Design and synthesis of foam glasses from recycled materials

Recycling has emerged as an environmental key point due to the diminishing of natural resources and the generation of ever-increasing amounts of industrial solid wastes. Glass wastes are among the materials that attract great interest in the recycling concept. This work presents the results of foams production from four series of compositions. The first series comprises powders of a sodium-calcium-silicate sheet glass cullet as the main component, an alkali-earth aluminosilicate glass as an additive, and a reagent grade silicon carbide (SiC) powder as gassing agent. In the second series, the glass cullet was used in combination with fly ashes (FLA) as main components, while SiC waste from abrasive paper served as foaming agent. In the third and fourth series, carbonates (calcite and dolomite) were used for foaming powder mixtures composed of sheet glass cullet and FLA, and powdered cathode ray tube panel glasses, respectively. All the processing parameters, including the main components, the nature and content of foaming agents are shown to play a crucial role on the foaming ability and final properties of the glass foams.     

Dynamic analysis of tapping mode atomic force microscope (AFM) for critical dimension measurement

Transient dynamics of tapping mode atomic force microscope (AFM) for critical dimension measurement are analyzed. A simplified nonlinear model of AFM is presented to describe the forced vibration of the micro cantilever-tip system with consideration of both contact and non-contact transient behavior for critical dimension measurement. The governing motion equations of the AFM cantilever system are derived from the developed model. Based on the established dynamic model, motion state of the AFM cantilever system is calculated utilizing the method of averaging with the form of slow flow equations. Further analytical solutions are obtained to reveal the effects of critical parameters on the system dynamic performance. In addition, features of dynamic response of tapping mode AFM in critical dimension measurement are studied, where the effects of equivalent contact stiffness, quality factor and resonance frequency of cantilever on the system dynamic behavior are investigated. Contact behavior between the tip and sample is also analyzed and the frequency drift in contact phase is further explored. Influence of the interaction between the tip and sample on the subsequent non-contact phase is studied with regard to different parameters. The dependence of the minimum amplitude of tip displacement and maximum phase difference on the equivalent contact stiffness, quality factor and resonance frequency are investigated. This study brings further insights into the dynamic characteristics of tapping mode AFM for critical dimension measurement, and thus provides guidelines for the high fidelity tapping mode AFM scanning.     

Controllability Analysis of Process Alternatives for Biobutanol Purification

Biobutanol has characteristics similar to petroleum fuel and is considered as a superior biofuel compared to ethanol. The development of technologies for biobutanol production by fermentation has resulted in higher final biobutanol concentrations together with less energy‐intensive separation and purification techniques. These new technological developments have the potential to provide a production process for biobutanol that is economically viable in comparison to the petrochemical pathway for its production. The control properties of four different possible process designs for biobutanol purification are analyzed. The results, using the singular value decomposition technique, indicated that the scheme where only biobutanol flow is purified, and both ethanol and acetone leaving the purification process mixed with water and biobutanol traces, showed the best control properties.     

Low‐order optimal regulation of parabolic PDEs with time‐dependent domain

Observer and optimal boundary control design for the objective of output tracking of a linear distributed parameter system given by a two‐dimensional (2‐D) parabolic partial differential equation with time‐varying domain is realized in this work. The transformation of boundary actuation to distributed control setting allows to represent the system's model in a standard evolutionary form. By exploring dynamical model evolution and generating data, a set of time‐varying empirical eigenfunctions that capture the dominant dynamics of the distributed system is found. This basis is used in Galerkin's method to accurately represent the distributed system as a finite‐dimensional plant in terms of a linear time‐varying system. This reduced‐order model enables synthesis of a linear optimal output tracking controller, as well as design of a state observer. Finally, numerical results are prepared for the optimal output tracking of a 2‐D model of the temperature distribution in Czochralski crystal growth process which has nontrivial geometry. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 494–502, 2015     

Data collection mode effect on feeling thermometer questions: A comparison of face-to-face and Web surveys

Feeling thermometer questions are widely used in political science research to estimate people’s attitudes and feelings toward a political object, like a political figure or an organization. Given the popularity of the feeling thermometer question in population surveys, more work is needed to explore the measurement of this question type. This study examines the data collection mode effect on feeling thermometers. Using the 2012 American National Election Studies, we find that the measurement of feeling thermometers is not exactly comparable between face-to-face and Web surveys. Face-to-face respondents tend to provide warmer feelings, while Web respondents give relatively more reliable responses in comparison. In both survey modes, respondents are most likely to select the response options that are verbally labeled although the effect is more striking in face-to-face than Web survey. The item nonresponse between these two modes does not differ in a meaningful way. This study ends by discussing future research directions on feeling thermometer questions.     

