Comparison of the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of As-Cast A356/SiC MMC Processed by ARB and CAR Methods

Accumulative roll bonding (ARB) and continual annealing and roll-bonding (CAR) processes were used in this study for improving the microstructure and mechanical properties of the A356/10?vol.% SiC metal matrix composite (MMC) produced by semi-solid metal processing (SSM). The results showed that using the ARB and CAR processes led to the following points: (a) the uniformity of the silicon and silicon carbide in the aluminum matrix improved, (b) the Si particles became finer and more spheroidal in appearance, (c) the porosity disappeared, (d) the bonding quality between the reinforcement and the matrix improved, (e) the particle-free zone disappeared, and therefore (f) the tensile strength (TS), elongation, and formability index of the MMC samples improved. However, it was found that the CAR process is a better method for improvement of microstructure and mechanical properties of as-cast MMC compared to ARB process.     

Ultra-low-power carbon nanotube FET-based quaternary logic gates

This paper presents low-power carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET)-based quaternary logic circuits. The proposed quaternary circuits are designed based on the CNTFET unique properties, such as the same carrier mobility for N- and P-type devices and also providing desirable threshold voltages by adopting proper diameters for the nanotubes. In addition, no paths exist between supply and ground rails in the steady states of the proposed designs, which eliminates the ON state static current and also the stacking technique is utilised in order to significantly reduce the leakage currents. The results of the simulations, conducted using Synopsys HSPICE with the standard 32 nm CNTFET technology, confirm the significantly lower power consumption, higher energy efficiency and lower sensitivity to process variation of the proposed designs compared to the state-of-the-art quaternary logic circuits. The proposed quaternary logic circuits have on average 92, 99 and 91% less total power, static power and PDP, respectively, compared with the most low-power and energy-efficient CNTFET-based quaternary logic circuits, recently presented in the literature.     

Effect of Adventitious Carbon on Pit Formation of Monolayer MoS2

Forming pits on molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) monolayers is desirable for (opto)electrical, catalytic, and biological applications. Thermal oxidation is a potentially scalable method to generate pits on monolayer MoS₂, and pits are assumed to preferentially form around undercoordinated sites, such as sulfur vacancies. However, studies on thermal oxidation of MoS₂ monolayers have not considered the effect of adventitious carbon (C) that is ubiquitous and interacts with oxygen at elevated temperatures. Herein, the effect of adventitious C on the pit formation on MoS₂ monolayers during thermal oxidation is studied. The in situ environmental transmission electron microscopy measurements herein show that pit formation is preferentially initiated at the interface between adventitious C nanoparticles and MoS₂, rather than only sulfur vacancies. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the C/MoS₂ interface favors the sequential adsorption of oxygen atoms with facile kinetics. These results illustrate the important role of adventitious C on pit formation on monolayer MoS₂.     

Nanostructured AA5005/Al2O3 composite manufactured by anodising and accumulative roll bonding

In this study, nanostructured AA5005/6 vol.-% Al₂O₃ composite manufactured by anodising and accumulative roll bonding (ARB) processes was investigated. The microstructure of the AA5005/Al₂O₃ composite after ninth ARB cycle exhibited a good distribution of alumina reinforcement particles in the AA5005 matrix. It was found that with increasing the number of cycles, the tensile strength of the monolithic and composite samples increased, but their ductility decreased at the first ARB cycle and then increased. The mean grain size of the composite sample after the ninth cycle was 88?nm. The tensile strength of the composite was 3.3 times higher than the initial AA5005 sheet. Observations revealed that the failure mode in the AA5005/Al₂O₃ composite was the shear ductile fracture.     

Simulation of carbon dioxide absorption process by aqueous monoethanolamine in a microchannel in annular flow pattern

The process of carbon dioxide absorption by aqueous monoethanolamine solvent was simulated in a microchannel in an annular flow pattern. This simulation has been carried out as a multiphase and three-dimensional process. The effects of different operating parameters such as temperature, superficial gas and liquid velocities, aspect ratio, and concentrations of solvent and solute have been investigated on the mass transfer flux and carbon dioxide conversion. The results of simulating mass transfer flux based on the calculated mass transfer coefficient were well consistent with the experimental data. The result of this study indicated that the mass transfer flux shall increase with the superficial gas and liquid velocities, temperature, concentration of solvent, and increment in the aspect ratio. It also revealed that increasing the concentration of solute would lead to an increase in the mass transfer flux and a decrease in the conversion.     

