Influence of milling strategy on the surface roughness in ball end milling of the aluminum alloy Al7075-T6

Surface roughness has an important role in the performance of finished components. End ball milling is used for achieving high surface quality, especially in complex geometries. Depending on the cutting conditions selected for ball end milling, different milling strategies can be applied. The produced surface quality is greatly affected from the selected milling strategy. The present paper examines the influence of the milling strategy selection on the surface roughness of an Al7075-T6 alloy. A number of cutting parameters are tested (axial and radial depth of cut, feed rate, inclination angles φ and ω) in order to perform 96 experiments and their results are processed using regression analysis and analysis of variance. All possible milling strategies are considered (vertical, push, pull, oblique, oblique push and oblique pull) and for each one of them, a mathematical model of the surface roughness is established, considering both the down and up milling. All models are statistically validated and experimentally verified, and can be used within the limits of the investigating cutting conditions. The polynomials produced are of the third order and the statistically most significant parameters are presented.     

Economic model predictive control with time‐varying objective function for nonlinear process systems

Economic model predictive control (EMPC) is a control scheme that combines real‐time dynamic economic process optimization with the feedback properties of model predictive control (MPC) by replacing the quadratic cost function with a general economic cost function. Almost all the recent work on EMPC involves cost functions that are time invariant (do not explicitly account for time‐varying process economics). In the present work, we focus on the development of a Lyapunov‐based EMPC (LEMPC) scheme that is formulated with an explicitly time‐varying economic cost function. First, the formulation of the proposed two‐mode LEMPC is given. Second, closed‐loop stability is proven through a theoretical treatment. Last, we demonstrate through extensive closed‐loop simulations of a chemical process that the proposed LEMPC can achieve stability with time‐varying economic cost as well as improve economic performance of the process over a conventional MPC scheme. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J 60: 507–519, 2014     

Modeling and Control of High-Velocity Oxygen-Fuel (HVOF) Thermal Spray: A Tutorial Review

This work provides a tutorial overview of recent research efforts in modeling and control of the high-velocity oxygen-fuel (HVOF) thermal spray process. Initially, the modeling of the HVOF thermal spray, including combustion, gas dynamics, particle in-flight behavior, and coating microstructure evolution is reviewed. The influence of the process operating conditions as predicted by the fundamental models on particle characteristics and coating microstructure is then discussed and compared with experimental observations. Finally, the issues of measurement and automatic control are discussed and comments on potential future research efforts are made.     

Pneumatic Networks for Soft Robotics that Actuate Rapidly

Soft robots actuated by inflation of a pneumatic network (a “pneu‐net”) of small channels in elastomeric materials are appealing for producing sophisticated motions with simple controls. Although current designs of pneu‐nets achieve motion with large amplitudes, they do so relatively slowly (over seconds). This paper describes a new design for pneu‐nets that reduces the amount of gas needed for inflation of the pneu‐net, and thus increases its speed of actuation. A simple actuator can bend from a linear to a quasi‐circular shape in 50 ms when pressurized at ΔP = 345 kPa. At high rates of pressurization, the path along which the actuator bends depends on this rate. When inflated fully, the chambers of this new design experience only one‐tenth the change in volume of that required for the previous design. This small change in volume requires comparably low levels of strain in the material at maximum amplitudes of actuation, and commensurately low rates of fatigue and failure. This actuator can operate over a million cycles without significant degradation of performance. This design for soft robotic actuators combines high rates of actuation with high reliability of the actuator, and opens new areas of application for them.     

A Novel Trust-Aware Geographical Routing Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are vulnerable to a wide set of security attacks, including those targeting the routing protocol functionality. The applicability of legacy security solutions is disputable (if not infeasible), due to severe restrictions in node and network resources. Although confidentiality, integrity and authentication measures assist in preventing specific types of attacks, they come at high cost and, in most cases, cannot shield against routing attacks. To face this problem, we propose a secure routing protocol which adopts the geographical routing principle to cope with the network dimensions, and relies on a distributed trust model for the detection and avoidance of malicious neighbours. A novel function which adaptively weights location, trust and energy information drives the routing decisions, allowing for shifting emphasis from security to path optimality. The proposed trust model relies on both direct and indirect observations to derive the trustworthiness of each neighboring node, while it is capable of defending against an increased set of routing attacks including attacks targeting the indirect trust management scheme. Extensive simulation results reveal the advantages of the proposed model.     

Evaluating routing metric composition approaches for QoS differentiation in low power and lossy networks

The use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in a wide variety of application domains has been intensively pursued lately while Future Internet designers consider WSN as a network architecture paradigm that provides abundant real-life real-time information which can be exploited to enhance the user experience. The wealth of applications running on WSNs imposes different Quality of Service requirements on the underlying network with respect to delay, reliability and loss. At the same time, WSNs present intricacies such as limited energy, node and network resources. To meet the application’s requirements while respecting the characteristics and limitations of the WSN, appropriate routing metrics have to be adopted by the routing protocol. These metrics can be primary (e.g. expected transmission count) to capture a specific effect (e.g. link reliability) and achieve a specific goal (e.g. low number of retransmissions to economize resources) or composite (e.g. combining latency with remaining energy) to satisfy different applications needs and WSNs requirements (e.g. low latency and energy consumption at the same time). In this paper, (a) we specify primary routing metrics and ways to combine them into composite routing metrics, (b) we prove (based on the routing algebra formalism) that these metrics can be utilized in such a way that the routing protocol converges to optimal paths in a loop-free manner and (c) we apply the proposed approach to the RPL protocol specified by the ROLL group of IETF for such low power and lossy link networks to quantify the achieved performance through extensive computer simulations.     

