Investigation on material mixing during FSW of AA7475 to AISI304

AA7xxx and AISI304 stainless steel (SS) are employed in promising applications. Al alloy-to-SS dissimilar joining is difficult and challenging. Major challenge in the joining of these alloys is the difficulty in mixing of these materials which possess exotic and widely distant properties. AA7475-T761 is a high strength aluminum alloy which is used in key aircraft components. Maiden AA7475-T761 and AISI304 dissimilar joints were fabricated using friction stir welding. Welding was performed with tool having pin diameter of 4 mm and offset of 1.25 mm on Aluminum side. Tool rotational speed, traverse speed and shoulder diameter were varied in the range of 450–560 rpm, 50–63 mm/min, and 12–14 mm, respectively. Mechanical tests showed that joint formed with 14 mm diameter, 560 rpm and 50 mm/min gave the best joint efficiency of 71% of Al-alloy at 7.31% elongation. The materials mixing issues during processing were analyzed with SEM mircrostructure and fractography. Metallography also revealed that offset is critical to the success of joint as it controlled effective mixing of SS and Al in 15 and 85 vol.%, respectively. SS fragments from thermo-mechanically affected zone of SS were found to be partially sheared forming layer of thickness equal to tool traverse/revolution ratio.     

An intelligent railway surveillance framework based on recognition of object and railway track using deep learning

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In high speed railways, the intelligent railway safety system is necessary to avoid the accidents due to collision between trains and obstacles on the railway...     

Factors affecting bulk to total bacteria ratio in drinking water distribution systems

Bacteria in drinking water systems can grow in bulk water and as biofilms attached to pipe walls, both causing regrowth problems in the distribution system. While studies have focused on evaluating the factors influencing the bacteria in bulk water and in biofilms separately, there is a need for understanding biofilm characteristics relative to the bulk water phase. The current study evaluated the effects of chlorine and residence time on the presence of culturable bacteria in biofilms relative to that in bulk water. The results showed that when no chlorine residual was present in the system, the median ratio of bulk to total bacteria was 0.81, indicating that 81% of the bacteria were present in bulk water, whereas only 19% were present in the biofilm. As chlorine concentration increased to 0.2, 0.5, and 0.7 mg/L, the median percentage of bacteria present in bulk water decreased to 37, 28, and 31, respectively. On the other hand, as the residence times increased to 8.2, 12, 24, and 48h, the median percentage of bacteria present in bulk water increased to 7, 37, 58, and 88, respectively, in the presence of a 0.2mg/L chlorine residual. The common notion that biofilms dominate the distribution system is not true under all conditions. These findings suggest that bulk water bacteria may dominate in portions of a distribution system that have a low chlorine residual.     

Mechanisms for naphthalene removal during electrolytic aeration

Batch tests were performed to investigate chemical and physical processes that may result during electrolytic aeration of a contaminated aquifer using naphthalene as a model contaminant. Naphthalene degradation of 58-66% took place electrolytically and occurred at the same rates at a pH of 4 and 7. 1,4-naphthoquinone was identified as a product of the electrolysis. Stripping due to gases produced at the electrodes did not result in any naphthalene loss. Hydrogen peroxide (which may be produced at the cathode) did not have any effect on naphthalene, but the addition of ferrous iron (which may be present in aquifers) resulted in 67-99% disappearance of naphthalene. Chlorine (which may be produced from the anodic oxidation of chloride) can effectively degrade naphthalene at pH of 4, but not at a pH of 7. Mono-, di- and poly chloronaphthalenes were identified as oxidation products. Ferric iron coagulation (due to the oxidation of ferrous iron) did not significantly contribute to naphthalene loss. Overall, electrolytic oxidation and chemical oxidation due to the electrolytic by-products formed are significant abiotic processes that could occur and should be accounted for if bioremediation of PAH-contaminated sites via electrolytic aeration is considered. Possible undesirable products such as chlorinated compounds may be formed when significant amounts of chlorides are present.     

