Separation of oxide inclusions from liquid metal in an applied electrostatic field

It is known that oxide inclusions in liquid metal carry mostly positive charges on their surfaces. In an electrostatic field, therefore, such charged particles suspended in a liquid metal experience forces and accumulate in the region of the negatively charged surface, resulting in the separation of oxide inclusions from the liquid metal. In this study, this principle was experimentally demonstrated for the case of a capacitor cell by the imposition of a d.c. potential on electrodes. The capacitor cell consisted of a dielectric container of Pyrex tube, a high voltage d.c. source, and two electrodes, which were symmetrically attached onto the outer surface of the Pyrex. tube. Experiments were carried out for suspensions of liquid tin/metal oxides, such as SnO₂, WO₃, and PbO under an applied potential of up to 12 kV. All experimental results were in good agreement with the theoretical prediction and showed that the degree of separation was significantly increased with the applied potential.     

Hybrid Model of High Speed Machining Centre Headstock

A hybrid high-speed machining centre headstock model based on two computation methods: the finite element method and the finite difference method is presented. The model allows one to calculate precisely the headstock's indices on the basis of which its optimal operating characteristics can be determined. The presented modelling methods allow one to evaluate a design from thermal, stiffness and durability points of view. By way of illustration, the behaviour of three machining centre headstocks with: an electrospindle on rolling bearings, a conventional spindle and an electrospindle on aerostatic bearings are modelled using the hybrid model.     

Effect of silicon content and annealing temperature on formation of retained austenite and mechanical properties in multi-phase steels

Cold-rolled and annealed ultra-high strength sheet steels with good ductility accompanied by TRIP of retained austenite have received considerable attention in recent years. This paper discusses the effect of silicon content and annealing temperature on the formation of retained austenite and the mechanical properties in Fe-0.34%C-1.7% Mn steels whose structure consists of ferrite, bainite and retained austenite. Silicon inhibited the cementite formation in bainite during isothermal holding and partitioned carbon from bainite to austenite, resulting in an increase in retained austenite content. When the silicon content was increased to 1.0 wt.% or higher, the amount of retained austenite markedly increased leading to good mechanical properties. 0.34%C-1.03%Si-1.7%Mn steel showed a high tensile strength of 1,030 MPa and a total elongation of 34.5% when annealed at 780°C for 5 min followed by isothermal holding at 400°C for 5 min. In this case, the amount of retained austenite was about 25%. The variation in tensile strength-elongation combination had good correlation with that in the amount of retained austenite with both annealing temperature and silicon content. The most retained austenite was obtained in the steel annealed at just above A_C1 temperature. The annealing temperature which gives the most retained austenite was decreased with decreasing the silicon content.     

HIGH-TEMPERATURE ISOPIESTIC STUDIES ON Hg-Pb BINARY AMALGAM

用高温等渗法测定了600K时Hg-Pb二元系中Hg的活度,并用Gibbs-Duhem积分计算了该二元汞齐中Pb的活度。     

Microstructure development of steel during severe plastic deformation

The microstructure development during plastic deformation was reviewed for iron and steel which were subjected to cold rolling or mechanical milling (MM) treatment, and the change in strengthening mechanism caused by the severe plastic deformation (SPD) was also discussed in terms of ultra grain refinement behavior. The microstructure of cold-rolled iron is characterized by a typical dislocation cell structure, where the strength can be explained by dislocation strengthening. It was confirmed that the increase in dislocation density by cold working is limited at 10¹⁶m⁻², which means the maximum hardness obtained by dislocation strengthening is HV3.7 GPa. However, the iron is abnormally work-hardened over the maximum dislocation strengthening by SPD of MM because of the ultra grain refinement caused by the SPD. In addition, impurity of carbon plays an important role in such grain refinement: the carbon addition leads to the formation of nano-crystallized structure in iron.     

Low-energy ion beam treatment of α-Al<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>3</Subscript>(0001) and improvement of photoluminescence of ZnO thin films

A low energy N₂ ^? ion beam impinged on a α-Al₂O₃(0001) single crystal surface in the range of fluence 5×10¹⁵/cm²?1×10¹⁸/cm² at room temperature. After ion bombardment, chemical bonding on the modified sapphire surface was investigated by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Below a fluence of 1×10¹⁵/cm², only a non-bonded N1s peak at the binding energy 398.7 eV was found, but further irradiation up to 2×10¹⁷/cm² induced Al?O?N bonding at around 403 eV. The occurrence of Al?N bonding was identified at ion fluence higher than 5×10¹⁷/cm² at 396.6 eV. II–VI ZnO thin films were grown on an untreated/ion-beam-induced sapphire surface by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) for the investigation of the modified-substrate effect on photoluminescence. The ZnO films grown on modified sapphire containing Al?O?N bonding only, and both Al?O?N and Al?N bonding showed a significant reduction of the peak related to deep-level defects in photoluminescence. These results are explained in terms of the formation of Al?N?O and Al?O?N layers and relaxation of the interfacial strain between Al₂O₃ and ZnO.     

Stabilised finite element methods for a bending moment formulation of the Reissner-Mindlin plate model

This work presents new stabilised finite element methods for a bending moments formulation of the Reissner-Mindlin plate model. The introduction of the bending moment as an extra unknown leads to a new weak formulation, where the symmetry of this variable is imposed strongly in the space. This weak problem is proved to be well-posed, and stabilised Galerkin schemes for its discretisation are presented and analysed. The finite element methods are such that the bending moment tensor is sought in a finite element space constituted of piecewise linear continuos and symmetric tensors. Optimal error estimates are proved, and these findings are illustrated by representative numerical experiments.     

Enforcing Efficient Equilibria in Network Design Games via Subsidies

The efficient design of networks has been an important engineering task that involves challenging combinatorial optimization problems. Typically, a network designer has to select among several alternatives which links to establish so that the resulting network satisfies a given set of connectivity requirements and the cost of establishing the network links is as low as possible. The Minimum Spanning Tree problem, which is well-understood, is a nice example.In this paper, we consider the natural scenario in which the connectivity requirements are posed by selfish users who have agreed to share the cost of the network to be established according to a well-defined rule. The design proposed by the network designer should now be consistent not only with the connectivity requirements but also with the selfishness of the users. Essentially, the users are players in a so-called network design game and the network designer has to propose a design that is an equilibrium for this game. As it is usually the case when selfishness comes into play, such equilibria may be suboptimal. In this paper, we consider the following question: can the network designer enforce particular designs as equilibria or guarantee that efficient designs are consistent with users’ selfishness by appropriately subsidizing some of the network links? In an attempt to understand this question, we formulate corresponding optimization problems and present positive and negative results.     

Hybrid Difference Methods for PDEs

We propose the hybrid difference methods for partial differential equations (PDEs). The hybrid difference method is composed of two types of approximations: one is the finite difference approximation of PDEs within cells (cell FD) and the other is the interface finite difference (interface FD) on edges of cells. The interface finite difference is obtained from continuity of some physical quantities. The main advantages of this new approach are that the method can applied to non-uniform grids, retaining the optimal order of convergence and stability of the numerical method for the Stokes equations is obtained without introducing staggered grids.