0.27-dB/km attenuation achieved by MSP preform process [opticalfibers]

Mechanically shaped preforms (MSP) have been demonstrated to combine economic non-CVD (chemical vapor deposition) processing and low loss, with a published value of 0.63 dB/km and a size of 30 fkm/preform. Improved processing is proposed which results in a minimum loss of 0.27 dB/km at 1550 nm. Preforms capable of yielding 150 fkm have been produced. Reboiling during preform stretching and fiber pulling is identified as the last remaining problem of the process     

Role of Pits in Corrosion Fatigue of Offshore Structural Steel

From the corrosion fatigue test under intermit-tent wetting condition for offshore structural steelof A537 cl.l and data analysis,some results associ-ated with the role of pits in fatigue process havebeen discussed.     

Information technology support in the chemical process design life cycle

Information technology has been becoming increasingly important in all areas of engineering during the last few years. Much of the progress achieved in chemical engineering would not have been possible without the enabling methods and tools provided by information technology. This trend will continue in the future but most likely with a considerably wider scope. While individual software tools and services have been in focus until recently, their integration into engineering work processes is an emerging and challenging area of research and development. This contribution attempts to highlight state of the art and future trends in supporting the activities during the life cycle of a chemical process by means of information technology. Emphasis will be largely on the process and plant design process rather than on procurement, manufacturing, and distribution of materials in the supply chain.     

Fast Voronoi modeling

The common way to construct Voronoi tessellations is to compare the distances between given reference points using a given distance function. To generalize this distance-function concept we expand an existing approach which defines distance functions by their ``unit circles'. Our new approach allows modeling the ``unit circles' by a closed Spline curve. Changing the control polygon directly affects the tessellation's appearance. Typically generalized Voronoi diagrams are represented by Voronoi vertices and curves separating the individual tiles. To obtain interactive modeling we extended an existing hardware accelerated rendering approach computing a bitmap-representation using different colors for individual tiles. With our extension, we are able to use our Spline distance representations as input for a growing process. This growing process easily takes into account weighting approaches like multiplicative, additive, and even free functional weighting.     

Transient Current Behaviour for Iron in 3.5%NaCl and 3.5%NaCl+ 1%NaNO_2 Solutions during Corrosion Fatigue

The transient current behaviour for Iron in 3.5%NaCl and 3.5%NaCl +1%NaNO2 solutions during corrosion fatigue (CF) process has been investigated at different given strain amplitudes and strain rates. The results show that elastic strain has little contribution to material dissolution. The elastic tension strain results in the decrease in the transient current, while the elastic compression strain increases the transient current. Compared to the elastic deformation, plastic deformation affects material dissolution evidently For iron in 3.5%NaCl solution, the strain amplitude plays a dominant role in the dissolution process accelerated by the plastic strain, while in 3.5%NaCl+1%NaNO2 solution, both the strain amplitude and strain rate play an important role in this process. In this paper, the effect of the elastic deformation on the material dissolution and the relation between the tension and compression current peak values under the plastic cycle deformation are discussed     

The impact of relative radiometric calibration on the accuracy of kNN-predictions of forest attributes

The k-nearest-neighbour (kNN) algorithm is widely applied for the estimation of forest attributes using remote sensing data. It requires a large amount of reference data to achieve satisfactory results. Usually, the number of available reference plots for the kNN-prediction is limited by the size of the area covered by a terrestrial reference inventory and remotely sensed imagery collected from one overflight. The applicability of kNN could be enhanced if adjacent images of different acquisition dates could be used in the same estimation procedure. Relative radiometric calibration is a prerequisite for this. This study focuses on two empirical calibration methods. They are tested on adjacent LANDSAT TM scenes in Austria. The first, quite conventional one is based on radiometric control points in the overlap area of two images and on the determination of transformation parameters by linear regression. The other, recently developed method exploits the kNN-cross-validation procedure. Performance and applicability of both methods as well as the impact of phenology are discussed.