The effect of partial substitution of nb for v on austenite grain size and hardness of a tool steel

In the present work, the composition of H- 13 tool steel was modified with respect to the vanadium content to include an addition of niobium to obtain improved austenite grain size control without altering the tempering response of the steel. Optical metallography and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation of extraction replicas showed that the new steel had a smaller austenite grain size and a finer carbide size distribution than the vanadium steel, which indicates a higher potential toughness.     

Adhesion improvement of thermoplastic isotropically conductive adhesive

Generally, isotropically conductive adhesive formulations include epoxy resin as the polymeric matrix. Although epoxy has superior adhesion capability, its drawbacks include the tendency to absorb moisture and lack of reworkability (thermosetting polymer). In this study, a thermoplastic polymer with low moisture absorption (0.28 wt%), called polyarylene ether (PAE2), is used in isotropically conductive adhesive (ICA) formulation. Previous research work by Lu et al. showed that the moisture absorbed into epoxy caused galvanic corrosion, which result in the formation of metal oxide . By using a polymer with low moisture absorption, the amount of water present in ICA will be small, and the corrosion rate and formation of metal oxide can be reduced. However, previous measurements of contact resistance stability of PAE2-based ICA showed that they are not stable on all surface finishes. It was determined that for thermoplastic-based ICA, poor adhesion was the main mechanism for unstable contact resistance. Two methods of adhesion improvement will be evaluated in this work. The first is to use coupling agents and the second is to blend the thermoplastic with epoxy. Both methods showed promise in improving the contact resistance stability of polyarylene ether based ICA.     

An overview of fault monitoring and diagnosis in mining equipment

Proper detection and diagnosis of failing system components is crucial to efficient mining operations. However, the harsh mining environment offers special challenges to these types of actions. The atmosphere is damp, dirty, and potentially explosive, and equipment is located in confined areas far from shop facilities. These conditions, coupled with the increasing cost of downtime and complexity of mining equipment, have forced researchers and operators to investigate alternatives for improving equipment maintainability. This paper surveys monitoring and diagnosis technologies that offer opportunities for improving equipment availability in mining. Expert systems, model-based approaches, and neural nets are each discussed in the context of fault detection and diagnosis. The paper concludes with a comparative discussion summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of each     

Best structures for deep submicrometer (0.1-0.3 μm) MOS devices

Summary form only given. The LDD-type structure has begun to encounter difficulties in satisfying transistor requirements in manufacturing due to a basic conflict between the need to have a graded drain profile for hot carrier suppression and the requirements for manufacturability and performance which place emphasis on a shallow, steeply profiled drain. One approach for overcoming this conflict and limitation is a MOS transistor structure called the hot-carrier suppressed (HCS) MOSFET. In this approach, a lower doped drain region is placed behind, or above, the shallow, heavier doped drain region rather than being placed adjacent to the channel region. This structure is described in detail, and its simulated performance compared with that of the LDD and conventional MOSFET structures     

Rainbow Net analysis of VAXcluster system availability

A system modeling technique, Rainbow Nets, is used to evaluate the availability and mean-time-to-interrupt of the VAXcluster. These results are compared to the exact analytic results showing that reasonable accuracy is achieved through simulation. The complexity of the Rainbow Net implemented for the VAXcluster does not increase as the number of processors increases, but remains constant. This is unlike a Markov model which increases in size exponentially. The constancy is achieved by using tokens with identity attributes (items) that can have additional attributes associated with them (features) which can exist in multiple states. The time to perform the simulation increases, but this is a polynomial increase rather than exponential. With Rainbow Nets, there is no restriction on distributions used for transition firing times. This freedom allows real situations to be modeled more accurately by choosing the distribution which best fits the system performance. This eliminates the need to make the many simplifying assumptions that are typically required to keep analytic calculations from becoming intractable     

Clock frequency and latency in synchronous digital systems

The tradeoffs in the design of synchronous digital systems between clock frequency and latency in terms of the circuit characteristics of a pipelined data path are described. A design paradigm relating latency and clock frequency as a function of the level of pipelining is developed for studying the performance of a synchronous system. This perspective permits the development of design equations for constrained and unconstrained design problems which describe these performance parameters in terms of the delays of the logic, interconnect, registers, clock skew, and the number of logic states. These results provide an approach to the design of those synchronous digital systems in which latency and clock frequency are of primary importance. From the behavioral specifications for the proposed system, the designer can use these results to select the best logic architecture and the best available device technology to determine if the performance specifications can be satisfied, and, if so, what design options are available for optimization of other system attributes, such as area     

The relationship between optical guiding and the relative phase infree-electron lasers

The relative phase in this case is defined as the shift in the wavenumber from the vacuum value integrated over the interaction length. The relative phase is studied from the standpoint of the linear stability analysis in both the high- and low-gain regimes, and the qualitative implications in each of these regimes of the relative phase on the refractive guiding of the signal are identical. Specifically, the relative phase is found to be negative at the low-frequency end of the gain band. The relative phase increases with increasing frequency over this band until it turns positive at a frequency approximately 10% below the frequency of peak gain. Thus optical guiding is indicated over a large portion, but not all, of the gain band. The specific example of interest involves the low-gain regime prior to saturation. In this case, it is shown that the analytic result is in substantial agreement with the calculation of the relative phase     

Multisite microprobes for neural recordings

Multisite, passive microprobes have been developed to allow simultaneous recording of action potential activity from multiple neurons at different locations in the brain. The microprobes were fabricated using standard integrated circuit techniques. The probe is a planar structure that consists of gold electrodes sandwiched between two polyimide dielectric layers and bonded to a molybdenum structural support. Windows in the top dielectric layer expose the electrode sites and bonding pads. In two distinct versions of the probe four or six recordings sites, respectively, of approximately 25 microns 2 are arranged on a dagger-shaped structure which can penetrate the pia. The bonding pads and interconnect wires at the probe head are entirely encapsulated in a tubular fixture that is packed with silicone RTV and sealed with epoxy to protect the interconnections from contact with body fluids. The site impedances at 1 kHz are typically between 2 and 4 M omega. Probe lifetimes for continuous immersion in physiological saline solution, as measured by impedance, have exceeded 750 h. The failure mechanism is believed to be due to moisture and ion absorption in the top dielectric layer. In acute neurophysiological experiments using the four site probes, action potential activity was recorded from physiologically identified neurons in the dorsal column nuclei of anesthetized rat.     

Computer-aided analysis of free-running microwave oscillators

The authors present a newly developed free-running steady-state oscillator analysis algorithm suited to large-signal oscillator analysis. Kurokawa's oscillation condition is coupled with the modified nodal admittance form of the circuit equations to avoid degenerate solutions. The algorithm was implemented by using both harmonic balance and frequency-domain spectral balance techniques. It was used in the simulation of monolithically integrated varactor-tuned MESFET oscillator. Good agreement between simulated power and oscillation frequency results was obtained     

On the capacity of a cellular CDMA system

It is shown that, particularly for terrestrial cellular telephony, the interference-suppression feature of CDMA (code division multiple access) can result in a many-fold increase in capacity over analog and even over competing digital techniques. A single-cell system, such as a hubbed satellite network, is addressed, and the basic expression for capacity is developed. The corresponding expressions for a multiple-cell system are derived. and the distribution on the number of users supportable per cell is determined. It is concluded that properly augmented and power-controlled multiple-cell CDMA promises a quantum increase in current cellular capacity