Microstructures of binary Cr–xNi alloys (0 ≤ Ni ≤ 50 wt.%) in their as-cast state and after high temperature exposure

Metallic materials designed for use at very high temperature must be based on elements with high melting points. In this work, several binary alloys, chosen in the Cr-rich part of the Cr–Ni diagram, were elaborated by foundry and characterised by metallography in the as-cast condition and after exposure at 1200 °C. Many of the obtained alloys are composed of imbricated body-centred cubic chromium phase saturated in Ni and face-centred cubic nickel phase saturated in Cr. These structures may evolve more or less at high temperature. High values of hardness were obtained for some of these alloys, suggesting high strength at elevated temperature. The hardness evolution vs. the Cr content was well represented by a law of mixture of the volume fractions and the hardness of the separated phases. Already intrinsically resistant to oxidation at high temperature, most alloys are also not sensitive to internal nitridation, contrary to pure Cr. Such Cr–Ni alloys may be considered as possible bases for heat-resistant alloys.     

Active optics and modified-Rumsey wide-field telescopes: MINITRUST demonstrators with vase- and tulip-form mirrors

Wide-field astronomy requires the development of larger aperture telescopes. The optical properties of a three-mirror modified-Rumsey design provide significant advantages when compared to other telescope designs: (i) at any wavelength, the design has a flat field and is anastigmatic; (ii) the system is extremely compact, i.e., it is almost four times shorter than a Schmidt. Compared to the equally compact flat-field Ritchey-Chrétien with a doublet-lens corrector, as developed for the Sloan digital sky survey-and which requires the polishing of six optical surfaces-the proposed modified-Rumsey design requires only a two-surface polishing and provides a better imaging quality. All the mirrors are spheroids of the hyperboloid type. Starting from the classical Rumsey design, it is shown that the use of all eight available free parameters allows the simultaneous aspherization of the primary and tertiary mirrors by active optics methods from a single deformable substrate. The continuity conditions between the primary and the tertiary hyperbolizations are achieved by an intermediate narrow ring of constant thickness that is not optically used. After the polishing of a double vase form in a spherical shape, the primary-tertiary hyperbolizations are achieved by in situ stressing. The tulip-form secondary is hyperbolized by stress polishing. Other active optics alternatives are possible for a space telescope. The modified-Rumsey design is of interest for developing large space- and ground-based survey telescopes in UV, visible, or IR ranges, such as currently demonstrated with the construction of identical telescopes MINITRUST-1 and -2, f/5-2 degrees field of view. Double-pass optical tests show diffraction-limited images.     

Synthesis of fiber Bragg grating parameters from experimental reflectivity: a simplex approach and its application to the determination of temperature-dependent properties

A simple, accurate, and fast method to synthesize the physical parameters of a fiber Bragg grating numerically from its reflectivity is proposed and demonstrated. Our program uses the transfer matrix method and is based on a Nelder-Mead simplex optimization algorithm. It can be applied to both uniform and nonuniform (apodized and chirped) fiber Bragg gratings. The method is then used to synthesize a uniform Bragg grating from its reflectivity taken at different temperatures. It gives a good estimate of the thermal expansion coefficient and the thermo-optic coefficient of the fiber.     

Time-invariant and time-varying multirate filter banks : application to image coding

This paper reviews various concepts and solutions of time-invariant and time-varying multirate filter banks. It discusses their performance for image and video coding at low bit rates, and their applicability in the mpeg-4 framework. Time-invariant multirate filter banks, and methods of design with different criteria appropriate for signal compression are first presented. Several procedures of quantization, namely scalar and lattice vector quantization, with bit allocation optimized in the rate-distortion sense, are used for the encoding of the subband signals. A technique of rate-constrained lattice vector quantization (rc-lvq), combined with a three components entropy coding, allow, together with distortion psychovi-sual weighting mechanisms to obtain significant visual improvements versus scalar quantization or the zerotree technique. However, time-invariant multirate filter banks, although efficient in terms of compression, are not well suited for content-based functionalities. Content-based features may require the ability to manipulate and thus encode a given region in the scene independently of the neighbouring regions, hence the use of transformations that can be adapted to arbitrary size bounded supports. Also, to increase the compression efficiency, one may want to adapt the transformation to the region characteristics, and thus use transform switching mechanisms, with soft or hard transitions. Three main classes of transformations can address these problems: shape-adaptive block transforms, transforms relying on signal extensions and transforms relying on time-varying multirate filter banks. These various solutions, with their methods of design, are reviewed. Emphasis is put on an extension of the SDF (symmetric delay factorization) technique which opens new perspectives in the design of time-bounded and time-varying filter banks. A region-adapted rate-distortion quantization algorithm has been used in the evaluation of the transformations compression efficiency. The coding results illustrate the interest of these techniques for compression but also for features such as quality scalability applied to selected regions of the image.     

