Response of Bonded Membrane Retrofit Concrete Masonry Walls to Dynamic Pressure

This paper describes the development of analytical models used to predict the response of bonded membrane retrofit concrete masonry walls subjected to out-of-plane impulse pressure loads. Full scale tests have shown significant improvement in the resistance of unreinforced concrete masonry walls retrofitted by membrane materials. The majority of the membrane retrofit concrete masonry walls survived compared to their unretrofitted counterparts that collapsed. Polymer membrane retrofit materials may be sprayed on, trowled on, or attached with adhesives to the tension face of the wall. Other membrane materials such as thin steel or aluminum sheets may be attached to the tension face of the wall using expansion screws or other structurally sound methods. Resistance functions previously presented by the writers for membrane retrofit concrete masonry walls are used in the development of the response. Single-degree-of-freedom equations are developed to predict the response of these walls to impulse pressure and the results of the analysis are compared with available full-scale tests.     

Texture development and residual stress in UHV evaporated silver films on glass substrates as a function of substrate temperature

Pole figures were collected for silver films of 140 nm thickness deposited on glass substrates with deposition rate of 0.076 nm s⁻¹, for substrate temperatures between 300 and 600 K covering all three zones in the structure zone model (SZM), using an X-ray diffractometer in texture mode. Additional information for determination of residual stress in these films was obtained by the technique. The components of the stress tensor were obtained using measurements at three different φ angles of 0°, 45° and 90°. The crystallite sizes as a function of substrate temperature and ψ angle were also obtained, and showed, an increase with substrate temperature in agreement with the SZM predictions, and a decrease with ψ angle, possibly due to some correlation between the preferred orientation and grain size. The relation between stress in these films and the processes of film growth in the SZM is discussed.     

Quantitative evaluation of a wavelet-based method in ventricular late potential detection

Ventricular late potentials (VLPs) are low-amplitude, high-frequency waveforms appearing in the terminal part of the QRS complex in electrocardiogram (ECG) of patients who are susceptible to ventricular tachycardia and sudden cardiac death, after surviving myocardial infarction. Accordingly, VLP detection presents a prominent non-invasive marker for some cardiac diseases clinically. This paper proposes a VLP detection method based on the wavelet transform and investigates its performance. In this method, a modified vector magnitude waveform is formed using discrete wavelet transform for each high-resolution ECG (HRECG) record; then, by applying the continuous wavelet transform to the QRS complex end part in this waveform, a feature vector is extracted from the resultant time-scale plot. This wavelet-based feature vector is processed by principle component analysis to reduce its dimensionality. Finally, a supervised feedforward artificial neural network, trained by a proper set of these feature vectors, is employed as a classifier. To evaluate the proposed method performance, a HRECG database consisting of the real VLP-negative and simulated VLP-positive patterns is used. In a comparative approach, different VLP detection techniques including the conventional time-domain method, developed by Simson, and some methods utilizing distinct diagnostic features are also applied to this database to investigate the capability of the proposed method in VLP analysis more completely. The results show the proposed method, employing the wavelet transform in both pre-processing and feature extraction stages, reveals high evaluation criteria (accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity) and is qualified to detect VLPs.     

Mathematical modeling of mass transfer in multicomponent gas mixture across the synthesized composite polymeric membrane

This study presents a new mathematical model to investigate the ternary gas mixture permeation across a synthesized composite PDMS/PA membrane. A novel algorithm is introduced for direct determination of diffusion coefficients. It pertains to study gas permeation through concentration dependent systems and comparing with traditional time lag method confirms the precision of this approach. Feature is that this method does not require physical properties of the membrane. Accordingly, it can be used as a general comprehensive model. In addition, molecular pair and molecular trio interactions were taken into account and in order to investigate the deviation of gas mixture from ideality, fugacities were calculated. The results showed that permeabilites of H₂ and CH₄ increase with increasing feed temperature and fugacity, while that of C₃H₈ decreases. Moreover, increasing C₃H₈ concentration improved permeation properties of all components. The results demonstrated that considering the concentration dependent system (CDS) leads to the small deviation of about less than 10%, while the deviation of 50–100% by the concentration independent system (CIS) was acquired. Additionally the results indicated that permeability of the lighter gases is specially affected by diffusivity, while solubility is dominant on permeability of the heavier gases.     

