Vibration cavitation behaviour of selected Ni-Mn-Ga alloys

Vibration cavitation erosion tests were carried out on Ni-Mn-Ga alloys of three different crystal structures: (1) the cubic austenite, (2) the non-modulated tetragonal martensite (T) and (3) the five-layered martensite (5M). All Ni-Mn-Ga alloys exhibited cavitation behaviour characterized by a step-wise curve of mass loss versus test time. This behaviour is correlated to the microstructural nature of the alloys as well as the surface conditions of the pre-test samples. The type and concentration of the defects at the surfaces were critical to the cavitation resistance of the alloys. The best cavitation resistant alloy was of a cubic austenitic structure, followed with the alloy of a tetragonal T-martensite. The largest material loss was found in the alloy with a 5M martensite. All the studied Ni-Mn-Ga alloys had an excellent cavitation resistance compared to that of the reference stainless steel, and they even excelled some NiTi alloys found in literature. This may be due to the superelasticity of the cubic austenite and the twinning of the martensitic phases.     

Novel tiO2 nanocatalysts for wastewater purification: tapping energy from the sun.

Water treatment using TiO2 semiconductor as a durable heterogeneous photocatalyst has been the focus of environmentalists in recent years. Currently, we developed an inexpensive and highly efficient approach for synthesizing nitrogen-doped TiO2 with lower band-gap energy that can respond to visible light. Doping on the molecular scale led to an enhanced nitrogen concentration of up to 21.8%. Reflectance measurements showed the synthesized N-doped TiO2 nanoparticles are catalytically active with the absorbance that extends into the visible region up to 600 nm. The water purification potential of this new class of compound was evaluated by studying the photodegradation of Acid Orange 7 (AO7) and E. coli. Experiments were conducted to compare the photocatalytic activities of N-doped TiO2 nanocatalysts and commercially available Degussa P25 power under identical solar light exposure. N-doped TiO2 demonstrated superior photocatalytic activities in both chemical compound degradation and bactericidal reactions. The result of this study shows the potential of applying new generations of catalyst for wastewater purification and disinfection.     

Modeling wireless fading channels via stochastic differential equations: identification and estimation based on noisy measurements

This paper is concerned with modeling and identification of wireless channels using noisy measurements. The models employed are governed by stochastic differential equations (SDEs) in state space form, while the identification method is based on the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm and Kalman filtering. The algorithm is tested against real channel measurements. The results presented include state space models for the channels, estimates of inphase and quadrature components, and estimates of the corresponding Doppler power spectral densities (DPSDs), from sample noisy measurements. Based on the available measurements, it is concluded that state space models of order two are sufficient for wireless flat fading channel characterization.     

Investigation of Mechanical and Electrical Characteristics for Cracked Conductive Particle in Anisotropic Conductive Adhesive (ACA) Assembly

In an anisotropic conductive adhesive (ACA) assembly, the electrical conduction is usually achieved with the conductive particles between the bumps of integrated circuit (IC) and corresponding conductive tracks on the glass substrate. Fully understanding of the mechanical and electrical characteristics of ACA particles can help to optimize the assembly process and improve the reliability of ACA interconnection. Most conductive particles used in the ACA assembly are with cracks in the metal coating of the particles after the ACA bonding. This paper introduced the fracture analysis by applying the cohesive elements in the numerical model of the nickel-coated polymer particle and further simulating the cracks initiation and propagation in the nickel coating during the ACA bonding. The simulation results showed that the stress distribution on the nickel-coated particle with cracks was significantly different from that on the nickel-coated particle without crack, indicating that the stress analysis by taking the crack into consideration is very important for the reliability assessment of the ACA interconnection. The stress analysis of cohesive elements indicated that the cracks initiated at the central area of the nickel coating and propagated to the polar area. Furthermore, by the introduction of a new parameter of the virtual resistance, a mathematical model was established to describe the electrical characteristics of the nickel-coated particle with cracks. The particle resistance of the nickel-coated particle with cracks was found to be much higher than that of the particle without crack in the optimized bonding pressure range, indicating that it is necessary to take the crack into consideration for the particle conduction analysis as well. Therefore, the fracture analysis on the conductive particle by taking the crack into consideration could accurately evaluate the reliability of ACA interconnection and avoid serious reliability issues.     

