Stability studies on methyl and ethyl fatty acid esters of sunflowerseed oil

Fatty acid esters, high in linoleic acid, were prepared and stored for long-term engine tests. Storage tests with these esters were undertaken to obtain more information on optimal storage requirements and general stability characteristics. Samples were kept at three temperature levels (20 C, 30 C and fluctuating around 50 C) for a 90-day period and were removed at regular intervals for chemical and physical analysis. The influence of air, temperature, light, TBHQ and contact with mild steel was evaluated by comparing the free fatty acid, peroxide, anisidine, ultraviolet absorption, viscosity and induction periods. A statistical model was used to evaluate the data and to reduce the large number of data points to comparable curves. Storage of esters in contact with air, especially at a temperature above 30 C, resulted in significant increases in peroxide, ultraviolet absorption, free fatty acid, viscosity and anisidine values. Exclusion of air retarded oxidation at all temperature levels. A direct relationship between viscosity increases and oxidation parameters was evident. Exposure to light caused a small increase in the oxidation parameters of esters stored at the highest temperature level. Addition of TBHQ prevented oxidation of samples stored under moderate conditions. Under unfavorable storage conditions the anti-oxidant was no longer effective. Mild steel had very little effect on the oxidation parameters. Only the anisidine values of samples stored at the highest temperature level were slightly increased. Methyl esters performed slightly better than ethyl esters during the storage test. The following practical guidelines for storage of fatty acid ester fuels are: (i) airtight containers should be used; (ii) the storage temperature should be <30 C; (iii) mild steel (rust free) containers may be used, and (iv) TBHQ has a beneficial effect on oxidation stability.     

Performance of combined cobalt—nickel—zirconia and HZSM-5 catalyst systems for carbon monoxide hydrogenation

The synthesis of hydrocarbons via hydrogenation of carbon monoxide was investigated over cobalt—nickel—zirconia catalysts of various compositions in combination with zeolite HZSM-5 in “mixed bed” and “follow bed” arrangements. These combinations resulted in the formation of aromatics in amounts as high as 30-35 wt% under relatively mild operating conditions (1 atm, 250–280°C). Although the olefinicity of C₂ and C₃ fractions in the product stream was higher in the mixed bed compared to the follow bed arrangement, the selectivities to aromatics were comparable in the two bed arrangements. The aromatic selectivity was found to be sensitive to operating conditions. The formation of aromatics was favored at high HZSM-5/metal catalyst ratios, low space velocities and high reaction temperatures. The product distributions obtained using various metal/zeolite bifunctional catalysts have been discussed.     

Verification of submodeling technique in thermomechanical reliability assessment of flip-chip package assembly

In this paper we verified the submodeling technique applied in the thermomechanical reliability assessment of a flip-chip BGA under accelerated thermal cycling test conditions. Since the steady-state creep model was implemented for the solder bump to better represent its realistic mechanical behavior, submodeling procedures developed specifically for path-dependent thermomechanical problems were considered. A detailed global model for the flip-chip BGA was built up to verify submodeling solutions. This model also served as a benchmark to examine solution discrepancies caused by different simplifications of the global model.     

Semiconductor-insulator structures in the phototargets of vidicons sensitive in the middle infrared region of the spectrum

The kinetics of electronic processes in vidicon phototargets based on semiconductor-insulator structures with a narrow-gap semiconductor is considered taking into account charge drain in the insulator layer and relaxation of the nonequilibrium depletion region in the semiconductor layer. The integration time, threshold sensitivity, and resolution at various intensities of incident radiation are estimated.     

Conflict detection and resolution in two-dimensional prefix router tables

We show that determining the minimum number of resolve filters that need to be added to a set of two-dimensional (2-D) prefix filters so that the filter set can implement a given policy using the first-matching-rule-in-table tie breaker is NP-hard. Additionally, we develop a fast O(nlogn+s) time, where n is the number of filters and s is the number of conflicts, plane-sweep algorithm to detect and report all pairs of conflicting 2-D prefix filters. The space complexity of our algorithm is O(n). On our test set of 15 2-D filter sets, our algorithm runs between 4 and 17 times as fast as the 2-D trie algorithm of A. Hari et al. (2000) and uses between 1/4th and 1/8th the memory used by the algorithm of Hari et al. On the same test set, our algorithm is between 4 and 27 times as fast as the bit-vector algorithm of Baboescu and Varghese (2002) and uses between 1/205 and 1/6 as much memory. We introduce the notion of an essential resolve filter and develop an efficient algorithm to determine the essential resolve filters of a prefix filter set.     