Diels–Alder Reversible Thermoset 3D Printing: Isotropic Thermoset Polymers via Fused Filament Fabrication

This study presents a new 3D printing process, the Diels–Alder reversible thermoset (DART) process, and a first generation of printable DART resins, which exhibit thermoset properties at use temperatures, ultralow melt viscosity at print temperatures, smooth part surface finish, and as‐printed isotropic mechanical properties. This study utilizes dynamic covalent chemistry based on reversible furan‐maleimide Diels–Alder linkages in the polymers, which can be decrosslinked and melt‐processed during printing between 90 and 150 °C, and recrosslinked at lower temperatures to their entropically favored state. This study compares the first generation of DART materials to commonly 3D printed high‐toughness thermoplastics. Parts printed from typical fused filament fabrication compatible materials exhibit anisotropy of more than 50% and sometimes upward of 98% in toughness when deformed along the build direction, while the first generation of DART materials exhibit less than 4% toughness reduction when deformed along the build direction. At room temperature, the toughest DART materials exhibit baseline toughness of 18.59 ± 0.91 and 18.36 ± 0.57 MJ m^?3 perpendicular and parallel to the build direction, respectively. DART printing will enable chemists, polymer engineers, materials scientists, and industrial designers to translate new robust materials possessing targeted thermomechanical properties, multiaxial toughness, smooth surface finish, and low anisotropy.     

A Unified Artificial Neural Network Architecture for Active Power Filters

In this paper, an efficient and reliable neural active power filter (APF) to estimate and compensate for harmonic distortions from an AC line is proposed. The proposed filter is completely based on Adaline neural networks which are organized in different independent blocks. We introduce a neural method based on Adalines for the online extraction of the voltage components to recover a balanced and equilibrated voltage system, and three different methods for harmonic filtering. These three methods efficiently separate the fundamental harmonic from the distortion harmonics of the measured currents. According to either the Instantaneous Power Theory or to the Fourier series analysis of the currents, each of these methods are based on a specific decomposition. The original decomposition of the currents or of the powers then allows defining the architecture and the inputs of Adaline neural networks. Different learning schemes are then used to control the inverter to inject elaborated reference currents in the power system. Results obtained by simulation and their real-time validation in experiments are presented to compare the compensation methods. By their learning capabilities, artificial neural networks are able to take into account time-varying parameters, and thus appreciably improve the performance of traditional compensating methods. The effectiveness of the algorithms is demonstrated in their application to harmonics compensation in power systems     

Hardware Acceleration of HMMER on FPGAs

We propose a new parallelization scheme for the hmmsearch function of the HMMER software, in order to target FPGA technology. hmmsearch is a very compute intensive software for biological sequence alignment, based on profile hidden Markov models. We derive a flexible, generic, scalable hardware parallel architecture which can accelerate the core of hmmsearch by nearly two orders of magnitude, without modifying the original algorithm of this software. Our derivation is based on the expression of the algorithm as a set of recurrence equations, and we show in a systematic way how a very efficient parallel version of the algorithm can be found by combining scheduling, projection, partitioning, pipelining and precision analysis. We present the performance of the implementation of this parallel algorithm on a FPGA platform.     

Characterization of carbon surface chemistry by combined temperature programmed desorption with in situ X-ray photoelectron spectrometry and temperature programmed desorption with mass spectrometry analysis

The analysis of the surface chemistry of carbon materials is of prime importance in numerous applications, but it is still a challenge to identify and quantify the surface functional groups which are present on a given carbon. Temperature programmed desorption with mass spectrometry analysis (TPD-MS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy with an in situ heating device (TPD-XPS) were combined in order to improve the characterization of carbon surface chemistry. TPD-MS analysis allowed the quantitative analysis of the released gases as a function of temperature, while the use of a TPD device inside the XPS setup enabled the determination of the functional groups that remain on the surface at the same temperatures. TPD-MS results were then used to add constraints on the deconvolution of the O1s envelope of the XPS spectra. Furthermore, a better knowledge of the evolution of oxygen functional groups with temperature during a thermal treatment could be obtained. Hence, we show here that the combination of these two methods allows to increase the reliability of the analysis of the surface chemistry of carbon materials.