Role of extruded texture on fatigue crack growth in a high strength aluminum alloy thick-walled cylinder

In present study, as a basic step for modeling the fatigue behavior of an extruded Al alloy cylinder, the fatigue crack growth data of the alloy was collected in two orientations. Microstructural analysis revealed that the material had recrystallized grains and clusters of constituent particles aligned in the direction of extrusion. Fatigue life of the samples revealed a shorter fatigue life representing a higher fatigue crack growth rate in transverse direction. The Paris constants C and m were found to be 4 × 10⁻¹¹ and 3.4 for the transverse orientation. The same constants were found to be 2 × 10⁻¹⁰ and 2.6 for the longitudinal direction. Post fracture analysis revealed that the topographical appearance of the fractured surfaces in two orientations was different. The mechanism of crack growth was the formation of striations. The present study revealed that the texture of the constituent particles created during extrusion process has a pronounced effect on the crack growth rate in two orientations. This paper was recommended for publication in revised form by Associate Editor Chongdu Cho Dr. M. A. Malik is a Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He graduated from Georgia Tech, USA with MS and PhD degrees in nuclear engineering. He has considerable working experience in nuclear research industry. He specializes in impurity transport and modeling and simulation techniques. His current research interests include structural analysis, reliability of materials and modeling and simulation of dynamic engineering systems. He has over 85 publications to his credit.     

A selective medium for the enumeration and differentiation of Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus

Modified reinforced clostridial medium (mRCM) was developed and evaluated for the differential enumeration of Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus. Lactobacillus bulgaricus, an important species of lactic acid bacteria with health benefits, is used in the production of yogurt and other fermented foods. Our results showed that supplementing reinforced clostridial medium with 0.025% CaCl₂, 0.01% uracil, and 0.2% Tween 80 (mRCM) significantly enhanced the growth rate of L. bulgaricus RR and ATCC 11842 strains as measured by the optical densities of these strains after 12 h of incubation at 42°C. The bacterial populations (plate count) of the RR and ATCC 11842 strains were 0.76 and 0.77 log cfu/g higher in mRCM than in de Man, Rogosa, and Sharpe and reinforced clostridial medium media, respectively. Conversely, the population counts for other bacterial species (Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, and Lactobacillus reuteri) were significantly inhibited in the mRCM medium. The addition of aniline blue dye to mRCM (mRCM-blue) improved the selectivity of L. bulgaricus in mixed lactic bacterial cultures compared with de Man, Rogosa, and Sharpe medium and lactic agar with regard to colony appearance and morphology. The mRCM-blue performed better than the conventional medium in culturing, enumerating, and differentiating L. bulgaricus. Therefore, mRCM-blue could be used as a selective medium to enhance the growth and differentiation of L. bulgaricus in order to meet the increasing demand for this beneficial species of bacteria.     

Failure analysis of bainitic steel pipe – Failed during cold working process

Cracked thin wall steel pipe was received for failure analysis. The samples of the cracked pipe, un-cracked pipe and starting material were subjected to different experiments. In this regard, optical and electron microscopes, universal testing machine and hardness tester were utilized for characterization. A series of heat treatment made on starting material to obtain the similar mechanical properties and microstructure as that of cracked pipe. The surface of the opened cracks were observed in scanning electron microscope and revealed high concentration of non-metallic inclusions. Finite element model was utilized for the confirmation of different stress conditions during the fabrication process.     

Effect of Microstructural Anisotropy on Mechanical Behavior of a High-Strength Al–Mg–Si Alloy

The mechanical behavior of an extruded aluminum alloy pipe has been investigated after repeated failures in an oil and gas industry. The pipe failures occurred by longitudinal cracking, and the mechanical properties of the pipe were blamed for the failure. The relevant critical properties of the pipe including basic tests of hardness, tensile, and impact behavior were measured, and extended fatigue testing of the material was conducted. Microstructural examination revealed a recrystallized grain structure and clusters of constituent particles aligned in the direction of extrusion. Tensile testing in both the longitudinal and circumferential directions showed virtually identical yield and tensile strengths. However, the material exhibited higher toughness in the longitudinal direction. Impact test showed that the energy absorbed during fracture was four times higher in the longitudinal direction. Fatigue testing displayed a shorter fatigue life in the transverse direction. The study showed that the microstructure after extrusion and the distribution of the constituent particles have a pronounced effect on the mechanical behavior of the extruded pipe and induced anisotropy in the material performance. Performance of the material can be improved by choosing the proper extrusion ratio to control the microstructure and by controlling the density and distribution of the constituent particles.     

Binary copolymerizations of 8-methacryloxy-quinoline with methyl methacrylate, methyl acrylate, styrene and acrylonitrile

8-methacryloxy-quinoline monomer (MAQ) was prepared by the reaction of 8-hydroxyquinoline with either methacryloyl chloride or methacrylic acid in the presence of triethylamine and N, N′-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide, respectively. Its structure was confirmed by IR and 1 H-NMR spectroscopy. Binary copolymerization of this new monomer with methyl acrylate (MA), acrylonitrile (AN) methyl methacrylate (MMA), styrene(ST), were performed in Dimethylformamide, using 1 mol% azobisisobutyronitrile as initiator at 65 °C. The copolymer compositions were determined from nitrogen analysis except MAQ-AN with 1 H-NMR. Copolymerization Parameters for each system were calculated by both the Finemen-Ross and Kelen-Tüdös methods. The monomer reactivity ratios for the systems MAQ-MA, MAQ-AN, MAQ-MMA and MAQ-ST were found to be r1?=?0.695?±?0.036, r2?=?0.62?±?0.235; r1?=?0.273?±?0.087, r2?=?0.259?±?0.67; r1?=?0.356?±?0.015, r2?=?1.615?±?0.052 and r1?=?0.097?±?0.003, r2?=?0.339?±?0.027 respectively. The Q and e values for MAQ monomer were found to be 1.62 and 1.40.     

