Postcyclic Recompression, Stiffness, and Consolidated Cyclic Strength of Silt

Low plasticity silts are liquefiable and the dissipation of pore pressures after an earthquake will be accompanied by densification and compression of the soil skeleton. Anisotropic rather than isotropic stress distributions are commonly found to exist in slopes or silty fills placed under K0 conditions and this can be enhanced further by the weight of overlying structures. Compression after an earthquake generally increases soil resistance but it can still be liquefied by aftershocks. The postcyclic recompression of silt, and postdrainage monotonic and cyclic strength and stiffness have therefore been investigated with respect to the effect of initial anisotropic consolidation. The compressibilities during postcyclic recompression were similar to those for isotropic consolidation. Samples with a greater initial anisotropy had less volumetric strain but larger axial strains during postcyclic drainage. Under stress reversal conditions failure occurred as a result of the development of double amplitude cyclic strains, whereas under nonreversal conditions compressive axial plastic strain was accumulated. Postdrainage second loading cyclic strength increased with increasing anisotropy. For isotropically consolidated samples failure under reversal cyclic loading resulted in a weaker soil structure even after postcyclic reconsolidation.     

On the k-tuple domination of de Bruijn and Kautz digraphs

In a digraph G, a vertex u is said to dominate itself and vertices v such that (u,v) is an arc of G. For a positive integer k, a k-tuple dominating set D of a digraph is a subset of vertices such that every vertex is dominated by at least k vertices in D. The k-tuple domination number of a given digraph is the minimum cardinality of a k-tuple dominating set of the digraph. In this letter, we give the exact values of the k-tuple domination number of de Bruijn and Kautz digraphs.     

Hamiltonian laceability of bubble-sort graphs with edge faults

It is known that the n-dimensional bubble-sort graph B_n is bipartite, (n − 1)-regular, and has n! vertices. We first show that, for any vertex v, B_n − v has a hamiltonian path between any two vertices in the same partite set without v. Let F be a subset of edges of B_n. We next show that B_n − F has a hamiltonian path between any two vertices of different partite sets if ∣F∣ is at most n − 3. Then we also prove that B_n − F has a path of length n! − 2 between any pair of vertices in the same partite set.     

Methane fermentation of a mixture of seaweed and milk at a pilot-scale plant

In this study, a pilot-scale plant was built to examine the practicality of producing biogas from seaweeds, widely available in Japan. Laminaria sp. and Ulva sp. seaweeds were mixed with other organic waste (milk) and used as fermentation materials. Though quantities and ratios of the materials were varied, the ratio of generated methane to input chemical oxygen demand (COD) was largely stable (0.2–0.3 m³ methane/kg COD) and the organic acid concentration in the methane fermentation solution was low (< 1200 ppm) during prolonged operation. These findings indicate that stable methane fermentation was achieved and that mixing with other organic material was effective in suppressing fluctuations in material amounts caused by the variable supply of seaweeds. Our results demonstrate the practical feasibility of biogas generation using seaweeds.     

Recovery of Platinum Group Metals from Spent Catalysts Using Iron Chloride Vapor Treatment

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B - The recovery of platinum group metals (PGMs) from spent automobile catalysts is a difficult process because of their relatively low contents in the...     

In-situ high temperature X-ray diffraction study of Ni/Al2O3 interface reactions

In-situ experiments on the Ni/Al₂O₃ interface reaction were carried out with a high temperature X-ray diffractometer capable of measuring the X-ray diffraction pattern in 1–2 s using an imaging plate. The kinetic formation processes of the interface reaction layer were measured by short-period exposure experiments with a high temperature X-ray diffractometer. NiAl₂O₄ was formed at the Ni/Al₂O₃ interface from 1468 K to 1673 K in air. The formation of NiAl₂O₄ obeyed the parabolic rate law. The value of the activation energy suggests that the diffusion of Al through NiAl₂O₄ controls the rate of formation. The results of thermal expansion coefficient measurements suggest that when a sample is cooled to room temperature, the magnitude of the stress on the Al₂O₃ owing to NiAl₂O₄ is smaller than that caused by NiO.     

Analysis and design of impulse signal generator based on current-mode excitation and transmission line resonator

Hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) is a neuromorphic algorithm that emulates sparsity, hierarchy and modularity resembling the working principles of neocortex. Feature encoding is an important step to create sparse binary patterns. This sparsity is introduced by the binary weights and random weight assignment in the initialization stage of the HTM. We propose the alternative deterministic method for the HTM initialization stage, which connects the HTM weights to the input data and preserves natural sparsity of the input information. Further, we introduce the hardware implementation of the deterministic approach and compare it to the traditional HTM and existing hardware implementation. We test the proposed approach on the face recognition problem and show that it outperforms the conventional HTM approach.     

Preparation of high-performance carbon nanotube/polyamide composite materials by elastic high-shear kneading and improvement of properties by induction heating treatment

Polyamide 66 (PA66) nanocomposites were prepared by compounding carbon nanotubes (CNTs) using an elastic high-shear kneading method, and the mechanism to understand their excellent properties was verified. In addition, we developed a microwave heat treatment that increases toughness quickly and at low cost. By combining 6.6 vol% or more of CNTs, PA66 with improved mechanical properties, such as higher elastic modulus and yield strength, was achieved, making it possible to obtain a composite having excellent high-temperature characteristics that does not melt even at a temperature above the melting point. These effects appeared to be due to defibration of CNT aggregates and isolation and dispersion in PA66. A lamellar crystal of PA66 grows around the CNT, forming an interphase. The higher performance appeared to be attributable to a continuous three-dimensional structure in which CNTs are bound via the interphase, and the improvement of the elastic modulus of the composite material was tentatively ascribed to a Halpin-Tsai model in which the size of the unit cell of the three-dimensional structure is introduced. The resulting CNT/PA66 composite materials are superior not only in performance but also in price.     

Space charges remaining in polymers after electron beam irradiation and the role of conductivity in their decay profiles

Five typical insulating polymers and a carbon‐loaded polyethylene were irradiated with 200‐keV electrons, and the space charge distributions remaining in the polymers were measured. When the polymer film is short‐circuited after irradiation, the amount of space charge gradually decreases monotonically. By analyzing such decay profiles, it becomes clear that the decay of the charges remaining after the irradiation is governed by the conductivity of the polymer. © 2015 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.