Here, T0 is any time (as the initial time),
and T is a rotation period of the bottom roller.
The largest velocity magnitude is near the gap of
the two cylinders and it fluctuates over time.
1732 Textile Research Journal 86(16)

Figure 2. Streamline and contours of velocity magnitude at different planes of Case 1: (a) x ¼ 1.255 cm; (b) y ¼ 4 cm; (c) z ¼ 0 cm; (d)
z ¼ 1.35 cm.

Figure 3. Instantaneous streamline and velocity contours for a rotation period (T) of the bottom roller at the plane x ¼ 0 cm of Case
1. T0 is any time (as the initial time): (a) T0+T/4; (b) T0+T/2; (c) T0+3T/4; (d) T0+T.
Guo et al.
The counter-rotating vortex pair generates in two sides
of the bottom roller. With time, the stagnation points
both upstream of the top roller and downstream of the
bottom roller move upward gradually and the size of
the counter-rotating vortex pair is increased. It should
be pointed out that the fluid is pseudo-periodic due to
different rotational velocities and diameters of the two
rollers.
From Figure 3, it is also noted that the velocity con-
tours near the bottom roller downstream show the
parabolic type, which is similar to a triangle zone. To
describe qualitatively the spinning triangle zone (ST), a
contour line with special value is extracted correspond-
ing to the flow behavior (streamlines and contours).
The triangle zone, as shown in Figure 4, is defined as
the profile of the special contour line, in which the
z-axis value is limited in [1, 1]. It can be observed
from the figure that the triangle zone decreases grad-
ually as the time increases. Therefore, the spinning tri-
angle is dynamic with time.
Effect of the top roller offset
When other parameters are kept constant, the effects of
the top roller offset on the special value of the contour
line (triangle zone) are as shown in Figure 5. The size of
the triangle zone for 6 mm offset (Case 3, l ¼ 6 mm) is
the largest due to small velocity (see also Figure 6).
Corresponding to spinning tests, this will result in
more end breaks for a longer triangle zone.5,20 It is
noted that there is no obvious difference between the
size of the triangle zone for Case 1 (l ¼ 3 mm) and Case
2 (l ¼ 0 mm). The triangle zone for 3 mm offset (Case 1,
l ¼ 3 mm) is just a little smaller than that of the case
Figure 4. The triangle zone (the profiles of the special contour
line) at plane x ¼ 0 cm in a cycle (T) of the bottom roller for Case
1; T0 is any time (as the initial time).
1733
without offset (Case 2, l ¼ 0 mm). Stalder4 has pointed
out that a smaller spinning triangle will increase spin-
ning tension and reduce hairiness. Therefore, the yarns
spun by using Case 1 (l ¼ 3 mm) will show the highest
tenacity under the same condition.
To further compare, the velocity at the intersectant
line between the planes y ¼ 4 cm and x ¼ 1.255 cm,
which is near the bottom roller, for different offsets of
the top roller, is shown in Figure 6. With the increase of
the offset length, except z-velocity, the velocities
descrease. It is also noted that the x-velocity in all
cases is negative. This makes it difficult to transport
the fibers forward . Hence, a larger offset length will
prolong the stagnation time of the fibers. The
z-velocity, along the cylinder axis, is antisymmetrical
on the center and the value of Case 1 (3 mm offset) is
the largest, which is helpful to move towards the center.
According to these simulation results, it can be inferred
that the rational design of the offset length is 3 mm or
so. This agrees with the spinning observation.18–20
In real situations, due to the effect of the frictional
contacts of fibers with the bottom roller, the asymmet-
ric spinning triangles are often formed to interfere with
the twist propagation into this zone and to migrate the
axis fiber at the front roller nip.1 Therefore, the skin
friction or wall shear stress of the bottom roller is very
important. To describe the problems, the skin friction
coefficient (CF) is introduced as31

CF ¼ 1 2 ð7Þ
2 ðU1 cos Þ
where wall shear stress  acts tangential to the surface
of the roller.
5.2
Case 1, l = 3 mm
5 Case 2, l = 0 mm
Case 3, l = 6 mm
4.8
4.6
y (cm)
4.4
4.2
3.8
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5
z (cm)
Figure 5. The triangle zones (the profiles of the special con-
tour line) at plane x ¼ 0 cm for different offset of the top roller.
1734 Textile Research Journal 86(16)

Figure 6. Velocity components along the intersectant line between the planes y ¼ 4 cm and x ¼ 1.255 cm for different offsets of the
top roller.

Figure 7 shows the distributions of the skin friction

coefficients (CF) across the bottom roller surface at
z ¼ 0 mm for different offsets of the top roller. Here
only CF at u ¼ 0–180 is given due to the fiber cover
on the upper surface of the bottom roller. It is necessary
to point out that the friction coefficients at 180–360 are
small for all cases that are not displayed here. For all
cases, the friction coefficient (CF) oscillates acutely. With
the increase of the offset of the top roller, the maximum
values deflect gradually towards near u ¼ 90 . After that,
the second peak values appear after u ¼ 90 . Although
the CF peak of Case 2 (l ¼ 0 mm) is the largest in three
cases, the distance between two peaks is also the largest.
This is disadvantageous to migrate the fibers at the front
roller nip. In Case 3 (l ¼ 6mm), the friction coefficient
before and behind two peak values (i.e., u < 80 and
u > 120 ) are very small compared with these at the
same positions of Case 1 (l ¼ 3 mm). On the other Figure 7. Skin friction coefficients versus angular position at
hand, the larger two peaks of friction coefficients and the upper surface of z ¼ 0 mm of the bottom roller for different
their close distance in Case 3 (l ¼ 6 mm) increase the offsets of the top roller.
Guo et al. 1735

