FATIGUE BEHAVIOUR OF AUSTENITIC Cr-Mn-N STEELS

Abstract— Solid solution hardening and strain hardening are the dominating strengthening mechanisms to achieve a high yield stress and ultimate tensile strength in Cr-Mn-N steels for drill collars. The fatigue limit can be improved more effectively by solid solution hardening than by strain hardening, but the attainable hardness due to soluble elements is restricted by other metallurgical demands. Strain hardening significantly increases the strength and the fatigue limit is improved too, but to a lesser extent. The reason for this behaviour is the introduction of internal stresses of the I, II and III kind by forging the drill collars. This results in macroscopic stresses which are varying over the cross section and in stresses of a microscopical scale which lead to an early loss of linearity in the elastic line of the stress strain curve and to the well known Bauschinger effect. Cyclic softening and hardening is accompanied by a rearrangement of the dislocation structure as revealed by transmission electron microscopy. The results indicate that a multiaxial and homogeneous cold working to produce a stable dislocation structure and to avoid large directional internal stresses is extremely important to achieve high fatigue strengths. Crack growth and crack closure measurements were performed for determination of the effective cyclic threshold stress intensity range for evaluation of the influence of the grain size on the fatigue limit.     

High-temperature creep and structure investigation of nearly stoichiometric Fe3Si

X-ray diffraction measurements were carried out on powdered single crystals of nearly stoichiometric Fe₃Si. The experimental data obtained in the temperature range from room temperature up to 750‡ C in terms of long-range order, thermal expansion, phase transition and Debye temperature (together with values of the Curie temperature) support the existence of two modifications of the DO₃ structure for Fe-26 at% Si alloys and a phase transition in the DO₃ structure field at 595‡ C. The high-temperature modification has a smaller thermal expansion coefficient, a higher Curie temperature and a higher Debye temperature.     

High-temperature creep and structure investigation of nearly stoichiometric Fe3Si

Single crystals of nearly stoichiometric Fe₃Si were creep-deformed at temperatureT = 450 to 850° C and applied stress=40 to 250 MPa. While the temperature dependence of the steady-state creep rate of crystals with less than 25 at% Si can be described by an exponential function exp (–H _exp/kT), the Fe-26 at% Si samples show an exponential dependence only below 500° C and above 600° C. At intermediate temperatures the dependence is weak. It is suggested that in this intermediate range two phases exist. The experimental results are consistent with the assumption that the phase boundaries do not hinder dislocation movement, and that the disocation velocity in the two phases is different.     

A contribution to the real-time simulation of coupled finite element models of machine tools – A numerical comparison

In this paper the real-time simulation of finite element (FE) models of machine tools on a multi-processor architecture is presented. The simulation model is based on several FE component models that are connected by non-linear couplings. These couplings allow relative motions of the components in a wide range. The coupled linear FE models are decomposed at the non-linear coupling nodes and each component is solved locally. The linear structure of the components can be used for efficient simulation methods and the components can be distributed to several processors for a parallel computation. Methods that differ in numerical accuracy and stability, computational effort and real-time capacity will be presented. By means of a complex example, it will be illustrated that a parallel, stable computation can be realized time-deterministically.     

Passivity based control of a distributed PEM fuel cell model

This work considers the controlled load change of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Due to the intrinsic nonlinearities of fuel cells, load changes are quite challenging. In the case of a low temperature PEM fuel cell, there is the possibility of undesired liquid water formation. Most available control concepts are heuristic linear controller structures based on a perfectly mixed fuel cell model. In this work a nonlinear controller for one-dimensional spatially distributed model of a PEM fuel cell is presented. The fuel cell model is derived from first principles. The concept of passivity is used to design the controller. A suitable control Lyapunov function is chosen and passivity of the fuel cell is shown. A state-feedback law is derived that can guarantee stability of the closed-loop system over a wide range of operation conditions. In order to make the feedback law applicable to fuel cells with limited measurement information an observer is designed. In a final step the state-feedback law and the observer are combined to an output-feedback controller.     