Comparison of Microparticles and Nanoparticles Effects on the Bonding of Roll Bonded IF Steel

In the present work, the effect of silicon carbide (SiC) particle size on the characteristics of cold roll bonded interstitial free (IF) steel strips, such as bond strength and peeled surface were carried out and compared to those of IF steel strip without particles. The bond strength was evaluated by the peeling test and scanning electron microscopy. It was found that with increasing thickness reduction, the bond strength of IF steel strips improved. The results also indicated that the presence of SiC particles (both micro and nano) decreased the bond strength of IF steel strips. Also, with increasing the particle size, the bond strength improved. It was found that for sample with microparticles compared to sample with nanoparticles, beyond the 80 % thickness reduction, a sudden increase in the average peel strength was observed. Finally, the results indicated that in the presence of nanoparticles between strips there were two types of unbonded area and the bond strength of these two areas was quite similar to each other.     

Resource management and task partitioning and scheduling on a run-time reconfigurable embedded system

There are many design challenges in the hardware-software co-design approach for performance improvement of data-intensive streaming applications with a general-purpose microprocessor and a hardware accelerator. These design challenges are mainly to prevent hardware area fragmentation to increase resource utilization, to reduce hardware reconfiguration cost and to partition and schedule the tasks between the microprocessor and the hardware accelerator efficiently for performance improvement and power savings of the applications.In this paper a modular and block based hardware configuration architecture named memory-aware run-time reconfigurable embedded system (MARTRES) is proposed for efficient resource management and performance improvement of streaming applications. Subsequently we design a task placement algorithm named hierarchical best fit ascending (HBFA) algorithm to prove that MARTRES configuration architecture is very efficient in increased resource utilization and flexible in task mapping and power savings. The time complexity of HBFA algorithm is reduced to O(n) compared to traditional Best Fit (BF) algorithm’s time complexity of O(n²), when the quality of the placement solution by HBFA is better than that of BF algorithm. Finally we design an efficient task partitioning and scheduling algorithm named balanced partitioned and placement-aware partitioning and scheduling algorithm (BPASA). In BPASA we exploit the temporal parallelism in streaming applications to reduce reconfiguration cost of the hardware, while keeping in mind the required throughput of the output data. We balance the exploitation of spatial parallelism and temporal parallelism in streaming applications by considering the reconfiguration cost vs. the data transfer cost. The scheduler refers to the HBFA placement algorithm to check whether contiguous area on FPGA is available before scheduling the task for HW or for SW.     

A hybrid S-N formulation for fatigue life modeling of composite materials and structures

A semi-empirical S-N formulation for the modeling of the constant amplitude fatigue behavior of composite materials and structures is introduced in this paper. The new S-N formulation is based on the commonly used exponential and power law fatigue models. It is a hybrid formulation combining the two existing models in order to improve their modeling accuracy in the low and high cycle fatigue regions. This formulation was applied to a number of fatigue databases for different composite materials and structural elements in order to simulate their fatigue behavior. The modeling accuracy of the hybrid model was compared to the accuracy of commonly used S-N models for composite materials. As proved, the hybrid model performs better in the majority of the examined cases and is able to overcome the disadvantages of previously developed models without introducing any complexity in the fitting procedure.     

Spectrophotometric and chemometric studies on the simultaneous determination of two benzodiazepines in human plasma

A numerical simple, accurate and precise method based on spectrophotometric data coupled with multivariate calibration methods, PLS and MLR, combined with GA was developed for the simultaneous determination of two benzodiazepines, Clobazam and Flurazepam. A data set of absorption spectra obtained from a calibration set of mixtures containing the compounds was used to build GA-PLS and GA-MLR models. The models were tested using a dataset constructed from the compound synthetic solutions. The better model was also applied to plasma samples. The proposed method requires no preliminary separation steps and can be used for these drugs analysis in quality control laboratories.     

The role of chlorine in methane coupling perovskite catalysts

ABO₃ perovskite ( A = Ca, Sr, Ba; B = Ti, Zr) has been prepared by a sol-gel method from oxygenated (I) or chlorinated (II) precursors. The difference in C₂-hydrocarbon selectivity depending on the preparation mode is ascribed to the presence of chlorine. To understand the effect of chlorine, the various catalysts have been characterized by XRD, BET, O₂ temperature programmed desorption. Addition of organic chlorinated compounds as probe molecules have been studied and compared on catalysts I and II.