Succinimide-N-sulfonic Acid as a Recyclable Brönsted Acid Catalyst for Synthesis of Pyrano[4,3-b]pyran Derivatives by Using Solar Energy Under Solvent-Free Conditions

Succinimide-N-sulfonic acid as an efficient Brönsted acid catalyzed the synthesis of pyrano[4,3-b]pyrans by using solar energy as a green source of energy under solvent-free conditions. This method has the advantages of high yield, short reaction time, and clean and simple methodology. The catalyst could be recycled without significant loss of activity.     

Numerical Simulation of Natural Convection in a Parallelogrammic Enclosure Containing Volumetric Heat Source with Non‐uniformly Heated Left Sidewall

The influence of the external Rayleigh number, inclination angle, and internal Rayleigh number on natural convection within an air‐filled parallelogrammic enclosure containing a volumetric source has been investigated numerically. The left sidewall of the enclosure is subjected to a non‐uniformly hot temperature and the right sidewall experiences a uniform cold temperature while the remaining top and bottom walls are kept adiabatic. The physical problems are represented mathematically by various sets of governing equations along with the corresponding boundary conditions. Buoyancy forces are taken into account during the analysis of the present investigation. By using the finite volume method, the dimensionless governing equations are discretized numerically based on a non‐uniform collocated grid system. Results are obtained for a wide range of external Rayleigh numbers varying from 10³ to 10⁶ with internal Rayleigh numbers varying from (0) to (10⁸) while the left sidewall from vertical is varied as 0, 30, –30, 60, and ?60^°, respectively. In the present study, the obtained results are presented in terms of streamlines, isotherms, and average Nusselt number along the hot and cold sidewalls. Two pairs of rotating vortices are observed due to the non‐uniform heating process while the shape of this rotating vortices is sensitive to the inclination angle. Furthermore, the flow field circulation and the average Nusselt number increase remarkably with the increase in the external Rayleigh number. The results of the present work are compared with other published results and give excellent agreement. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 43(6): 542–560, 2014; Published online 11 November 2013 in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/htj ). DOI 10.1002/htj.21096     

Innovative Fungal Disease Diagnosis System Using Convolutional NeuralNetwork

Fungal disease affects more than a billion people worldwide, resulting in different types of fungus diseases facing life-threatening infections. The outer layer of your body is called the integumentary system. Your skin, hair, nails, and glands are all part of it. These organs and tissues serve as your first line of defence against bacteria while protecting you from harm and the sun. The It serves as a barrier between the outside world and the regulated environment inside our bodies and a regulating effect. Heat, light, damage, and illness are all protected by it. Fungi-caused infections are found in almost every part of the natural world. When an invasive fungus takes over a body region and overwhelms the immune system, it causes fungal infections in people. Another primary goal of this study was to create a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based technique for detecting and classifying various types of fungal diseases. There are numerous fungal illnesses, but only two have been identified and classified using the proposed Innovative Fungal Disease Diagnosis (IFDD) system of Candidiasis and Tinea Infections. This paper aims to detect infected skin issues and provide treatment recommendations based on proposed system findings. To identify and categorize fungal infections, deep machine learning techniques are utilized. A CNN architecture was created, and it produced a promising outcome to improve the proposed system accuracy. The collected findings demonstrated that CNN might be used to identify and classify numerous species of fungal spores early and estimate all conceivable fungus hazards. Our CNN-Based can detect fungal diseases through medical images; earmarked IFDD system has a predictive performance of 99.6% accuracy.     

Circulating Non-Coding RNAs as a Signature of Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptomatology

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a multifaced neurodevelopmental disorder that becomes apparent during early childhood development. The complexity of ASD makes clinically diagnosing the condition difficult. Consequently, by identifying the biomarkers associated with ASD severity and combining them with clinical diagnosis, one may better factionalize within the spectrum and devise more targeted therapeutic strategies. Currently, there are no reliable biomarkers that can be used for precise ASD diagnosis. Consequently, our pilot experimental cohort was subdivided into three groups: healthy controls, individuals those that express severe symptoms of ASD, and individuals that exhibit mild symptoms of ASD. Using next-generation sequencing, we were able to identify several circulating non-coding RNAs (cir-ncRNAs) in plasma. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to show that miRNAs, piRNAs, snoRNAs, Y-RNAs, tRNAs, and lncRNAs are stably expressed in plasma. Our data identify cir-ncRNAs that are specific to ASD. Furthermore, several of the identified cir-ncRNAs were explicitly associated with either the severe or mild groups. Hence, our findings suggest that cir-ncRNAs have the potential to be utilized as objective diagnostic biomarkers and clinical targets.     

Performance Analysis on Homogeneous LEACH and EAMMH Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Personal Communications - The current state of aerosols retention and loading over West Africa requires urgent consideration to avert environmental disaster which include telecommunication...