High-Temperature Fracture Mechanism of Low-Ca-Doped Silicon Nitride

High-purity Si₃N₄ (with 2.5 wt% glassy SiO₂) doped with 0 to 450 at.ppm of Ca was prepared as a model system to investigate the effects of grain-boundary segregants on fracture phenomenology at 1400°C. Subcritical crack-growth (SCG) resistance as well as creep resistance was degraded significantly by the presence of a small amount of Ca. The internal friction of the doped materials exhibited the superposition of a grain-boundary relaxation peak and a high-temperature background, and the apparent viscosity of the grain-boundary film was determined from the peak. Based on these experimental data, the fracture mechanism at 1400°C was divided into three regions: "brittle," SCG, and creep failure as a function of both external strain rate and Ca concentration, C _Ca. From the investigation of the C _Ca dependence of the critical strain rate for the transition from "brittle" to SCG fractures, the SCG phenomenon is suggested to be triggered by small-scale, grain-boundary sliding. The C _Ca dependence of "steady-state" creep rate was far from the theoretical dependence of diffusional creep via a solution-precipitation mechanism. The discrepancy was interpreted to be due to the presence of an impurity-insensitive creep component. This component may correspond to the lowest limit of the tensile creep rate in Si₃N₄ polycrystalline materials containing intergranular glassy-SiO₂ film.     

Advanced oxidant reactivity pertaining to granular activated carbon beds for air pollution control

The Pennsylvania State University is researching an advanced oxidation system, which includes an air-phase photolytic chamber, an air/water stripping tower, and granular activated carbon (GAC) beds, for controlling volatile organic compounds (VOCs).A laboratory-scale experimental procedure has been employed that simulated certain aspects of several full-scale installations. The apparatus has been used to characterize the loading capacity and mass transfer zone of selected VOCs on coconut shell GAC. The GAC bed has then been placed in series with an ultraviolet reactor, which generates ozone and advanced oxidants in order to regenerate the loaded GAC at intensities of advanced oxidants that were higher than full-scale installations.VOC loading tests revealed that the adsorption of methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) was characterized by a well-defined mass transfer zone. Upon exposure to UV/O₃, desorption and/or destruction of the MIBK and other VOCs occurred most prominently within the first inch of the GAC bed. This correlated with the penetration of advanced oxidants into the GAC bed, which also occurred most significantly in the bed's first inch. However, the amount of oxidant penetration increased with time. The removal of oxidants from air by GAC was accompanied by a decrease in mass of the GAC. The ability of oxidants to penetrate a GAC bed was altered when the bed was loaded with a VOC.     

Statistical Analysis of the Intergranular Film Thickness in Silicon Nitride Ceramics

Silicon nitride materials typically reveal thin amorphous intergranular films along grain boundaries, with only the exception of special boundaries. It is known that such grainboundary films strongly affect the high-temperature properties of the bulk material. High-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) was used to study these amorphous films in different Si₃N₄ ceramics. The observed film thicknesses at grain boundaries in these materials varied between 5and 15 Å. It was shown that the grain-boundary film thickness strongly depends on film chemistry. Careful inspections of film-thickness measurements across grain boundaries in a given material suggest that the film widths vary on the order of 1 Å. Therefore, a quantitative evaluation should allow for the determination of the standard deviation of the film thickness. The amorphous film widths along grain boundaries in four materials were measured over the entire length (up to 1 μm) of the grain boundary between two triple points. Forty to fifty data points were evaluated for each boundary, giving a Gaussian-like distribution of the film thickness around a median value, which corresponded well with the film width measured from single HREM micrographs. The accuracy achieved by the statistical method was better than ± 1 Å.     

Trace detection of krypton using laser-induced fluorescence

Highly sensitive detection of neutral Kr atoms was accomplished by the use of laser-induced fluorescence. In one experiment, Kr at 40 parts per 10(12) in He was detected at a signal-to-noise ratio of 500 by time-resolved fluorescence measurements. The Kr metastable 1s(5) level was populated by cascade after two-photon excitation to the 2p(6) level by the frequency-tripled output of a pulsed single-longitudinalmode dye laser. After a delay, when scattered laser light and cascade resonance fluorescence became negligible, trace quantities of Kr were detected by the use of a pulsed-laser pumping scheme. In a related experiment, (78)Kr/(86)Kr isotope ratios ranging from 1 to 0.1 were measured with a resonant isotopic depletion technique first proposed by Makarov [Sov. J. Quantum Electron. 13, 722 (1983)]. The (86)Kr metastable population was selectively depleted by optical pumping to a higher-lying state that relaxed to the ground state by means of radiative cascade. After the (78)Kr/(86)Kr ratio of metastables had been enriched by a factor of 10, the (78)Kr population was probed by pulsed excitation. Premixed (78)Kr/(86)Kr ratios were measured to within an accuracy of 10%, even for unresolved, Doppler-broadened transitions.     

