Electron tomography: An imaging method for materials deformation dynamics

The combination of in-situ and three-dimensional (3D) in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is one of the emerging topics of recent advanced electron microscopy research. However, to date, there have been only handful examples of in-situ 3D TEM for material deformation dynamics. In this article, firstly, the authors briefly review technical developments in fast tilt-series dataset acquisition, which is a crucial technique for in-situ electron tomography (ET). Secondly, the authors showcase a recent successful example of in-situ specimen-straining and ET system development and its applications to the deformation dynamics of crystalline materials. The system is designed and developed to explore, in real-time and at sub-microscopic levels, the internal behavior of polycrystalline materials subjected to external stresses, and not specifically targeted for atomic resolution (although it may be possible). Technical challenges toward the in-situ ET observation of 3D dislocation dynamics are discussed for commercial structural crystalline materials, including some of the early studies on in-situ ET imaging and 3D modeling of dislocation dynamics. A short summary of standing technical issues and a proposed guideline for further development in the 3D imaging method for dislocation dynamics are then discussed.     

A Novel Beam Search to Improve Neural Machine Translation for English-Chinese

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is an end-to-end learning approach for automated translation, overcoming the weaknesses of conventional phrase-based translation systems. Although NMT based systems have gained their popularity in commercial translation applications, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Being the most popular search algorithm in NMT, beam search is vital to the translation result. However, traditional beam search can produce duplicate or missing translation due to its target sequence selection strategy. Aiming to alleviate this problem, this paper proposed neural machine translation improvements based on a novel beam search evaluation function. And we use reinforcement learning to train a translation evaluation system to select better candidate words for generating translations. In the experiments, we conducted extensive experiments to evaluate our methods. CASIA corpus and the 1,000,000 pairs of bilingual corpora of NiuTrans are used in our experiments. The experiment results prove that the proposed methods can effectively improve the English to Chinese translation quality.     

毫米波波束管理的设计与研究

毫米波是第五代移动通信系统的重要通信技术,因其频谱特性可以利用大带宽承载大量信息,有效提升系统的吞吐量。高频段毫米波传输具有高损耗性,且受环境影响较大,为了支持非视距和移动性,必须支持准确且实时的波束跟踪以确保信号传输质量。波束管理的目的是使得基站与终端之间发送与接收波束对准以提高链路的性能。文中根据3GPP协议规范设计了波束管理方案,包括以下几方面的内容:波束扫描、波束测量、波束上报、波束指示、波束失败恢复。     

高能量离子束诊断质谱仪的研制及性能表征

本研究开发了一台应用于高能量离子束诊断的直线式飞行时间质谱仪，实现了其与高能真空弧放电离子源的联用。该仪器加速电压30 kV，飞行腔有效飞行距离1.5 m，通过短脉冲离子门精确截取，ICCD高速相机优化聚焦，仪器分辨率优于90 FWHM，对放电过程中产生的等离子体可实现不同时间的离子成分分析。将该方法用于真空弧放电离子源放电过程中离子成分的检测，放电2 μs时，电离成分以气态离子C⁺、O⁺、C²⁺、O²⁺为主；放电6 μs后，除气体成分外，还可以检测到Fe⁺、Cu⁺及其同位素金属离子峰。该仪器能够给出离子源放电产生离子的种类、价态以及相对含量等信息，可实现整个放电过程产生离子成分信息的准确诊断。     

Carbon membrane bridged ZnSe and TiO2 nanotube arrays: Fabrication and promising application in photoelectrochemical water splitting

In this work, a cascade structure among ZnSe, carbon membrane and TiO₂ NTAs was constructed precisely. This carbon membrane bridged ZnSe and TiO₂ composite exhibits excellent H₂ evolution activity, the H₂ evolution rate of ZnSe/C/TiO₂ NTAs (866.76 μmol/cm²) is about 6.95 times higher than that of pure TiO₂ NTAs (124.64 μmol/cm²) after 200 min irradiation. The introduction of carbon membrane can greatly facilitate the electron transfer from ZnSe to TiO₂, ZnSe/C/TiO₂ ternary composite exhibits the highest transient photocurrent density (1.05 mA/cm²) and the lowest impedance (677.6 Ω) among all the samples. Besides, the contact between TiO₂ and electrolyte is improved after introducing carbon membrane, therefore C/TiO₂ NTAs shows more positive flat band potential of (1.86 V) compared with TiO₂ NTAs (0.50 V). It is also found that pure carbon powder can achieve H₂ production under visible light irradiation, its sensitization effect can further improve photocurrent density of the composite under 500 nm light radiation, the electrons produced in carbon film can inject into TiO₂, and holes from TiO₂ can quickly transfer to carbon film, leading to excellent H₂ evolution efficiency.     

