Tensile testing and fracture mechanism analysis of polyvinyl alcohol nanofibrous webs

A tensile properties testing study was conducted to understand the influence of thickness, cross-head speed (speed of testing), gauge length (GL; specimen test length), and sample shape on important tensile properties of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofiber webs. The effects of each testing parameter on load at break, extension at break, Young's modulus, and tensile stress–strain curve of PVA nanofiber webs are analyzed. The Welch two sample t-tests show the significant difference among tested data. Using interaction plots, two-way analysis of variance, and margin mean plots, the interaction effects among testing parameters have been analyzed. Of all the factors, cross-head speed, the interaction among GL, and sample thickness (GL: Thickness) and the interaction among GL, testing speed and sample thickness (GL: Speed: Thickness) have significant influence on the tensile properties of PVA nanofiber webs. Moreover, the hypothesized model of mechanism of tensile strain–stress curve of PVA nanofiber webs has been proposed. Based on the model, the tensile strain–stress curve can be split into three stages: linear elastic, partial break up, and complete breakage. This study will provide a better understanding of tensile testing parameters' effects and their interaction effects on the tensile properties of nanowebs.     

The structure and management of service level agreements innetworks

The paper proposes a structure for quality-of-service (QoS)-centered service level agreements (SLA), and a framework for their real-time management in multiservice packet networks. The SLA is structured to be fair to both parties, the service provider and their customer. The SLA considered here are for QoS assured delivery of aggregate bandwidth from ingress to egress nodes; however, the control and signaling is for the more granular flows or calls. A SLA monitoring scheme is presented in which revenue is generated by the admission of flows into the network, and penalty incurred when flows are lost in periods when the service provider is not SLA compliant. In the SLA management scheme proposed, the results of a prior off-line design are used, in conjunction with measurements taken locally at ingress nodes, to classify the loading status of routes. The routing and resource management are based on virtual partitioning and its supporting mechanism of bandwidth protection. The effectiveness of SLA management is measured by the robustness in performance in the presence of substantial diversity in actual traffic conditions. A simulation testbed called D'ARTAGNAN has been built from which we report numerical results for a case study. The results show that the SLA management scheme is robust, fair and efficient over a broad range of traffic conditions     

Machine independent AND and OR parallel execution of logicprograms. I. The binding environment

We describe a binding environment for the AND and OR parallel execution of logic programs that is suitable for both shared and nonshared memory multiprocessors. The binding environment was designed with a view of rendering a compiler using this binding environment machine independent. The binding environment is similar to closed environments proposed by J. Conery. However, unlike Conery's scheme, it supports OR and independent AND parallelism on both types of machines. The term representation, the algorithms for unification and the join algorithms for parallel AND branches are presented in this paper. We also detail the differences between our scheme and Conery's scheme. A compiler based on this binding environment has been implemented on a platform for machine independent parallel programming called the Chare Kernel     

The emerging landscape of bioinformatics software systems

Fusing computing and biology expertise, bioinformatics software provides a powerful tool for organizing and mining the vast amounts of data genetics researchers are accumulating. As life scientists and computational scientists interact to create useful bioinformatics software systems, several themes or lessons recur. We identify seven themes: the nature of biological data; data storage, analysis and retrieval; computational modeling and simulation; biologically meaningful information integration; data mining; image processing and visualization; and closing the loop     

ERD facility for analysis of hydrogen and deuterium in solids

Hydrogen is the lightest element in nature, and so, its detection and quantitative analysis is difficult by the conventional methods utilized for other elements. In the recent years the technique of elastic recoil detection analysis (ERD) using 1–2 MeV He⁺ beam has been developed to quantitatively and simultaneously analyze hydrogen and its isotopes in solids. Such a facility has been set up using the 2 MeV Van-de-Graaff accelerator at IIT Kanpur. It facilitates H and D analysis in a material up to a depth of ∼ 1μm with a detection sensitivity of 0·1 at.% and depth resolution of about 300 ?. The application potential of this setup is illustrated by presenting the results of measurements performed on Al:H:D systems prepared by plasma source ion implantation and highT _c YBCO pellets exposed to humid atmosphere.     

The roles of computerized support systems: a decision subprocess-based analysis

This paper analyses the potential roles of computerized systems in supporting the decision-making process. Toward this end, we propose an expository process model of decision-making and develop a framework that provides the infrastructure for the analysis. The proposed process model draws on two well-known models in the literature and enumerates eight distinct phases in decision-making. The framework developed is based on an integration of this process model with Simon's notion of 'decision-structuredness'. Unlike any of the existing frameworks, the suggested framework permits a micro-level analysis of support system roles. The analysis is intended as a pre-design guide, to help systems developers and users to identify support potential and possibilities, and to target their activities accordingly.     

Improving manufacturing by cost-effective process modeling

Computer-aided engineering tools are routinely used to simulate forging and heat-treatment operations and to perform thermal and stress analyses. This review gives a few examples of the current uses of process modeling tools and outlines some developing capabilities and near-term applications.     

Performance considerations in designing network interfaces

Design issues that affect the performance of network input/output (I/O) are examined by analyzing the design and performance of a workstation's network interface to the 100-Mb/s FDDI token ring. Several design alternatives for partitioning functions between the network interface and the host software are evaluated. A simple model is proposed for looking at the performance of network I/O, and an effective analysis approach for predicting user-perceived throughput is demonstrated. The analysis reveals that, particularly for network interfaces that reside on an I/O bus, providing a DMA engine for data movement provides significant improvements in throughput. However, the designs for the receive and transmit sides are not necessarily symmetrical, and it is shown that host architecture considerations influence the design of each direction differently. The analysis is used to show the potential benefits of having all protocol functions on the network interface and also to point out the potential processing power needed on that network interface