Crystal structures and shape-memory behaviour of NiTi

Shape-memory alloys (SMAs) are a unique class of metal alloys that after a large deformation can, on heating, recover their original shape. In the many practical applications of SMAs, the most commonly used material is NiTi (nitinol). A full atomic-level understanding of the shape-memory effect in NiTi is still lacking, a problem particularly relevant to ongoing work on scaling down shape-memory devices for use in micro-electromechanical systems. Here we present a first-principles density functional study of the structural energetics of NiTi. Surprisingly, we find that the reported B19' structure of NiTi is unstable relative to a base-centred orthorhombic structure that cannot store shape memory at the atomic level. However, the reported structure is stabilized by a wide range of applied or residual internal stresses. We propose that the memory is stored primarily at the micro-structural level: this eliminates the need for two separate mechanisms in describing the two-way shape-memory effect.     

Strengthening mechanisms in Al2O3/SiC nanocomposites

A strengthening mechanism merely arising from internal (residual) microstresses due to thermal expansion mismatch is proposed for explaining the high experimental strength data measured in Al₂O₃/SiC nanocomposites. Upon cooling, transgranular SiC particles undergo lower shrinkage as compared to the surrounding matrix and provide a hydrostatic “expansion” effect in the core of each Al₂O₃ grain. Such a grain expansion tightens the internal Al₂O₃ grain boundaries, thus shielding both weakly bonded and unbonded (cracked) grain boundaries. It is shown that the shielding effect by intragranular SiC particles is more pronounced than the grain-boundary opening effect eventually associated with thermal expansion anisotropy of the Al₂O₃ grains, even in the “worst” Al₂O₃-grain cluster configuration. Therefore, an improvement of the material strength can be found. However, a large stress intensification at the grain boundary is found when intergranular SiC particles are present, which can produce a noticeable wedge-like opening effect and trigger grain-boundary fracture. The present model enables us to explain the experimental strength data reported for Al₂O₃/SiC nanocomposites and confirms that the high strength of these materials can be explained without invoking any toughening contribution by the SiC dispersion.     

生物医用形状记忆高分子材料

形状记忆聚合物作为一种智能材料,已经在生物医用领域显示出了巨大的应用前景。基于形状记忆聚合物材料的原理,组成和结构可以设计兼具生物降解性、生物相容性等多种功能的新型智能材料。本文综述了三种典型的生物降解性形状记忆聚合物材料(聚乳酸、聚己内酯、聚氨酯)的发展,从结构上对三种形状记忆聚合物进行了分类讨论,详细分析了不同种类聚合物形状记忆的机理、形状变化的固定率和回复率、回复速率等,并介绍了一些形状记忆聚合物材料在生物医学中的应用。最后对医用形状记忆聚合物未来发展进行了展望:双程形状记忆聚合物及体温转变形状记忆材料将会受到研究者的重点关注。     

A Review of Smart Superwetting Surfaces Based on Shape-Memory Micro/Nanostructures

Bioinspired smart superwetting surfaces with special wettability have aroused great attention from fundamental research to technological applications including self-cleaning, oil–water separation, anti-icing/corrosion/fogging, drag reduction, cell engineering, liquid manipulation, and so on. However, most of the reported smart superwetting surfaces switch their wettability by reversibly changing surface chemistry rather than surface microstructure. Compared with surface chemistry, the regulation of surface microstructure is more difficult and can bring novel functions to the surfaces. As a kind of stimulus-responsive material, shape-memory polymer (SMP) has become an excellent candidate for preparing smart superwetting surfaces owing to its unique shape transformation property. This review systematically summarizes the recent progress of smart superwetting SMP surfaces including fabrication methods, smart superwetting phenomena, and related application fields. The smart superwettabilities, such as superhydrophobicity/superomniphobicity with tunable adhesion, reversible switching between superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity, switchable isotropic/anisotropic wetting, slippery surface with tunable wettability, and underwater superaerophobicity/superoleophobicity with tunable adhesion, can be obtained on SMP micro/nanostructures by regulating the surface morphology. Finally, the challenges and future prospects of smart superwetting SMP surfaces are discussed.     

Shape-memory surfaces for cell mechanobiology

Shape-memory polymers (SMPs) are a new class of smart materials, which have the capability to change from a temporary shape ‘A’ to a memorized permanent shape ‘B’ upon application of an external stimulus. In recent years, SMPs have attracted much attention from basic and fundamental research to industrial and practical applications due to the cheap and efficient alternative to well-known metallic shape-memory alloys. Since the shape-memory effect in SMPs is not related to a specific material property of single polymers, the control of nanoarchitecture of polymer networks is particularly important for the smart functions of SMPs. Such nanoarchitectonic approaches have enabled us to further create shape-memory surfaces (SMSs) with tunable surface topography at nano scale. The present review aims to bring together the exciting design of SMSs and the ever-expanding range of their uses as tools to control cell functions. The goal for these endeavors is to mimic the surrounding mechanical cues of extracellular environments which have been considered as critical parameters in cell fate determination. The untapped potential of SMSs makes them one of the most exciting interfaces of materials science and cell mechanobiology.     

