Effect of electric field on the hydrodynamics of fluidized nanoparticles

The effect of electric field on the hydrodynamics of nanoparticles was studied in a fluidized rectangular bed, with electrodes attached to two parallel walls. It was shown that the electric field of the order of 3 times the gravity markedly decreased the bed expansion and increased the solids volume fraction of nanoparticles fluidized by air. In these experiments, a light diode assembly was utilized to infer the local solids volume fractions within a rectangular bed of 10 nm silica particles. These experimental measurements yielded a two dimensional solids volume fraction distribution within the rectangular bed. The experimental results provided some new insights into the distribution of solids within the bed. The agglomerate diameters were computed using a momentum balance with the drag given by the Ergun equation and the empirical Richardson-Zaki method. Both methods yielded agglomerate diameters of the order of 100 μm and showed dependence on the strength of the electric field. The electric field decreased the granular temperature of the nanoparticles.     

Myocardial imaging with technetium-99m-tetrofosmin: comparison of one-day and two-day protocols

There is no evidence of myocardial redistribution after tetrofosmin injection, therefore, two separate injections are needed to differentiate scar from ischemia with this tracer. The injections can be given on the same day (one-day protocol) or on separate days (two-day protocol). As part of a Phase II clinical study, a one-day protocol was compared with a two-day protocol. METHODS: Fifty-five patients with suspected coronary artery disease were studied according to the following protocol: on the first day at rest, anterior, left lateral, left anterior oblique 40 degrees and 70 degrees images were acquired 30 min after injection of 8 mCi of tetrofosmin for 5 min each. Two days later, exercise and rest images were acquired on the same day. At peak exercise, 8 mCi of tetrofosmin were injected and 30 min later the same four standard planar images were recorded as on Day one. Four hours after the exercise injection, 24 mCi of tetrofosmin were injected at rest and imaging was repeated 30 min later. Qualitative comparisons between the one- and two-day protocols were performed in 50 patients in whom all data were available following blinded evaluation of images by three readers. RESULTS: All three readers reported identical results for the 26 patients. A difference in extent or location between the observers was found in seven patients, differences between normal and abnormal in eight patients, while discrepancies between ischemia and necrosis were noted in four patients. In five patients, an ischemic area was found according to the one-day protocol, but according to the data of the two-day protocol, this area was judged to be necrotic. One observer reported the opposite in one patient. These discrepancies between the reversibility of defects were restricted to the inferior wall. Comparison with 201Tl data showed no systematic pattern of variation. CONCLUSION: Tetrofosmin can be used in a one-day protocol. However, in planar imaging, the inferior wall should be reported with caution.     

Pre-illumination to control the active trap density in asemi-insulating MQW device

The trap density in a photorefractive semi-insulating quantum-well (QW) device can be dynamically adjusted for optimum sensitivity by passivating some of its traps with photocarriers from a pre-illumination pulse. By reducing the effective trap density with pre-illumination, we demonstrate that the carrier drift length can increase, causing more than an order of magnitude increase in device sensitivity by increasing the number of QW's screened per carrier. Too much pre-illumination, on the other hand, decreases four-wave mixing diffraction efficiency, due to lateral drift. The optimum trap density enables higher sensitivity while maintaining high-resolution operation. Pre-illumination can also be used to speed up grating erasure by increasing the electron-hole recombination probability     

Flash pyrolysis of coal: effect of nitrogen,argon and other atmospheres in increasing olefin concentration and its significance on the mechanism of coal pyrolysis

Samples of three Indian coals, of widely differing origin and rank, were subjected to flash pyrolysis at a temperature of about 1150 °C for 30 s in vacuo, and under atmospheres of nitrogen, argon, ammonia, and perdeuterobenzene. The gaseous products of the pyrolyses were analysed by infra-red and mass spectroscopy and by gas chromatography. Observed variations in gas compositions are discussed relative to the possible mode of influence by the pyrolytic atmospheres. It would appear that the pyrolytic atmosphere is an important factor in determining the composition of the pyrolysis products; the influence of nitrogen, argon and perdeuterobenzene is a physical one, leading especially to higher yields of olefins.     

Acoustic modeling problem for automatic speech recognition system: conventional methods (Part I)

In automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, the speech signal is captured and parameterized at front end and evaluated at back end using the statistical framework of hidden Markov model (HMM). The performance of these systems depend critically on both the type of models used and the methods adopted for signal analysis. Researchers have proposed a variety of modifications and extensions for HMM based acoustic models to overcome their limitations. In this review, we summarize most of the research work related to HMM-ASR which has been carried out during the last three decades. We present all these approaches under three categories, namely conventional methods, refinements and advancements of HMM. The review is presented in two parts (papers): (i) An overview of conventional methods for acoustic phonetic modeling, (ii) Refinements and advancements of acoustic models. Part I explores the architecture and working of the standard HMM with its limitations. It also covers different modeling units, language models and decoders. Part II presents a review on the advances and refinements of the conventional HMM techniques along with the current challenges and performance issues related to ASR.     

