Pitting transients analysis of stainless steels at the open circuit potential

Metastable pitting of stainless steels in chloride containing oxidising electrolytes is investigated at rest potential using a new experimental technique allowing to record simultaneously the potential and corrosion current variations. Different industrial surface conditions (BA and 2B) are tested for both ferritic (FeCr type) and austenitic (FeCrNi type) stainless steels. It was shown that the number of pitting events decreases with the exposure time and that BA condition provides better resistance to pitting than 2B. As far as pitting mechanisms are concerned, the potential recovery after pitting does not reflect the pit repassivation but rather refers to the discharge of the surface capacity. Analysing the pitting transients provides quantitative information on the cathodic reaction through the passive film (transfer resistance and surface capacitance). Differences in pitting transient shapes are discussed as well.     

Genericity in Java: persistent and database systems implications

Lack of parametric polymorphism has been a major obstacle for making Java a viable database programming language. Regrettably, a recently accepted solution for genericity in Java 5.0 has far-reaching negative implications for persistent and database systems because of static and dynamic type violations. Severe implications occur in typical database transactions when processing a variety of database collections. Well-known approaches to persistence in Java, including Java’s own persistence mechanism, do not perform correctly due to incorrect dynamic type information that gets promoted to persistence along with objects. Dynamic checking of types of objects fetched from the persistent store may now lead to unexpected type violations. Further problems occur in reflective transactions as Java Core Reflection now allows dynamic type violations without detecting them or throwing standard exceptions. All of this shows that extending Java with parametric polymorphism has not made Java a more viable database programming language. Both legacy systems, such as those based on the Java binding of the ODMG or JDO, and future Java-related persistent and database technologies will be affected. The source of these problems is in an implementation idiom called type erasure. This paper provides formal proofs of the above implications of type erasure along with specific samples of code in Java 5.0 illustrating these violations. The limitations of the virtual platform and extensions required for persistent systems to solve this problem are also elaborated.     

The structure and mechanical and tribological properties of TiBCN nanocomposite coatings

TiBCN nanocomposite coatings were deposited in a closed field unbalanced magnetron sputtering system using pulsed magnetron sputtering of a TiBC compound target with various Ar/N₂ mixtures. TiBCN coatings were characterized using X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, nanoindentation, Rockwell C indentation and ball-on-disk wear tests. The coatings with a nitrogen content of less than 8 at.% exhibited superhardness values in the range of 44–49 GPa, but also showed poor adhesion and low wear resistance. Improvements in the coating adhesion, H/E ratio and wear resistance were achieved together with a decrease in the coating hardness to 35–45 GPa as the N content in the coatings was increased from 8 to 15 at.%. The microstructure of the coatings changed from a nano-columnar to a nanocomposite structure in which 5–8 nm nanocrystalline Ti(B,C) and Ti(N,C) compounds were embedded in an amorphous matrix consisting of BN, free carbon and CN phases. With a further increase in the N content in the coatings to levels greater than 20 at.%, the inter-particle spacing of the nanocrystalline compounds increased significantly due to the formation of a large amount of the amorphous BN phase, which also led to low hardness and poor wear resistance of the TiBCN coatings.     

Effect of calcination/rehydration treatments on the environment of V in β zeolite

A dealuminated zeolite β has been contacted with solutions of ammonium metavanadate to incorporate vanadium as tetrahedral V species which are not removed under treatment with aqueous solution of ammonium acetate. The effects of calcination and rehydration on the environment of the V species have been studied by diffuse reflectance UV-visible and ⁵¹V NMR. The reducibility of the V species has been followed by TPR and ESR. The dehydroxylation/rehydroxylation process occurring in the β framework upon dehydration/rehydration has been monitored by ²⁹Si MAS NMR and FT-IR spectroscopy. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Moisture effect on selected polymer‐based membranes used for waterproofing building basements

As part of a comprehensive study to develop national guidelines for waterproofing building basements in Kuwait, physical properties of locally available waterproofing materials were examined and the performance of selected polymer‐based membranes under continuous exposure to moisture, as in actual service conditions, were evaluated. Five categories of waterproofing materials, consisting of bitumen membranes, plastic membranes, rubber membranes, fluid‐applied materials, and cementitous materials were tested in accordance with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard test methods. Sulphate and chloride concentrations in soil and groundwater in Kuwait are generally high. The rise in groundwater level in Kuwait is a predominant cause of water leakage into building basements in residential areas. The effect of moisture on the performance of waterproofing materials was evaluated under simulated conditions of continuous exposure to groundwater. The test results indicated that under continuous exposure to salty water, the moisture rather than the salts seems to have a detrimental effect on the physical properties of some of the waterproofing materials. The results also indicated that oxidized bitumen membranes are not suitable for waterproofing building basements. The performance of the two polymer modified bituminous membranes evaluated in the study indicates that waterproofing materials belonging to the same category may have significant differences in specific properties. POLYM. COMPOS., 26:276–286, 2005. © 2005 Society of Plastics Engineers     

