Bipolar Fatigue Caused by Field Screening in Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 Ceramics

Bipolar cycling of lead zirconate titanate ceramics can lead to massive material damage in regions close to the electrode. The damaged region can be identified by color changes, and the microstructure in this region shows signs of interface melting. This damaged region can screen the sample volume from the applied voltages and reduced fields are applied to the undamaged part of the sample. This has two effects. The first one is that the bulk is effectively subjected to smaller fields, but the measured parameters are assigned to the applied field, yielding apparent fatigue curves. The second effect is that with further cycling, field screening protects the bulk of the sample from fatigue due to the reduced effective fields. If the damaged region is mechanically removed and the ferroelectric hystereses are measured again, nearly unfatigued parameters are obtained.     

On the Effect of Local Grain-Boundary Chemistry on the Macroscopic Mechanical Properties of a High-Purity Y2O3-Al2O3-Containing Silicon Nitride Ceramic: Role of Oxygen

The effects of grain-boundary chemistry on the mechanical properties of high-purity silicon nitride ceramics have been investigated, specifically involving the role of oxygen, present along the grain boundaries, in influencing the fracture behavior. To avoid complications from inadvertently introduced impurities, studies were performed on a high-purity Si₃N₄ processed using two-step gas-pressure-HIP sintering. Varying the grain-boundary oxygen content, which was achieved by control of oxidizing heat treatments and sintering additives, was found to result in a transition in fracture mechanism, from transgranular to intergranular fracture, with an associated increase in fracture toughness. This phenomenon is correlated to an oxygen-induced change in grain-boundary chemistry and possibly to a concomitant structural transformation along the interface. The incorporation of oxygen appears to affect fracture by "weakening" the interface, thus facilitating debonding and crack advance along the boundaries, and hence to toughening by grain bridging. It is concluded that if the oxygen content in the thin grain-boundary films exceeds a lower limit, which is ∼0.87 equiv% oxygen content, then the interfacial structure and bonding characteristics favor intergranular debonding during crack propagation; otherwise, transgranular fracture ensues.     

Experimental study of the vortex end in centrifugal separators: The nature of the vortex end

The nature of the vortex end (or the “tail end” or “tip”) in reverse-flow centrifugal gas cleaning equipment, cyclones and swirl tubes, has been studied by visualization using a stroboscope and high-time-resolution pressure measurements. The core of the vortex is shown to bend to the wall of the separator, and rotate around the wall, forming the ring-shaped pattern normally observed at the vortex end. The end of the vortex was found to occur higher in the swirl tube (“less stable vortex”) when the solid loading is increased, and when the volumetric flow rate to the tube is decreased. The frequency with which the vortex core rotates varies with the gas flow rate and was found to be about the same as the frequency with which the gas rotates higher in the separator. The time-averaged wall pressure suddenly decreases in the separator body at the point where the vortex end attaches to the wall.     

Modeling carbonation for corrosion risk prediction of concrete structures

Damage of reinforced concrete structures is often caused by corrosion of steel reinforcements due to carbonation. Although literature on carbonation has become vast, a comprehensive numerical model for quantitative prediction of the corrosion risk that allows for environmental influences such as temperature and humidity seems lacking. The aim of the present paper is the development of a theoretical model to predict carbonation of concrete structures. The model describes movement and retention of heat, moisture and carbon dioxide (CO₂) by means of balance equations and diffusion laws. The balance equations are coupled and take into account the interaction between different transport and storing processes. A new mathematical formulation of the function of moisture in balance faithfully represents the moisture-storing properties of a porous media. The evolutionary equation of the reaction of CO₂ is derived from reaction kinetics that are described by the Arrhenius' function. The model is solved by means of an efficient numerical method using a Finite Element concept and numerical time integration techniques. It is verified by using results from experimental tests reported in the literature. Taking into account changing atmospheric conditions, structures are investigated with respect to the corrosion risk of steel reinforcements. Together with threshold values taken from the literature, the numerical results give the corrosion risk of reinforced concrete structures.     

Interactive deformable models with quadratic bases in Bernstein�CB��zier-form

We present a physically based interactive simulation technique for de formable objects. Our method models the geometry as well as the displacements using quadratic basis functions in Bernstein?CBézier form on a tetrahedral finite element mesh. The Bernstein?CBézier formulation yields significant advantages compared to approaches using the monomial form. The implementation is simplified, as spatial derivatives and integrals of the displacement field are obtained analytically avoiding the need for numerical evaluations of the elements?? stiffness matrices. We introduce a novel traversal accounting for adjacency in order to accelerate the reconstruction of the global matrices. We show that our proposed method can compensate the additional effort introduced by the co-rotational formulation to a large extent. We validate our approach on several models and demonstrate new levels of accuracy and performance in comparison to current state-of-the-art.     

Learning GP-BayesFilters via Gaussian process latent variable models

GP-BayesFilters are a general framework for integrating Gaussian process prediction and observation models into Bayesian filtering techniques, including particle filters and extended and unscented Kalman filters. GP-BayesFilters have been shown to be extremely well suited for systems for which accurate parametric models are difficult to obtain. GP-BayesFilters learn non-parametric models from training data containing sequences of control inputs, observations, and ground truth states. The need for ground truth states limits the applicability of GP-BayesFilters to systems for which the ground truth can be estimated without significant overhead. In this paper we introduce GPBF-Learn, a framework for training GP-BayesFilters without ground truth states. Our approach extends Gaussian Process Latent Variable Models to the setting of dynamical robotics systems. We show how weak labels for the ground truth states can be incorporated into the GPBF-Learn framework. The approach is evaluated using a difficult tracking task, namely tracking a slotcar based on inertial measurement unit (IMU) observations only. We also show some special features enabled by this framework, including time alignment, and control replay for both the slotcar, and a robotic arm.     

Curvature continuous offset approximation based on circle approximation using quadratic Bézier biarcs

We present a method for G² end-point interpolation of offset curves using rational Bézier curves. The method is based on a G² end-point interpolation of circular arcs using quadratic Bézier biarcs. We also prove the invariance of the Hausdorff distance between two compatible curves under convolution. Using this result, we obtain the exact Hausdorff distance between an offset curve and its approximation by our method. We present the approximation algorithm and give numerical examples.