超声功率对2219-T351铝合金搅拌摩擦焊接头组织与性能的影响

采用搅拌摩擦焊和不同功率的超声辅助搅拌摩擦焊对2219-T351铝合金进行焊接试验，测量焊接温度和焊接压力，对焊接接头的微观组织、显微硬度和力学性能进行分析，研究了加入不同超声功率后焊缝的组织性能和材料流动性. 结果表明，超声能降低焊接温度，随着超声功率增加减小的幅度越大. 加入了超声后，焊缝微观组织更加均匀，底部材料的流动情况得到改善，焊缝区有更多的强化相残留，焊接接头的显微硬度、抗拉强度及断后伸长率在加入超声后均有提高，在加入2.25 kW的超声功率时达到最高，最高拉伸强度为331 MPa，可达到母材的80%左右.     

A neural network based technique for vibration characterization using Gaussian laser beams

This paper presents a neural network technique combined with an optical measurement system for the characterization of mechanical vibrations in industrial machinery. In the proposed system, the Gaussian beam of a laser source illuminates on an array of photodetectors. If either the laser source or the photodetector array is coupled with a vibrating system, then the optical powers detected by the photodetectors will vary accordingly, and are expected to reflect the magnitude and frequency of the X–Y planar vibrations of the monitored system. The time-varying optical powers are input to an artificial neural network-based vibration monitoring system which maps the power distributions to the X–Y position of the laser beam center. An experimental setup of the system is built and used for training and testing purposes. The obtained experimental results demonstrate the adequacy of combining optical techniques with neural networks to estimate the vibration frequency and magnitude. Estimated frequencies were within 1% of the actual ones, and the estimated magnitudes were within 29% of the actual magnitudes when using a chirp signal in the training phase. The magnitude estimation percentage error was further reduced below 12% when the neural network was trained with a decaying chirp signal.     

Compressive failure of hybrid multidirectional fibre-reinforced composites

In this paper, the hybridisation of multidirectional carbon fibre-reinforced composites as a means of improving the compressive performance is studied. The aim is to thoroughly investigate how hybridisation influences the laminate behaviour under different compression conditions and thus provide an explanation of the “hybrid effect”. The chosen approach was to compare the compressive performance of two monolithic carbon fibre/epoxy systems, CYTEC HTS/MTM44-1 and IMS/MTM44-1, with that of their respective hybrids. This was done by keeping the same layup throughout ((0/90/45/−45)_2S) while replacing the angle plies in one case or the orthogonal plies in the other case with the second material, thus producing two hybrid systems. To investigate the compressive performance of these configurations, compact and plain compression test methods were employed which also allowed studying the sensitivity of compressive failure to specimen geometry and loading conditions. The experimental results and the subsequent fractographic analysis revealed that the hybridisation of selective ply interfaces influenced the location and severity of the failure mechanisms. Finally, in light of this knowledge, an update of the generic sequence of events, previously suggested by the authors, which lead to global fracture in multidirectional fibre-reinforced composites under compression is presented.     

Fatigue life improvement of 12Cr1МoV steel by irradiation with Zr+ ion beam

Cyclic tension and bend tests were performed on heat-resistant 12Cr1MoV steel specimens in as-supplied condition as well as after Zr⁺ ion beam surface irradiation. Distinct differences in strain induced relief, as well in cracking pattern of modified surface layer were observed by optical microscopy and interference profilometry. Changes in subsurface layer are characterized by means of nano- and microindentation and fractography of fracture surfaces (with the help of scanning electron microscopy). It is shown that the main influence on mechanical properties is mostly induced by thermal treatment during irradiation rather than formation of a 2 μm thick layer doped with Zr. The differences in deformation behavior may be explained by physical mesomechanics concepts.