Shape-memory surfaces for cell mechanobiology

Abstract

Shape-memory polymers (SMPs) are a new class of smart materials, which have the capability to change from a temporary shape ‘A’ to a memorized permanent shape ‘B’ upon application of an external stimulus. In recent years, SMPs have attracted much attention from basic and fundamental research to industrial and practical applications due to the cheap and efficient alternative to well-known metallic shape-memory alloys. Since the shape-memory effect in SMPs is not related to a specific material property of single polymers, the control of nanoarchitecture of polymer networks is particularly important for the smart functions of SMPs. Such nanoarchitectonic approaches have enabled us to further create shape-memory surfaces (SMSs) with tunable surface topography at nano scale. The present review aims to bring together the exciting design of SMSs and the ever-expanding range of their uses as tools to control cell functions. The goal for these endeavors is to mimic the surrounding mechanical cues of extracellular environments which have been considered as critical parameters in cell fate determination. The untapped potential of SMSs makes them one of the most exciting interfaces of materials science and cell mechanobiology.     

Shape memory materials and hybrid composites for smart systems: Part II Shape-memory hybrid composites

By hybridizing or incorporating shape-memory materials with other functional materials or structural materials, smart composites can be fabricated which may utilize the unique functions or properties of the individual bulk materials to achieve multiple responses and optimal properties, or, to tune their properties to adapt to environmental changes. A variety of shape-memory hybrid composites have been designed and manufactured, with shape-memory elements being either the matrix or the reinforcement. The hybrid composites provide tremendous potential for creating new paradigms for material–structural interactions and demonstrate varying success in many engineering applications. This review, from the standpoint of materials science, will give a state-of-the-art survey on the various shape-memory hybrid smart composites developed during the last decade. Emphasis is placed on the design, fabrication, characterization and performance of fibre-reinforced, particle-reinforced and multi-layered thin-film shape-memory composites.     

Building performance standards into data envelopment analysis structures

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a mathematical approach to measuring the relative efficiency of peer Decision-Making Units (DMUs). DEA is particularly useful where no a priori information on the trade-offs or relations among various performance measures is available. However, it is very desirable if “evaluation standards,” when they can be established, be incorporated into DEA performance evaluation. This is particularly important when service operations are under investigation, because service standards are generally difficult to establish. A number of approaches have been developed to incorporate evaluation standards into DEA as reported in the literature. These approaches tend to be rather indirect, focusing primarily on the multipliers in the DEA models. This paper introduces a new way of building performance standards directly into the DEA structure. Based upon the conventional DEA model and an activity matrix, a set of standard DMUs can be generated and incorporated directly into the DEA analysis. The proposed approach is applied to a sample of 100 branches of a major Canadian bank where time standards are used to generate a set of standard bank branches.     

On the creep crack growth prediction by a local approach

Classical methods to predict crack growth in structures are generally based on fracture mechanics concepts. For high-temperature applications, where creep (monotonic or cyclic) or thermal stresses are present, such classical approaches lead to large difficulties. An alternative method is to calculate as accurately as possible the actual local behaviour including viscoplasticity and creep damage effects. The different levels of the possible “local approaches” are briefly reviewed and discussed; the case of creep crack growth is then studied in detail, through the use of viscoplastic constitutive equations including creep damage effect. Both the creep damage and the hardening of the metal are supposed to be isotropic, characterized respectively by the following scalar internal variables: the Kachanov's damage variable D and the cumulated viscoplastic strain p. The evolution equation of creep damage is a differential non-linear one with non-linear cumulative effect. The local states of different mechanical fields ((σ, , D) and their redistribution, due to damage effect, are accurately investigated and illustrated by various numerical examples. Finally the approach is applied to the creep of initially cracked CT specimen.     

Electrochromic applications

“Chromogenic” materials, i.e. compounds, especially oxides, of polyvalent elements with coloration dependent on oxidation state, are of high practical interest since they allow the construction of “electrochromic” devices whose optical properties, light absorption and reflection, can be controlled by an external voltage. After a presentation of the basic chromogenic reactions, a systematic overview of reported electrochromic thin-layer systems is given, examples are discussed, and the probable first large-scale electrochromic application, an antiglare rear view mirror, is outlined. The trend of patents indicates that the ideal electrochromic system for various applications is still to be found.     