Fundamental dynamics of flow through carbon nanotube membranes

The flow of a model non-polar liquid through small carbon nanotubes is studied using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation. We explain how a membrane of small-diameter nanotubes can transport this liquid faster than a membrane consisting of larger-diameter nanotubes. This effect is shown to be back-pressure dependent, and the reasons for this are explored. The flow through the very smallest nanotubes is shown to depend strongly on the depth of the potential inside, suggesting atomic separation can be based on carbon interaction strength as well as physical size. Finally, we demonstrate how increasing the back-pressure can counter-intuitively result in lower exit velocities from a nanotube. Such studies are crucial for optimisation of nanotube membranes.     

Model predictive control for systems with stochastic multiplicative uncertainty and probabilistic constraints

Robust predictive control handles constrained systems that are subject to stochastic uncertainty but propagating the effects of uncertainty over a prediction horizon can be computationally expensive and conservative. This paper overcomes these issues through an augmented autonomous prediction formulation, and provides a method of handling probabilistic constraints and ensuring closed loop stability through the use of an extension of the concept of invariance, namely invariance with probability p.     

Linear-Time Recognition of Helly Circular-Arc Models and Graphs

A circular-arc model ℳ is a circle C together with a collection A\mathcal{A} of arcs of C. If A\mathcal{A} satisfies the Helly Property then ℳ is a Helly circular-arc model. A (Helly) circular-arc graph is the intersection graph of a (Helly) circular-arc model. Circular-arc graphs and their subclasses have been the object of a great deal of attention in the literature. Linear-time recognition algorithms have been described both for the general class and for some of its subclasses. However, for Helly circular-arc graphs, the best recognition algorithm is that by Gavril, whose complexity is O(n ³). In this article, we describe different characterizations for Helly circular-arc graphs, including a characterization by forbidden induced subgraphs for the class. The characterizations lead to a linear-time recognition algorithm for recognizing graphs of this class. The algorithm also produces certificates for a negative answer, by exhibiting a forbidden subgraph of it, within this same bound.     

Background pattern removal by power spectral filtering

A new method for removing periodic background patterns from pictures is presented. The basic spatial frequency composition of the pattern is determined from an estimate of the power spectrum of the picture. A convolutional restoration kernel is then created from a modified version of the power spectrum. The method is extremely effective and can be automated.     

Port Placement Planning in Robot-Assisted Coronary Artery Bypass

Properly selected port sites for robot-assisted coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) improve the efficiency and quality of these procedures. In clinical practice, surgeons select port locations using external anatomic landmarks to estimate a patient's internal anatomy. This paper proposes an automated approach to port selection based on a preoperative image of the patient, thus avoiding the need to estimate internal anatomy. Using this image as input, port sites are chosen from a grid of surgeon-approved options by defining a performance measure for each possible port triad. This measure seeks to minimize the weighted squared deviation of the instrument and endoscope angles from their optimal orientations at each internal surgical site. This performance measure proves insensitive to perturbations in both its weighting factors and moderate intraoperative displacements of the patient's internal anatomy. A validation study of this port site selection was performed. cardiac algorithm also Six surgeons dissected model vessels using the port triad selected by this algorithm with performance compared to dissection using a surgeon-selected port triad and a port triad template described by Tabaie et al., 1999. With the algorithm-selected ports, dissection speed increased by up to 43% (p = 0.046) with less overall vessel trauma. Thus, this algorithmic approach to port site selection has important clinical implications for robot-assisted CABG which warrant further investigation.     

Continuously extruded micro‐textured polypropylene films

The continuous extrusion of micro‐textured isotactic polypropylene (i‐PP) film and its tribological properties are reported. As analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, a rectangular‐semicircular micro‐patterned die successfully produced extruded cast‐films with hill‐like micro‐texture. Such films displayed static and kinetic coefficients of friction (COF_s and COF_k) values of 0.247 ± 0.028 and 0.245 ± 0.003, respectively, for a steel fixture sliding along the micro‐texture of the film. The equivalent COF_s and COF_k values for non‐textured (NT) films were 0.369 ± 0.036 and 0.340 ± 0.024, respectively, confirming that textured films displayed a reduction in COF of about 30%. For textured and NT films sliding on textured films, the COF_k values were even lower at 0.161 ± 0.013 and 0.113 ± 0.004, which represents about 20–40% reduction as compared with that for the NT‐NT counterparts. Films coated with a silicone lubricant displayed COF_s and COF_k values of 0.334 ± 0.042 and 0.099 ± 0.012, respectively, for NT films sliding over lubricated NT films, and 0.426 ± 0.031 and 0.063 ± 0.006, respectively, for textured films sliding over lubricated textured films. The COF_k values for textured/non‐lubricated films approach those of NT/lubricated films, indicating that micro‐textured polypropylene films may be used in environmentally sensitive applications where lubricants and fluorinated additives may not be used for reducing friction. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 54:2147–2154, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers