Optimal control of accelerator concentration for resin transfer molding process

Resin cure following mold filling is an essential element in resin transfer molding. To fabricate a composite part with high dimensional stability and minimize residual stress, uniform resin cure should be achieved. This study considers a three-part resin system composed of epoxy, hardener and accelerator. The cure kinetics can be controlled by the accelerator concentration at the injection gate. A numerical method that can predict degree of cure distribution based on accelerator concentration at the gate was proposed. The degree of cure distribution is obtained by solving the resin flow, heat transfer, accelerator concentration and cure problems sequentially. Utilizing this numerical method, an optimal variation of accelerator concentration during mold filling was sought by solving a constrained optimization problem. The effect of accelerator control on degree of cure distribution was investigated and its validity was examined for two different geometries.     

Visual insights into high-resolution earthquake Simulations.

This study focuses on the visualization of a series of large earthquake simulations collectively called TeraShake. The simulation series aims to assess the impact of San Andreas Fault earthquake scenarios in Southern California. We discuss the role of visualization in gaining scientific insight and aiding unexpected discoveries.     

Exploiting ILP, TLP, and DLP with the polymorphous trips architecture

The Tera-op reliable intelligently adaptive processing system (TRIPS) architecture seeks to deliver system-level configurability to applications and runtime systems. It does so by employing the concept of polymorphism, which permits the runtime system to configure the hardware execution resources to match the mode of execution and demands of the compiler and application.     

Minimum-Energy Translational Trajectory Generation for Differential-Driven Wheeled Mobile Robots

Mobile robots can be used in many applications, such as exploration, search and rescue, reconnaissance, security, and cleaning. Mobile robots usually carry batteries as their energy source and their operational time is restricted by the finite energy available from the batteries. Therefore, energy constraints are critical to the service time of mobile robots. This paper investigates the minimum-energy control problem for translational trajectory generation, which minimizes the energy drawn from the batteries. Optimal control theory is used to find the optimal velocity trajectory in analytic form. To demonstrate energy efficiency obtainable, we performed simulations of minimum-energy velocity control and compared the results with loss-minimization control and energy-optimal trapezoidal velocity profiles. Simulation results showed that significant energy savings can be achieved, of up to 9% compared with loss-minimization control and up to 10% compared with energy-optimal trapezoidal velocity profile. We also performed an actual robot experiment using Pioneer 3-AT platform to show the validity of the proposed minimum-energy velocity control. The experimental results revealed that the proposed minimum-energy velocity control can save the battery energy up to 10% compared with loss-minimization control. Categories (3): Robot control, (5): RobotMotion Planning     

An accurate and practical buffer allocation model for the buffer cache based on marginal gains

A new dynamic buffer allocation strategy based on the notion of marginal gains is presented for the buffer cache that is used by the operating system to store frequently accessed disk blocks in main memory, and the performance of the proposed strategy is compared with those of previous allocation strategies. In the proposed strategy, marginal gain values are predicted by exploiting functions that approximate the expected number of buffer hits per unit time. Experimental results from both trace-driven simulation and an actual implementation in the FreeBSD operating system show that the proposed strategy accurately predicts the marginal gain values for various workloads resulting in significantly improved buffer hit ratios.     

Extensions of LDA by PCA mixture model and class-wise features

Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is a data discrimination technique that seeks transformation to maximize the ratio of the between-class scatter and the within-class scatter. While it has been successfully applied to several applications, it has two limitations, both concerning the underfitting problem. First, it fails to discriminate data with complex distributions since all data in each class are assumed to be distributed in the Gaussian manner. Second, it can lose class-wise information, since it produces only one transformation over the entire range of classes. We propose three extensions of LDA to overcome the above problems. The first extension overcomes the first problem by modelling the within-class scatter using a PCA mixture model that can represent more complex distribution. The second extension overcomes the second problem by taking different transformation for each class in order to provide class-wise features. The third extension combines these two modifications by representing each class in terms of the PCA mixture model and taking different transformation for each mixture component. It is shown that all our proposed extensions of LDA outperform LDA concerning classification errors for synthetic data classification, hand-written digit recognition, and alphabet recognition.     

Characterization of Ceramic Composite-Membranes Prepared by ORMOSIL Coating Sol

Sol-gel methods offer many advantages over conventional slip-casting, including the ability to produce ceramic membranes. They are purer, more homogeneous, more reactive and contain a wider variety of compositions. We produced ormosil sol using sol-gel process under different molecular weight of polymer species [polyethylene glycol (PEG) ] in total system [Tetraethyl ortho silicate(TEOS)-polyethylene glycol (PEG)]. The properties of as-prepared ormosil sol such as,viscosity, gelation time were characterized. Also, the ceramic membrane was prepared by dip-coating with synthetic sol and its micro-structure was observed by scanning electron microscopy. The permeability and rejection efficiency of membrane for oil/water emulsion were evaluated as cross-flow apparatus. The ormosil sol coated Membrane is easily formed by steric effect of polymer and it improves flux efficiency because infiltration into porous support decreased. Its flux efficiency is elevated about 200(1/m2·h) compared with colloidal sol coated membrane at point of five minutes from starting test.     

Effects of ternary additions on the thermoelastic martensitic transformation of NiAl

Nickel-rich β-NiAl alloys, which are potential materials for high-temperature shape-memory alloys, show a thermoelastic martensitic transformation, which produces their shape memory effect. However, the transformation to Ni₅Al₃ phase during heating of NiAl martensite can interrupt the reversible martensitic transformation; consequently, the shape memory effect in NiAl martensite might not appear after heating. The phase transformation process in binary Ni-(34 to 37)Al martensite was investigated by differential thermal analysis (DTA) method, and we found that the condition of reversible martensitic transformation was not the β → Ni₅Al₃ transformation, but rather the M → Ni₅Al₃ transformation occurring at 250 °C to 300 °C. Therefore, the transformation temperature of M → Ni₅Al₃ determined the highest operating temperature for the shape memory effect. For verifying the critical temperature, the phase transformation process was investigated for eight ternary Ni-33Al-X alloys (X=Cu, Co, Fe, Mn, Cr, Ti, Si, and Nb). Only Ti, Si, and Nb additions were found to be effective in dropping the M _s temperature, and they facilitated the shape memory effect in Ni-33Al-X alloys. In particular, the addition of Si and Nb raised the transformation temperature of M → Ni₅Al₃, a potentially beneficial effect for shape memory at higher temperatures. This article is based on a presentation made in the symposium entitled “Fundamentals of Structural Intermetallics,” presented at the 2002 TMS Annual Meeting, February 21–27, 2002, in Seattle, Washington, under the auspices of the ASM and TMS Joint Committee on Mechanical Behavior of Materials.