Driver age, car mass and accident exposure— A synthesis of available data

The tendency of younger drivers to be more likely than older drivers to drive smaller cars has been an important consideration in a number of prior investigations of the relation between car size and traffic safety. The purpose of the present study is to quantify this effect on a firmer basis than hitherto by fitting data from seven independent sources to a unified general model. More specifically, when the exposure measures “per unit distance of travel” or “per registered car” are used in studies of car mass effects on traffic safety, the exposure information often does not contain the variable driver age. This work develops a general procedure for disaggregating such exposure data into three driver (or owner) age categories; A₁: 16–24; A₂: 25–34; and A₃: 35 years. Data from the seven sources are fined to the equation

f(i,m) = H_i[1 + G _i(m/900 − 1)]

where m is the ear mass in kg, and f(i,m) is the fraction of cars of mass m which are driven (owned) by persons in the A_i, (i = 1, 2, 3) age category. The form of this equation permits easy comparison of 900 and 1800 kg cars. Those particular masses that have been chosen for illustrative comparisons in earlier work. The seven sets of data are used to derive overall average values of the parameters H₁ and G₁. The data from all seven sources show consistent effects which are summarized in one analytical expression which is well suited for use in future studies of car size effects because it reflects a synthesis of much prior data and it permits sensitivity analyses to be performed conveniently.     

Magnetism of epitaxial Ru and Rh monolayers on graphite

Recently, Pfandzelter et al. (1995) reported the first observation of monolayer ferromagnetism of a 4d metal, namely in a Ru monolayer grown on graphite. Using the tight-binding linear-muffin-tin-orbital (TB-LMTO) method we have calculated the electronic and magnetic structure of epitaxial Ru and Rh monolayers on graphite with the experimentally determined atomic density. Monolayers of the other 4d elements were found to be non-magnetic already in the free-standing limit. The magnetic structure of the Ru and Rh monolayers is studied as a function of metal-graphite interlayer distance h. They become magnetic at h = 4.5 a.u. (Ru) and h = 4.8 a.u. (Rh) in a first-order transition. In the assumed p(2 × 2) super-structure, the moments on the “hollow” site atoms are up to four times bigger than those on the “on-top” site atoms. For h > 5.4 a.u. (Ru) and h > 5.1 a.u. (Rh) the site dependence vanishes and the moments of the free monolayers are approximately reached (1.9 μ_B and 1.2 μ_B, respectively).     

Shape-memory materials and hybrid composites for smart systems: Part I Shape-memory materials

A review is presented of the current research and development of shape-memory materials, including shape-memory alloys, shape-memory ceramics and shape-memory polymers. The shape-memory materials exhibit some novel performances, such as sensoring (thermal, stress or field), large-stroke actuation, high damping, adaptive responses, shape memory and superelasticity capability, which can be utilized in various engineering approaches to smart systems. Based on an extensive literature survey, the various shape-memory materials are outlined, with special attention to the recently developed or emerged materials. The basic phenomena in the materials, that is, the stimulus-induced phase transformations which result in the unique performance and govern the remarkable changes in properties of the materials, are systematically lineated. The remaining technical barriers, and the challenges to improve the present materials system and develop a new shape memory materials are discussed.     

"Get Rich, or Die Trying": Lessons from Rambus' High-Risk Predatory Litigation in the Semiconductor Industry

Patent litigation is a visible and widespread feature of the semiconductor industry, as firms pursue judicial mechanisms to defend, or promote, their intellectual property portfolios. This study highlights the antecedents, strategic goals, tactics and outcomes of the most significant US trial of this type in the last decade, namely Rambus v. Infineon, whereby a smaller company (Rambus) successfully pursued a “do or die” litigation campaign against a larger rival, thus changing the rules of engagement for the semiconductor industry as a whole. This campaign is notable, not just because of its undoubted effects on the semiconductor industry, but because of the innovative nature of Rambus' strategy, which was extremely risky both in terms of its prospects of success and its potential damage to the company if it failed. Arguing that dominant logic and operating rules are important antecedents in the development and pursuit of patent litigation strategies, this paper analyses the Rambus case using a “dominant logic” and “effectuation” framework. Doing so demonstrates the innovative nature of Rambus' “high-risk predatory strategy”, the outcome of a dominant logic sustained by effectuation principles. The paper discusses the impact and significance of this new strategic form.     

Resolution of complex γ spectra from triple-coincidence data: Ba–Mo split in Cf spontaneous fission

Using triple-coincidence events of prompt fission γ rays from spontaneous fission of ²⁵²Cf, we made a new analysis of the yield matrix of coincident pairs of barium (Z=56) and molybdenum (Z=42) fission fragments. Branching from γ-bands (K=2) and octupole-bands (K=0) were also measured. From this reanalysis the previously proposed “extra-hot-fission mode” (8–10 neutrons evaporated) is much weaker than first reported. In this paper, we discuss in detail the methodology, including background subtraction for triple-coincidence data. The importance of minimal compression spectra allowing least-squares peak-fitting analysis is emphasized.     