Effect of interface on the mechanical behaviour of glass bead-filled PVC

The surface of glass beads of average particle size 100m was modified (a) by incorporating extra hydroxyl groups by chemcial treatment, and (b) by applying a thin coating of polymethacrylic acid (PMA) on the glass surface. The corresponding chemical changes were investigated using infrared spectroscopy. The tensile behaviour of a glass bead-filled PVC composite prepared with surface-modified glass beads, showed the following effects: (a) hydroxyl groups incorporated on to the glass surface did not affect the glass-PVC interface and hence did not change the tensile behaviour of the composite; (b) PMA coating on the glass surface caused improvement in the tensile behaviour in the low strain region and deterioration in the high region. An SEM study of the fractured surface suggested debonding at the glass-PVC interface in the first case, and failure of the PVC-PMA interface in the second case.     

Bulk micromachining of silicon in TMAH-based etchants for aluminum passivation and smooth surface

The fabrication of silicon based micromechanical sensors often requires bulk silicon etching after aluminum metallization. All wet silicon etchants including ordinary undoped tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide (TMAH)-water solution attack the overlaying aluminum metal interconnect during the anisotropic etching of (100) silicon. This paper presents a TMAH-water based etching recipe to achieve high silicon etch rate, a smooth etched surface and almost total protection of the exposed aluminum metallization. The etch rate measurements of (100) silicon, silicon dioxide and aluminum along with the morphology studies of etched surfaces are performed on both n-type and p-type silicon wafers at different concentrations (2, 5, 10 and 15%) for undoped TMAH treated at various temperatures as well as for TMAH solution doped separately and simultaneously with silicic acid and ammonium peroxodisulphate (AP). It is established through a detailed study that 5% TMAH-water solution dual doped with 38 gm/l silicic acid and 7 gm/l AP yields a reasonably high (100) silicon etch rate of 70 μm/h at 80 °C, very small etch rates of SiO₂ and pure aluminum (around 80 Å/h and 50 Å/h, respectively), and a smooth surface (±7 nm) at a bath temperature of 80 °C. The etchant has been successfully used for fabricating several MEMS structures like piezoresistive accelerometer, vaporizing liquid micro-thruster and flow sensor. In all cases, the bulk micromachining is carried out after the formation of aluminum interconnects which is found to remain unaffected during the prolonged etching process at 80 °C. The TMAH based etchant may be attractive in industry due to its compatibility with standard CMOS process.     

Bubble Formation through Reaction at Liquid‐Liquid Interfaces

Slag foaming is an important phenomenon in steelmaking processes with both beneficial as well as negative effects. The present work is part of the wider project on the modelling of slag foaming, with special reference to dynamic conditions. Since bubble formation is the first step to foam formation, the present work was carried out in an attempt to simulate the bubble formation in slag/metal reactions in steelmaking processes by water‐modelling experiments. The bubble formation due to the gas produced through chemical reaction at the interface between oleic acid and sodium bicarbonate solution was systematically monitored. The chemical reaction rate was varied by varying the concentration of sodium bicarbonate. The bubbles were observed to be generated in the heavier aqueous phase just below the water‐oil interface. The bubbles penetrated the interface and escaped through the oil phase. The rate of the reaction was estimated from the volume of the gas that passed the water/oil interface. It was observed that the bubble formation and bubble growth mechanism were influenced by the reaction rate while the bubble size seemed to be unaffected by the reaction rate.     

Two-Point Linearization Method for the Analysis of Pipe Networks

This note proposes a new method for snapshot analysis of water distribution systems based on the commonly used gradient method. The proposed method uses a secant (intersecting the head-loss function in two points) instead of a tangent to approximate the pipe head-loss function. A theoretical model is developed for the flow range in which the secant approximates the head-loss function without exceeding a given allowable error. This scheme allows a tradeoff to be made between the allowable error and the number of iterations required to achieve convergence. The proposed method is applied to an example network to illustrate its application and benefits. It is argued that the number of iterations required to find a solution can be reduced significantly in both snapshot and extended-period simulations.     

Quantification of carbon nanotube dispersion and its correlation with mechanical and thermal properties of epoxy nanocomposites

An experimental study is carried out to quantitatively assess the dispersion quality of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in epoxy matrix as a function of CNT variant and weight fraction. To this end, two weight fractions (0.05% and 0.25%) of as-grown, oxidized, and functionalized CNTs are used to process CNT/epoxy nanocomposites. Scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and Fourier transform infrared analysis of different variants of CNTs are used to establish the efficiency of purification route. While the relative change in mechanical properties is investigated through tensile and micro-hardness testing, thermal conductivity of different nanocomposites is measured to characterize the effect of CNT addition on the average thermal properties of epoxy. Later on, a quantitative analysis is carried out to establish the relationship between the observed improvements in average composite properties with the dispersion quality of CNTs in epoxy. It is shown that carboxylic (-COOH) functionalization reduces the average CNT agglomerate size and thus ensures better dispersion of CNTs in epoxy even at higher CNT weight fraction. The improved dispersion leads to enhanced interfacial interaction at the CNT/epoxy interface and hence provides higher relative improvement in nanocomposite properties compared to the samples prepared using as-grown and oxidized CNTs. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2020 , 137, 48879.