Identifiability of nonlinear systems with application to HIV/AIDS models

In this note, we investigate different concepts of nonlinear identifiability in the generic sense. We work in the linear algebraic framework. Necessary and sufficient conditions are found for geometrical identifiability, algebraic identifiability and identifiability with known initial conditions. Relationships between different concepts are characterized. Constructive procedures are worked out for both generic geometrical and algebraic identifiability of nonlinear systems. As an application of the theory developed, we study the identifiability properties of a four dimensional model of HIV/AIDS. The questions answered in this study include the minimal number of measurement of the variables for a complete determination of all parameters and the best period of time to make such measurements. This information will be useful in formulating guidelines for clinical practice.     

Plasma spraying of nanostructured partially yttria stabilized zirconia powders

Nanosized partially yttria stabilized zirconia particles, prepared using a co-precipitation method, were reprocessed into agglomerate powders using two methods for plasma spraying. The first method was to make micrometer-sized agglomerates directly following the grinding of the calcined yttria–zirconia agglomerates. The second method was to reconstitute the nanosized particles into micrometer agglomerates using spray drying. The deposition efficiency, porosity, microhardness and average grain size of the deposits made from these two reprocessed powders were studied. Distinct results related to the process parameters were obtained for the two types of powders. The second type of powder was more suitable for plasma spraying than the first one. Using the second type of powder, some unique results distinguished from those of the conventional partially yttria stabilized zirconia powders were observed and an optimized coating with a porosity of 3.8%, Hv_0.3 of 953 and mainly consisting of 1–3 μm columnar grains in the columnar direction and smaller than 100 nm in their cross-sections was achieved.     

Grain refinement of Al-7Si alloys and the efficiency assessment by recognition of cooling curves

Under sand cup solidification condition, the influence of Ti, B concentration, and holding time on the grain size of a high-purity Al-7Si alloy has been systematically studied. It is found that the grain size decreases rapidly at lower Ti or B additions, and is almost constant at the higher concentrations. For Al-3B refined Al-7Si alloys, the grain size increases at the initial period of holding time, and then rapidly becomes independent of holding time; while for Al-7Si alloys refined with Al-5Ti-1B, the grain size increases with holding time throughout. To evaluate the refinement efficiency, a new method named “intelligent evaluating of melt quality by pattern recognition of thermal analysis cooling curves” has also been introduced in this article. The results show that comparing the cooling curve of the evaluated melt with those in a database to find the most similar one to it can precisely assess the grain refinement efficiency of the measured Al-7Si alloy. In addition, the influence of Ti, B addition levels, and pouring temperatures on some characteristic parameters of cooling curve has also been discussed.     

Modeling of Temperature–Frequency Correlation Using Combined Principal Component Analysis and Support Vector Regression Technique

A good understanding of environmental effects on structural modal properties is essential for reliable performance of vibration-based damage diagnosis methods. In this paper, a method of combining principal component analysis (PCA) and support vector regression (SVR) technique is proposed for modeling temperature-caused variability of modal frequencies for structures instrumented with long-term monitoring systems. PCA is first applied to extract principal components from the measured temperatures for dimensionality reduction. The predominant feature vectors in conjunction with the measured modal frequencies are then fed into a support vector algorithm to formulate regression models that may take into account thermal inertia effect. The research is focused on proper selection of the hyperparameters to obtain SVR models with good generalization performance. A grid search method with cross validation and a heuristic method are utilized for determining the optimal values of SVR hyperparameters. The proposed method is compared with the method directly using measurement data to train SVR models and the multivariate linear regression (MLR) method through the use of long-term measurement data from a cable-stayed bridge. It is shown that PCA-compressed features make the training and validation of SVR models more efficient in both model accuracy and computational costs, and the formulated SVR model performs much better than the MLR model in generalization performance. When continuously measured data is available, the SVR model formulated taking into account thermal inertia effect can achieve more accurate prediction than that without considering thermal inertia effect.