Green optical backbone networks: virtual topology adaptation using a page rank‐based rating system

An energy‐aware virtual topology rating system is proposed in this work, which can be utilized as a tool during the virtual topology reconfiguration procedure in an optical backbone network in order to reduce its energy consumption. It is well known that maintaining a static virtual topology in Internet Protocol (IP)‐over‐Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks is not energy‐efficient. To that end, virtual topology adaptation algorithms have been developed to adjust the virtual topology to the constantly fluctuating traffic load. While these algorithms achieve significant energy savings, further reduction on the total network energy consumption can be achieved through the proposed rating system. The proposed rating system is a modified version of the page rank algorithm, which ranks websites in the Internet based on their importance. The proposed rating system attributes ratings to lightpaths, which indicate the relative significance of a lightpath in the virtual topology in terms of energy consumption. The rating can be used during the routing procedure as an energy efficiency indicator, in order to increase the number of lightpaths that are deactivated from the reconfiguration mechanism and increase the utilization per lightpath. The proposed reconfiguration scheme (page rank‐based virtual topology reconfiguration) achieves up to 12% additional energy savings in comparison to an existing virtual topology reconfiguration algorithm at the cost of slightly increased average hop distance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Study of water sorption of egg powders by inverse gas chromatography

Summary Inverse gas chromatography was used to study the water sorption properties of two spray-dried egg powders as a function of water activity, temperature and food composition. A considerably higher water uptake was observed in the defatted egg powder than in the whole-egg powder. Sorption isotherms at different temperatures were determined in order to obtain the thermodynamic parameters of sorption. The thermodynamic parameter values were less negative for the whole-egg powder than for the defatted powder. The reduction in water-binding capacity in the whole-egg powder is explained by the masking of the sorption sites by the non-hygroscopic fat. Both the BET and Freundlich equations were applied to the sorption isotherms, and the BET monolayer as well as the sorptive capacity values were calculated.

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Untersuchung der Wassersorption von Eipulver durch Invers-Gaschromatographie

Zusammenfassung Für die Untersuchung der Wassersorption zweier sprühgetrockneter Eipulver als Funktion der Wasseraktivität, Temperatur und Lebensmittelzusammensetzung wurde die Invers-Gaschromatographie verwendet. Im entfetteten Eipulver wurde eine beträchtlich höhere Wasseraufnahme beobachtet als im Volleipulver. Um die thermodynamischen Parameter zu erhalten, wurden die Sorptionsisothermen bei verschiedenen Temperaturen bestimmt. Die Werte der thermodynamischen Parameter waren für das Volleipulver weniger negativ als für das entfettete Eipulver. Die Verminderung der Wasserbindungskapazität im Volleipulver erklärt sich durch die Belegung der Sorptionsstellen durch das nicht-hygroskopische Fett. Sowohl die BET-Methode¹ als auch die Freundlichsche Gleichung wurden für die Sorptionsisotherme angewandt und die Werte der nach BET monomolekularen Schicht wie auch die Sorptionskapazität wurden berechnet.

     

Non-magnetic hexagonal nanocrystalline ni films grown by radio frequency magnetron sputtering

Nanoscale Ni films in the thickness range 15-500 nm were grown on various substrates, such as amorphous glass, single crystalline silicon and sapphire, and polycrystalline alumina, at a temperature of about 350 K by radio frequency magnetron sputtering. It is demonstrated, via X-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, that there is an Ar-gas pressure window that favors the growth of stable single-phase hexagonal nanocrystalline Ni films regardless of the film thickness and the kind of the substrate. At lower or higher Ar pressures the films grow in the regular face centered cubic phase of Ni. The structural habits are attributed to differences in the kinetic energy of the Ni atoms impinging on the substrates. Superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry measurements reveal that the hexagonal films show zero magnetic response down to liquid Helium temperature. This result is discussed with respect to earlier first principle calculations and to experimental results on Ni nanoparticles.     

Physicochemical characterization of nimodipine–polyethylene glycol solid dispersion systems

This study investigates the solid–solid interactions between nimodipine (NIM) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) of different mean molecular weights (PEG 2000, 4000 and 6000), in solid dispersion systems, applying differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier-Transform infrared spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), hot stage microscopy (HSM) and theoretical modeling by the Flory–Huggins (FH) solution theory. Phase diagrams constructed with the aid of DSC and FH solution theory showed sensitivity on the estimated values of the FH interaction parameter (χ). When χ is considered a constant number (χ?=?α, α?≠?0), formation of a eutectic mixture is predicted in the 70–80% w/w PEG concentration region, while when χ was considered as a function of concentration and temperature (χ?=?f(φ,Τ)), the model predicts the formation of monotectic systems. Construction of more precise phase diagrams by HSM to the aid of Kofler’s “contact preparation” method confirmed the monotectic nature of the examined systems. Studies on NIM’s re-crystallization process in the solid dispersions revealed a strong dependence of the crystallization rate, as well as the resulting crystal form, on the mean molecular weight and concentration of PEG: NIM crystallization rates decrease as PEG’s MW increases, while NIM mod II crystals predominate in dispersions prepared at temperatures above NIM’s liquidus and growth of NIM mod I prevailing in PEG-rich samples.