Using Bandwidth-Space Partitioning to Improve Cell Coverage and Near-Far Unfair Access Problem in a Noise-Limited CDMA Cellular Network

This paper concerns CDMA cellular networks equipped with conventional matched filter receivers. For this type of cellular networks, two problems exist. One is the inverse relationship between the coverage and capacity, and the other one is the near-far unfair access problem. To resolve these two problems, a bandwidth-space partitioning technique is adopted. Several admission control schemes based on the bandwidth-space partitioning technique are proposed, and their performances are evaluated based on the simulation.Shih-Tsung Yang received his B.S. (1989) and M.S. (1991) degrees in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University, and Ph.D. (1999) degree in electrical and computer engineering from University of Maryland, College Park.From 1999 to 2000, he was with SBC Technology Resourtces, Inc. where he was involved in the network architecture design for the ATM based networks. From November 2000 to May 2003, he was with Transilica/Microtune where he was involved in the design of Baseband and RF for the wireless communications. Since May 2003, Dr. Yang is now with Genesys Logic, Inc. where he is responsible for the baseband design of the WLAN and Ethernet.Dr. Yang’s research interests are in the area of Digital Communications, Communication networks and signal processing. E-mail: thomas.yang@genesyslogic.com.twAnthony Ephremides received his B.S. degree from the National Technical University of Athens (1967), and M.S. (1969) and Ph.D. (1971) degrees from Princeton University, all in Electrical Engineering. He has been at the University of Maryland since 1971, and currently holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department and in the Institute of Systems Research (ISR) of which he is a founding member. He is co-founder of the NASA Center for Commercial Development of Space on Hybrid and Satellite Communications Networks established in 1991 at Maryland as an off-shoot of the ISR. He served as Co-Director of that Center from 1991 to 1994.He was a Visiting Professor in 1978 at the National Technical University in Athenas, Greece, and in 1979 at the EECS Department of the University of California, Berkeley, and at INRIA, France. During 1985-1986 he was on leave at MIT and ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. He was the General Chairman of the 1986 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in Athens, Greece and of the 1991 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory in Budapest, Hungary. He also organized two workshops on Information theory in 1984 (Hot Springs, VA) and in 1999 (Metsovo, Greece). He was the Technical Program Co-Chair of the IEEE INFOCOM in New York City in 1999 and of the IEEE International Symposium on Information theory in Sorrento, Italy in 2000. He has also been the Director of the Fairchild Scholars and Doctoral Fellows Program, an academic and research partnership program in Satellite Communications between Fairchild Industries and the University of Maryland. He won the IEEE Donald E. Fink Prize Paper Award (1992) and he was the first recipient of the Sigmobile Award of the ACM (Association of Computer Machinery) for contributions to wireless communications in 1997. He has been the President of the Information Theory Society of the IEEE (1987) and has served on its Board of Governors almost continuously from 1981 until the present. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the IEEE in 1989 and 1990. Dr. Ephremides has authored or co-authored over 100 technical journal papers and 300 technical conference presentations. He has also contributed chapters to several books and edited numerous special issues of scientific journals. He has also won awards from the Maryland Office of Technology Liaison for the commercialization of products and ideas stemming from his research. He has served on the Editorial Boards of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Information theory, the Journal of Wireless Networks, and the International Journal of Satellite Communications.He has been the Dissertation Supervisor of over twenty Ph.D. students who now hold prominent positions in academia, industry, and research labs. He is the founder and President of Pontos, Inc., a Maryland company that provides technical consulting services, since 1980.Dr. Ephremides’ interests are in the areas of communication theory, communication systems and networks, queueing systems, signal processing, and satellite communications. His research has been continuously supported since 1971 by NSF, NASA, ONR, ARL, NRL, NSA, and Industry. E-mail: tony@eng.umd.edu     

宝钢不锈钢2500m3高炉提高块矿配比实践

宝钢不锈钢2500m^3高炉通过上下部制度的调整、改善炉渣性能、稳定原燃料质量、强化设备管理等多项措施，使块矿使用比例逐步提高，实现了降本增效。     

Crushing behaviour of the energy absorbing 'tensor skin' panels

ABSTRACT Research results concerning the simulation of the crushing behaviour of composite systems with energy absorption characteristics are presented in the present work. The study is focused on the ‘tensor skin’ concept, an energy absorbing composite system that was originally developed to improve the crashworthiness of helicopters under water impact and which is promising for utilization in the construction of the lower part of composite fuselage aircraft. The ‘tensor skin’ concept comprises a folded or corrugated composite construction, which upon loading unfolds by forming ‘plastic hinges’, leading to an increase in the load bearing capability of the structure. The numerical modelling issues and the critical aspects of the simulation are discussed. Verification of the numerical simulation procedure is performed by experimental work. The experimental results utilized to assess and validate the numerical procedure were derived within the European Research Project ‘Design for Crash Survivability – CRASURV’ (BRITE – Aeronautics Area). The results of the simulations are generally in good agreement with experimental data.     

Hydrogen degradation of steels in gas mains after long periods of operation

We study the degradation of the mechanical and corrosion properties of 17G1S steel in gas mains as a result of operation for 28–40 yr. We reveal the simultaneous decrease in its strength and hardness, on the one hand, and impact toughness and crack resistance, on the other hand. The indicated parameters prove to be most sensitive to the in-service degradation of the metal. The degradation of steel leads to the increase in the strain-hardening coefficient and the appearance of the yield plateau in the tensile stress-strain diagram and causes the appearance of sensitivity to hydrogen embrittlement increasing in the process of operation. We analyze the role of absorbed hydrogen affecting the mechanism of strain aging and responsible for the appearance of defects. It is shown that the polarization resistance can be used not only for monitoring of the corrosion state of gas pipelines but also for the prediction of changes in their mechanical properties in the process of operation. __________ Translated from Fizyko-Khimichna Mekhanika Materialiv, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 97–104, September–October, 2007.