Failure of Emergency Batteries for Aircrafts due to Stress-Corrosion Cracking

Several electrical brass (CuZn37) connector bolts of aircraft batteries failed as a result of stress-corrosion cracking. The batteries are used for emergency supply of the avionics in case of power failure or for complete control in the case of engine failure. For activation, the thermal battery is heated by a pyrotechnic element and then supplies electrical power with 5 A for 20 min up to 240 A for 3 min. For assembly of the batteries, an acetic acid curing silicone resin is used for housing seal on the lid and on the connector bolts. Because of the almost hermetic sealing of the enclosure, the silicone resin cures very slowly and metallic parts are exposed to the acetic acid vapor. So the electrical brass connector showed corrosive attack with the formation of copper acetate (verdigris). Subsequent failure due to stress-corrosion cracking occurred. The failure type and damage mechanisms could be simulated in laboratory experiments.     

Erosion Corrosion on Oil Coolers for Navy Ships

Incorrect material selection does not always lead to corrosion. In addition to an inferior selection of materials, unsuitable operating conditions and poor design also contributed to the presented failure. A combination of erosion and corrosion caused a leak in an oil cooler of a Navy ship. Because there was no welding seam between the deflectors and tube plate on the carbon steel cooler, cooling water could stream between them, and the flow rate became excessive. This caused erosion on the tube plate. In addition, the repeated change of the cooling liquid after servicing caused a uniform corrosion attack.     

Einsatz des nichtrostenden Duplex‐Stahls 1.4362 als preisgünstige Alternative im Bauwesen

Use of duplex stainless steel 1.4362 as reasonable alternative in civil engineering applications. Due to drastically increased prices for raw materials in a lot of cases the standard austenitic stainless steels often used in civil engineering are no longer competitive. The duplex stainless steel 1.4362 represent a low cost alternative but it has not yet an official national technical approval. By means of exposure tests as well electrochemical investigations the corrosion behaviour of this type of steel should be clarified in slightly acid, chloride‐containing environments as they often occur in practical applications. The results show that the low cost steel 1.4362 could be used as alternative materials for civil engineering applications where up to now austenitc stainless steels as e.g. 1.4404 or 1.4571 were applied.     

Development of a new combined corrosion protection system for chloride‐contaminated reinforced concrete structures

Chloride‐induced damage of reinforcing steel is especially for parking garages and bridges often very severe as large amounts of chlorides act on horizontal surfaces which could lead to fast ingress of these detrimental ions up to the level of the reinforcement and subsequently to high rates of corrosion. In order to avoid the disadvantages of conventional rehabilitation (unreliable prognosis with patch repair or high costs and regular maintenance with cathodic protection using impressed current) a new combined protection system was developed where the principle of drying out the concrete (by means of a surface protection system) is combined with a temporary cathodic protection (by means of a sprayed zinc layer) during the transitional period of the drying out process. This new system was tested both in the laboratory and on‐site at a pilot application. Based on the results obtained the possibilities and limitations of the new system are discussed in this paper.     

256×256 focal plane array midwavelength infrared camera based on InAs/GaSb short-period superlattices

An infrared camera based on a 256×256 focal plane array (FPA) for the second atmospheric window (3–5 μm) has been realized for the first time with InAs/GaSb short period superlattices (SLs). The SL detector structure with a broken gap type-II band alignment was grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GaSb substrates. Effective bandgap and strain in the superlattice were adjusted by varying the thickness of the InAs and GaSb layers and the controlled formation of InSb-like bonds at the interfaces. The FPAs were processed in a full wafer process using optical lithography, chemical-assisted ion beam etching, and conventional metallization technology. The FPAs were flip-chip bonded using indium solder bumps with a read-out integrated circuit and mounted into an integrated detector cooler assembly. The FPAs with a cut-off wavelength of 5.4 μm exhibit quantum efficiencies of 30% and detectivity values exceeding 10¹³ Jones at T=77 K. A noise equivalent temperature difference (NETD) of 11.1 mK was measured for an integration time of 5 ms using f/2 optics. The NETD scales inversely proportional to the square root of the integration time between 5 ms and 1 ms, revealing background limited performance. Excellent thermal images with low NETD values and a very good modulation transfer function demonstrate the high potential of this material system for the fabrication of future thermal imaging systems.     

A monolithic PDMS waveguide system fabricated using soft-lithography techniques

A monolithic waveguide system using poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) was designed, fabricated, and characterized. The waveguide demonstrated good confinement of light and relatively low attenuation at 0.40 dB/cm. The robustness and handling properties of the completed waveguides were excellent, and the process yield exceeded 96%. The waveguide did exhibit moderate temperature and humidity sensitivity but no temporal variation, and insertion loss remained stable over extended periods of time. Applications of this waveguide system in microscale sensing are immense, judging by the frequency of use of PDMS as the substrate for microfluidic and biomedical systems. The monolithic nature of the waveguides also reduces their cost and allows integration of optical pathways into existing PDMS-based microsystems.     

Efficient approximation to calculate time delay and dispersion in linearly chirped periodical microphotonic structures

The Bloch mode propagation through the chirped periodical structure is defined by its local dispersion relation. In a slowly varying structure its time delay is the integral of the local inverse group velocity along the propagation direction. The integration can be strongly simplified for linearly chirped structures if the assumption is made that the local dispersion relation is just a scaled and shifted version of the dispersion relation at the input. This assumption leads to exact solutions for the structures with locally uniaxial deformation and provides a good approximation for arbitrary structures with small chirps. The approach is demonstrated for high index contrast chirped Bragg mirrors and complicated photonic crystal waveguide structures, including coupled waveguides and a slow group velocity waveguide.