Experimental and calculation results of the integral reflood test QUENCH-14 with M5® cladding tubes

The QUENCH-14 experiment investigated the effect of M5® cladding material on bundle oxidation and core reflood, in comparison with tests QUENCH-06 (ISP-45) that used standard Zircaloy-4 and QUENCH-12 that used VVER E110-claddings. The PWR bundle configuration of QUENCH-14 with a single unheated rod, 20 heated rods, and four corner rods was otherwise identical to QUENCH-06. The test was conducted in principle with the same protocol as QUENCH-06, so that the effects of the change of cladding material could be observed more easily. Pre-test calculations were performed by the Paul Scherrer Institut (Switzerland) using the SCDAPSIM, SCDAP/RELAP5 and MELCOR codes. Follow-on post-test analyses were performed using SCDAP/RELAP5 and MELCOR as part of an ongoing programme of model validation and code assessment. Alternative oxidation correlations were used to examine the possible influence of the M5® cladding material on hydrogen generation, in comparison with Zircaloy-4.     

Harvesting of peripheral blood progenitor cells with different programmes of discontinuous flow systems

PURPOSE: To investigate whether a rapid and practical determination of the temporal frequency characteristic (TFC) of the visual system can be obtained by using the visually evoked potentials (VEPs) elicited by pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) stimulation. METHODS: VEPs were recorded from eight volunteers. For the conventional steady state VEPs (S-VEP), the eye was stimulated with five stimulus frequencies. To acquire the PRBS-VEPs, the eye was stimulated with a PRBS stimulus for 40 seconds. The TFC for the S-VEP was calculated from the root mean squared amplitude for each frequency using Fourier transform. For the PRBS stimulus, a cross-correlation function between PRBS (x[t]) and PRBS-VEP (y[t]) was calculated to obtain the TFC. RESULTS: The TFCs obtained by the PRBS and S-VEP methods were highly correlated (P < 0.05), and the TFC curves resembled those in the literature. Most important, the data necessary to determine the TFCs using the PRBS stimulus could be obtained in 4 minutes, whereas that for the S-VEP required 60 minutes for the two eyes. CONCLUSIONS: The high correlation between the TFCs obtained by the two methods indicated that the PRBS technique gives a good measure of the TFC of the human visual system. The significantly shorter time required for this method demonstrated that it is a practical method for determining the linear (and nonlinear) property of the visual system and that it may be useful in clinical applications.     

Constraints als Schlüssel zu industriellen Konfigurator-Lösungen

Up-to-date products and systems in industry want to offer many features at low production cost. Using a toolbox of components, individual systems with many variants are configured. Configurators using knowledge-bases with constraints fulfil those requirements. This has been shown with large industry applications.     

Testing of controllers for thermal solar systems

One standardised way to determine the performance of thermal solar systems is based on component testing and system simulation. The approach is to test the solar collector, the store, the controller and other selected components separately and to carry out system simulations using the determined parameters. Due to increasingly complex control strategies, particularly implemented within so-called multi-function controllers for solar combisystems, the available test method for controllers – for the time being defined in ENV 12977-2, Annex B – has to be extended. In order to substitute temperature sensors by variable resistors and to document the response of a tested controller, a computer based test facility featuring an input/output-emulator between the controller and a PC has been developed. The emulator generates varying resistance values as input signals for the controller and records the status of the different outputs as its response. Both, manual adjustment and programmed temperature profiles provided by the PC are possible. All transmitted inputs as well as the response of the controller are stored in a data file. Experience gained from testing controllers used in thermal solar systems for combined hot water preparation and space heating, commonly called combisystems shows that alleged advanced control algorithms or fancy features do not inevitably result in an improvement of system performance or increased reliability. The extended test method and the set-up of the test facility described in this paper enable detailed investigations of nearly all kinds of controllers. Particularly with respect to multi-function controller testing, the introduced test method will be one basis for the upcoming standard prCEN/TS 12977-5, replacing ENV 12977-2, Annex B.