friction force between the fibers and the bottom roller,

and make it difficult for the fibers to migrate, thus form-
Effect of the drafting inclination angle
ing a large triangle zone (see also Figure 5). Therefore, The angle of inclination of the drafting system is one
an offset of about 3 mm is rational.18–20 factor that determines the height of the spinning
triangle. In the spinning system, with a low inclination
angle, which is in respect to the horizontal plane (i.e.,
5 the x–z plane in this study), the angle of wrap of the
Case 1, θ = 45 ο fiber strand over the curvature of the front bottom
4.8 Case 4, θ = 30 ο drafting roller is large, resulting in a long spinning tri-
Case 5, θ = 60 ο
angle.18–20 Our simulation results also show a smaller
4.6 inclination angle (Case 4,  ¼ 30 ) causes a larger tri-
angle zone (Figure 8). Also, it can be clearly seen from
y (cm)

4.4 Figure 8 that the size of the triangle zone decreases with
increasing the inclination angle.
4.2 Figure 9 shows the three velocity components along
the intersectant line between the planes y ¼ 4 cm and
4
x ¼ 1.255 cm for different drafting inclination angles.
As the inclination angle increases, the velocity also
3.8
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 increases. It is obvious that the three velocity compo-
z (cm) nents in Case 5 ( ¼ 60 ) are close to those of Case 1
( ¼ 60 ). However, the velocities in Case 4 ( ¼ 30 ),
Figure 8. The triangle zones (the profiles of the special con- especially the y-velocity, are much smaller in compari-
tour line) at plane x ¼ 0 cm for different inclination angles. son with Cases 1 and 5. In accordance with our

Figure 9. Velocity components along the intersectant line between the planes y ¼ 4 cm and x ¼ 1.255 cm for different drafting
inclination angles.
1736
Figure 10. Skin friction coefficients versus angular position at
the upper surface of z ¼ 0 mm of the bottom roller for different
drafting inclination angles.
simulation, as the fiber strand passes through the two
rotating roller-pairs, the velocities in the x and y direc-
tions will transfer the fiber strand towards the outlet,
while the z-velocity is responsible for converging at the
twisting point. For Case 5 ( ¼ 60 ), although a larger
negative x-velocity makes it difficult to transport fibers
or strands, a larger z-velocity will converge quickly
fibers or strands to the center, resulting in a short spin-
ning triangle (see also Figure 8). On the contrary, a
smaller velocity in Case 4 ( ¼ 30 ) leads the fibers to
transfer and converge slowly and form a long triangle
zone (see also Figure 8). In spinning, the longer spin-
ning triangle results in more end breaks.5,20 Hence, a
larger inclination angle, 45–60 , should be adopted.
As shown in Figure 10, the maximum values of the
friction coefficients decrease gradually as the inclination
angles increase. Similarly, the friction coefficient (CF)
also oscillates across the bottom roller surface for
three cases. In addition, the peak values after u ¼ 90
are at almost the same position for different inclination
angles. There are two larger peaks at u ¼ 80 or so for
Case 5 ( ¼ 60 ). It is difficult to migrate the fibers.
However, the skin friction in Case 4 ( ¼ 30 ) oscillates
acutely and it has a large amplitude. This can disperse
the fibers to form a large triangle (see also Figure 8).
Corresponding to the CF analysis, a 45 inclination
angle is suggested.18–20
Conclusions
In this paper, a dynamic mesh technique was adopted
to simulate airflow around two rotating circular cylin-
ders (a roller-pair). Due to a large recirculation zone, a
tapered cone streamline around the two cylinders were
formed. In particular, the vortex behind the bottom
Textile Research Journal 86(16)
roller will prolong the stagnation time of the fibers
and results in generating the fly. The bubble-type vor-
tices along the stream-wise direction will help the edge
fibers to converge to the center, which form a triangle
zone. In addition, with time, a dynamic triangle zone
was also observed. For all cases, the friction coefficients
oscillate across the bottom roller surface.
The study also shows that as the offset of the top
roller increases, the velocities in the stream-wise (x- and
y-) direction decrease and the maximum values of the
skin friction deflect gradually towards near u ¼ 90 .
However, the z-velocity for 3 mm offset (Case 1) was
the largest. This is helpful to draw the fibers towards
the axis center (converging point) and form a small
triangle zone to increase the yarn tension. Similarly,
with the increase of the inclination angle, the velocities
increase while both the defined triangle zones and the
maximum values of the friction coefficients decrease.
Hence, a larger inclination angle can speed up the
fiber transportation and greatly increase the yarn ten-
sion. Corresponding to the simulation results, the opti-
mized offset length and inclination angle were given,
which agrees with the theory analysis and experiments
of spinning.18–20
The computational modeling constructed by this
paper can provide a useful insight into the spinning
triangle flow behavior, which has not previously been
reported in the open literature. The long-term objective
for this study is to obtain the fiber dynamics in this
spinning triangle to optimize the triangle zone.
Further detailed studies will follow.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: This work was supported by the Research Grants
Council (RGC) of Hong Kong, China (project number:
PolyU5420/13H) and the Hong Kong Polytechnic
University (project number: G-UC52).
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