The use of multilayer neural networks in material synthesis

This paper demonstrates the incorporation of a multilayer neural network in semiconductor thin film deposition processes. As a first step toward neural network-based process control, we present results from neural network pattern classification and beam analysis of reflection high energy electron diffraction RHEED images of GaAs/AlGaAs crystal surfaces during molecular beam epitaxy growth. For beam analysis, we used the neural network to detect and measure the intensity of the RHEED beam spots during the growth process and, through Fourier transformation, determined the thin film deposition rate. The neural network RHEED pattern classification and intensity analysis capability allows, powerful in situ real time monitoring of epitaxial thin film deposition processes. Our results show that a three layer network with sixteen hidden neurons and three output neurons had the highest correct classification rate with a success rate of 100% during testing and training on 13 examples     

A two-state electronic antigen and an antibody selected to discriminate between these states

Inspired by biology where pathways are triggered and suppressed by specific binding of two molecules, we realize a functional interface between electronics and biology by replacing one of the pair molecules with a two-state "electronic antigen" device comprising a hydroquinone monolayer assembled on gold, and choosing for the pair molecule an antibody that discriminates between the two electrically selected redox states of the monolayer. Application of an oxidative +0.6 V pulse to the antigen switches it to its benzoquinone state where antibodies bind the layer. A subsequent -0.6 V pulse reduces the monolayer back to the unbinding hydroquinone state, releases the specifically bound antibody molecules, and prevents further binding.     

The composite fuzzy reliability index of power systems

This paper describes a method for fuzzy calculation of power system reliability. It introduces a composite fuzzy security and fuzzy adequacy indices encompassing the power system segments of generation, transmission, and the segment of load nodes. The fuzzy security index is determined by the security membership grades of the power system components which are found to be the worst in their segments. The fuzzy adequacy index is based on the adequacy indices of generation, transmission, and transmission integration segments. The composite fuzzy reliability index enables the system operator to have a continuous insight into the distance between the power system's actual state and the closest unreliable state by tracking the system's components with the lowest security and adequacy membership grades of the respective segments. The algorithm has been tested on the models of the IEEE Three Area RTS-96 and Bosnia-Herzegovina power systems.     

A quantized water cycle optimization algorithm for antenna array synthesis by using digital phase shifters

In this article, a quantized water cycle algorithm (QWCA) is used for the antenna array pattern synthesis with low side‐lobe levels (SLLs) and nulls at desired directions by using four‐bit digital phase shifters. In addition to the standard features as a metaheuristic algorithm, QWCA has an internal quantization mechanism and a precalculated array factor method. The latter provides an accelerated procedure to QWCA under favour of the digitized values that can be stored in a three‐dimensional array. This acceleration is based on the reality that the accessing data in the memory need less time than the usage of the mathematical functions throughout the optimization process. The internal quantization mechanism of QWCA is utilized to achieve digital values matching to the discrete values of the phase shifter instead of the simple rounding up/down routines after optimization. The numerical results showed that QWCA can obtain very good SLLs and null depth levels (NDLs) on the synthesized pattern. Moreover, the results are achieved in remarkably short optimization times. SLL and NDL values obtained by QWCA are also compared with the available literature values. The comparisons reveal that QWCA is able to produce better results than the other compared alternatives. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:21–29, 2015.     

Fuzzy predictive PI control for processes with large time delays

This paper presents the design, tuning and performance analysis of a new predictive fuzzy controller structure for higher order plants with large time delays. The designed controller consists of a fuzzy proportional-integral (PI) part and a fuzzy predictor. The fuzzy predictive PI controller combines the advantages of fuzzy control while maintaining the simplicity and robustness of a conventional PI controller. The dynamics of the prediction term are adaptive to the system's time delay. The prediction term has two parts: a fuzzy predictor that uses the system time delay as an input for calculating the prediction horizon and an exponential term that uses the prediction horizon as its positive power. The prediction term also introduces phase lead into the system which compensates for the phase lag due to the time delay in the plant, thereby stabilizing the closed-loop configuration. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with the responses of the conventional predictive PI controller, showing many advantages of the new design over its conventional counterpart.