汽轮机运行调节方式优化策略探析

分析了汽轮机的喷嘴调节、节流调节、旁通调节、定压调节和滑压调节等几种基本调节方式的特点,指出现役燃煤火电机组多因调节方式单一而普遍存在着调峰能力不足、负荷响应迟缓以及因长期偏离设计工况致使运行安全经济性下降等诸多问题,提出了通过调节方式的优化组合,采用(节流)定压-滑压-(喷嘴)定压-旁通调节的复合调节方式,以实现煤电机组安全、经济、灵活、快速地参与电网的深度调峰,破解具有强随机波动性的新能源电量规模化并网的困境。     

Promising approaches to improve the performances of hybrid non‐isocyanate polyurethane

The performances of hybrid non‐isocyanate polyurethane (NIPU) materials were improved by using promising approaches. For the ring‐opening reaction of cyclic carbonate with excess amine, methanol was selected as solvent to increase the molar mass of NH₂‐terminated NIPU pre‐polymer but also caused the formation of urea as a result of eliminating hydrogen bonding between NIPU chains. Meanwhile, another approach was carried out to reduce the content of urea by altering the introduction mode of reactants, along with further increasing the molar mass of the NIPU pre‐polymer. The final hybrid materials were prepared by adding bisphenol‐A diglycidyl ether into the pre‐polymer. The results indicated that the introduction of methanol and the change of the introduction mode of reactants could improve the performance of the hybrid materials. The hybrid material derived from the forward method has optimal performance with a tensile strength of 10.8 MPa, elongation at break of 167%, a glass transition temperature of 49.1 °C and a crosslinking density of 450 mol m^?3 as well as presentable thermodynamic stability, ascribed to the high molar mass of the NIPU pre‐polymer, the low urea content and the dense crosslinking network. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry     

MIMO-GFDM系统中低复杂度动态禁忌搜索检测算法的改进

针对多输入多输出的广义频分复用（MIMO-GFDM）系统的等效信道矩阵维度极大，传统的MIMO检测算法复杂度高且性能不佳的问题，将大规模MIMO系统中的动态禁忌搜索（RTS）检测算法运用到MIMO-GFDM系统中，并解决了RTS算法初始值的求解复杂度高的问题。首先利用最小均方误差（MMSE）检测算法所用到矩阵的正定对称性将矩阵Cholesky分解，并结合Sherman-Morrison公式迭代计算初始值，降低了初始值求逆的高复杂度；然后以改进的MMSE检测结果作为RTS算法的初始值，从初始值逐步全局搜索最优解；最后通过仿真，对不同算法的迭代次数和误码率（BER）性能进行了研究。理论分析与仿真结果表明：在MIMO-GFDM中，所提改进RTS信号检测算法误码率远低于传统信号检测算法。在4QAM时，RTS算法大约有低于MMSE检测6 dB的信噪比性能增益（误码率在10^-3时）；在16QAM时，RTS算法大约有低于MMSE检测4 dB的信噪比性能增益（误码率在10^-2时）。与传统RTS算法性相比，所提改进算法在不影响误码率性能的同时降低了算法复杂度。     

基于滑模变结构控制的路径跟踪研究

为解决锅炉水冷壁磨损检测机器人的路径跟踪问题,提出了一种基于指数趋近律的滑模变结构控制的机器人路径跟踪方法。在水冷壁磨损检测机器人运动模型的基础上,进行路径跟踪误差分析,设计一种基于指数趋近律的滑模变结构控制器,再利用Lyapunov定理验证其收敛性,最后通过MATLAB软件模拟仿真,仿真结果表明该控制器可以克服误差,使位姿误差收敛至零。