N-particle dynamics of the Euler equations for planar diffeomorphisms

The Euler equations associated with diffeomorphism groups have received much recent study because of their links with fluid dynamics, computer vision, and mechanics. In this article, we consider the dynamics of N point particles or “blobs” moving under the action of the Euler equations associated with the group of diffeomorphisms of the plane in a variety of different metrics. This dynamical system is already in widespread use in the field of image registration, where the point particles correspond to image landmarks, but its dynamical behavior has not previously been studied. The 2-body problem is always integrable, and we analyze its phase portrait under different metrics. In particular, we show that 2-body capturing orbits (in which the distances between the particles tend to 0 as t  → ∞) can occur when the kernel is sufficiently smooth and the relative initial velocity of the particles is sufficiently large. We compute the dynamics of these “dipoles” with respect to other test particles, and supplement the calculations with simulations for larger N that illustrate the different regimes.     

Role of plastic work in fatigue crack propagation in metals

The plastic work required for a unit area of fatigue crack propagation U was measured by cementing tiny foil strain gages ahead of propagating fatigue cracks and recording the stress-strain curves as the crack approached. Measurements of U and plastic zone size in aluminum alloys 2024-T4, 2219-T861, 2219 overaged, and A1-6.3 wt% Cu-T4, and a binary Ni-base alloy with 7.2 wt% A1 are herein reported. The results are discussed along with previously reported measurements of U in three steels and 7050 aluminum alloy. When U is compared to the fatigue crack propagation rate at constant ΔK along with strength and modulus, the conclusion is drawn that U is one of the parameters which determines the rate of fatigue crack propagation. The relation of U to microstructure is also discussed. “Homogeneous” plastic deformation in the plastic zone ahead of the crack seems desirable.     

Multi-Stimuli Dually-Responsive Intelligent Woven Structures with Local Programmability for Biomimetic Applications

This work focuses on multi-stimuli-responsive materials with distinctive abilities, that is, color-changing and shape-memory. Using metallic composite yarns and polymeric/thermochromic microcapsule composite fibers, processed via a melt-spinning technique, an electrothermally multi-responsive fabric is woven. The resulting smart-fabric transfers from a predefined structure to an original shape while changing color upon heating or applying an electric field, making it appealing for advanced applications. The shape-memory and color-changing features of the fabric can be controlled by rationally controlling the micro-scale design of the individual fibers in the structure. Thus, the fibers’ microstructural features are optimized to achieve excellent color-changing behavior along with shape fixity and recovery ratios of 99.95% and 79.2%, respectively. More importantly, the fabric's dual-response by electric field can be achieved by a low voltage of 5 V, which is smaller than the previously reported values. Above and beyond, the fabric is able to be meticulously activated by selectively applying a controlled voltage to any part of the fabric. The precise local responsiveness can be bestowed upon the fabric by readily controlling its macro-scale design. A biomimetic dragonfly with the shape-memory and color-changing dual-response ability is successfully fabricated, broadening the design and fabrication horizon of groundbreaking smart materials with multiple functions.     

MODELS FOR IMPROVED EFFECTIVENESS BASED ON DEA EFFICIENCY RESULTS

Following the characterization via Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) of managerial units as efficient or inefficient, management will wish to increase profitability and/or control costs while becoming (or remaining) technically efficient in the DEA sense. This paper presents three families of models for achieving this and describes the managerial situations in which they are useful. The first addresses the management of an existing Decision Making Unit (DMU) and die second attempts to identify the desired “location” for a new DMU. The third addresses the aggregate of all DMUs, reallocating scarce resources among them for maximum overall organizational profitability and technical efficiency.     

RF magnetron sputtered TiNiCu shape memory alloy thin film

Shape memory alloys (SMAs) offer a unique combination of novel properties, such as shape memory effect, super-elasticity, biocompatibility and high damping capacity, and thin film SMAs have the potential to become a primary actuating mechanism for micro-actuators. In this study, TiNiCu films were successfully prepared by mix sputtering of a Ti₅₅Ni₄₅ target with a separated Cu target. Crystalline structure, residual stress and phase transformation properties of the TiNiCu films were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), and curvature measurement methods. Effects of the processing parameters on the film composition, phase transformation and shape-memory effects were analyzed. Results showed that films prepared at a high Ar gas pressure exhibited a columnar structure, while films deposited at a low Ar gas pressure showed smooth and featureless structure. Chemical composition of TiNiCu thin films was dependent on the DC power of copper target. DSC, XRD and curvature measurement revealed clearly the martensitic transformation of the deposited TiNiCu films. When the free-standing film was heated and cooled, a ‘two-way’ shape-memory effect can be clearly observed.