An efficient hybrid DWT-fuzzy filter in DCT domain based illumination normalization for face recognition

Multimedia Tools and Applications - This paper presents an efficient hybrid DWT-DCT based illumination normalization technique for face recognition. In a face image, illumination usually changes...     

A comprehensive modeling framework for gate stack process dependence of DC and AC NBTI in SiON and HKMG p-MOSFETs

A comprehensive modeling framework involving mutually uncorrelated contribution from interface trap generation and hole trapping in pre-existing, process related gate insulator traps is used to study NBTI degradation in SiON and HKMG p-MOSFETs. The model can predict time evolution of degradation during DC and AC stress, time evolution of recovery after stress, impact of stress and recovery bias and temperature, and impact of several AC stress parameters such as pulse frequency, duty cycle, duration of last pulse cycle (half or full) and pulse low bias. The model can successfully explain experimental data measured using fast and ultra-fast methods in SiON and HKMG devices having different gate insulator processes. The trap generation and trapping sub components of the composite model have been verified by independent experiments. Data published by different groups are reconciled and explained. The model can successfully predict long time DC and AC stress data and has been used to determine device degradation at end of life as EOT is scaled for different HKMG devices.     

A mixed integer programming formulation and effective cuts for minimising schedule durations of Australian truck drivers

Transport companies seek to maximise vehicle utilisation and minimise labour costs. Both goals can be achieved if the time required to fulfil a sequence of transportation tasks is minimised. However, if schedule durations are too short drivers may not have enough time for recuperation and road safety is impaired. In Australia transport companies must ensure that truck drivers can comply with Australian Heavy Vehicle Driver Fatigue Law and schedules must give enough time for drivers to take the amount of rest required by the regulation. This paper shows how transport companies can minimise the duration of truck driver schedules complying with Australian Heavy Vehicle Driver Fatigue Law. A mixed integer programming formulation is presented and valid inequalities are given. Computational experiments show that these inequalities provide significant reduction in computational effort when using one of the most advanced commercial mixed integer programming solver.     

Analytical modeling of subthreshold current and subthreshold swing of Gaussiandoped strained-Si-on-insulator MOSFETs

This paper presents the analytical modeling of subthreshold current and subthreshold swing of short- channel fully-depleted （FD） strained-Si-on-insulator （SSOI） MOSFETs having vertical Gaussian-like doping pro- file in the channel. The subthreshold current and subthreshold swing have been derived using the parabolic approx- imation method. In addition to the effect of strain on silicon layer, various other device parameters such as channel length （L）, gate-oxide thickness （tox）, strained-Si channel thickness （ts_Si）, peak doping concentration （Np）, project range （Rp） and straggle （op） of the Gaussian profile have been considered while predicting the device characteris- tics. The present work may help to overcome the degradation in subthreshold characteristics with strain engineering. These subthreshold current and swing models provide valuable information for strained-Si MOSFET design. Ac- curacy of the proposed models is verified using the commercially available ATLASTM, a two-dimensional （2D） device simulator from SILVACO.     

Factors influencing arsenic and nitrate removal from drinking water in a continuous flow electrocoagulation (EC) process

An experimental study was conducted under continuous flow conditions to evaluate some of the factors influencing contaminant removal by electrocoagulation (EC). A bench-scale simulation of drinking water treatment was done by adding a filtration column after a rectangular EC reactor. Contaminant removal efficiency was determined for voltages ranging from 10 to 25 V and a comparative study was done with distilled water and tap water for two contaminants: nitrate and arsenic(V). Maximum removal efficiency was 84% for nitrate at 25 V and 75% for arsenic(V) at 20 V. No significant difference in contaminant removal was observed in tap water versus distilled water. Increase in initial As(V) concentration from 1 ppm to 2 ppm resulted in a 10% increase in removal efficiency. Turbidity in the EC reactor effluent was 52 NTU and had to be filtered to achieve acceptable levels of final turbidity (5 NTU) at steady-state. The flow regime in the continuous flow reactor was also evaluated in a tracer study to determine whether it is a plug flow reactor (PFR) or constantly stirred tank reactor (CSTR) and the results show that this reactor was close to an ideal CSTR, i.e., it was fairly well-mixed.