Effects of silver nanoparticles and fungal degradation on density and chemical composition of heat-treated poplar wood (Populous euroamerica)

Effects of silver nanoparticles and fungal degradation on the weight loss and chemical composition of heat-treated poplar wood were studied. Wood blocks were impregnated with a 400 ppm nanosilver suspension under 3 bar pressure for 20 min using Lowry process (edited empty cell). Heat-treatment was carried out at 135, 160 and 185 °C. Specimens were divided into 4 groups; control, nanosilver impregnated, heat-treated and impregnated- heat treated specimens (135, 160 and 185 °C). All samples from the internal and superficial parts of the blocks were exposed to the white rot fungus Trametes versicolor. The results of heat-treated samples indicated higher amount of Klason lignin and extractives, but lower holocellulose and cellulose content. Furthermore, heat-treatment illustrated an increasing effect on the fungal resistance. For all the properties, significant difference was found between the internal and superficial test specimens. Nanosilver impregnation had an intensifying effect on the results of the heat-treatment.     

Fuzzy simulation approach to multi-task scheduling in uncertain distributed server systems

The efficient scheduling of tasks in distributed server systems is of great importance to minimise the response time and thus improve the performance of such systems. This paper presents an integrated fuzzy simulation approach to improve the performance of distributed server systems. Performance is defined in terms of time-varying distributions of job arrival, job parallelism and task service demand with fuzzy parameters. In order to achieve the most efficient policies for job scheduling in this fuzzy system, an integrated fuzzy simulation approach is used. This is the first study that uses fuzzy simulation for performance improvement of uncertain distributed server systems.     

Solubilization of multi walled carbon nanotubes under a facile and mild condition

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) functionalized with amino groups was prepared via chemical modification of carboxyl groups introduced on the carbon nanotube surfaces. Oxidation of MWCNTs was performed with ozone in aqueous phase and amidation of generated carboxylic groups, was occurred with amines in the presence of HATU as a coupling agent. Obtained functionalized MWCNTs are soluble in many common organic solvents. The functionalized MWCNTs were characterized in detail using FTIR-ATR, Raman CHN and SEM methods.     

Equilibrium calculations for direct synthesis of dimethyl ether from syngas

Thermodynamic analysis of single‐step synthesis of dimethyl ether (DME) from syngas over a bi‐functional catalyst (BFC) in a slurry bed reactor has been investigated as a function of temperature (200–240°C), pressure (20–50 bar), and composition feed ratio (H₂/CO: 1–2). The BFC was prepared by physical mixing of CuO/ZnO/Al₂O₃ as a methanol synthesis catalyst and H‐ZSM‐5 as a methanol dehydration catalyst. The three reactions including methanol synthesis from CO and H₂, methanol dehydration to DME and water–gas shift reaction were chosen as the independent reactions. The equilibrium thermodynamic analysis includes a theoretical model predicting the behaviour and a comparison to experimental results. Theoretical model calculations of thermodynamic equilibrium constants of the reactions and equilibrium composition of all components at different reaction temperature, pressure, and H₂/CO ratio in feed are in good accordance with experimental values.     

Dowex50W-X树脂吸附硫酸溶液中的锶

In this study,strontium adsorption from sulfuric acid solution by different Dowex 50W-X ion exchange resins was investigated.Among these resins,Dowex 50W-X8 resin showed the maximum sorption of strontium from the aqueous solutions.The effect of pH,contact time,mass of resin,temperature,and concentration of interfering ions on strontium adsorption were evaluated to determine the optimum conditions of strontium sorption process.The kinetic models of sorption were analyzed using pseudo-first and pseudo-second order models.The results indicated that the pseudo-second order kinetic model was more appropriate than the other one.Moreover,the data obtained in this study were fitted into several sorption isotherm models and it was found that the Langmuir sorption isotherm shows the best fitting to the experimental data.     

Sodium dodecyl sulfate coated alumina modified with a new Schiff's base as a uranyl ion selective adsorbent

A simple and selective method was used for the preconcentration and determination of uranium(VI) by solid-phase extraction (SPE). In this method, a column of alumina modified with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and a new Schiff's base ligand was prepared for the preconcentration of trace uranyl(VI) from water samples. The uranium(VI) was completely eluted with HCl 2M and determined by a spectrophotometeric method with Arsenazo(III). The preconcentration steps were studied with regard to experimental parameters such as amount of extractant, type, volume and concentration of eluent, pH, flow rate of sample source and tolerance limit of diverse ions on the recovery of uranyl ion. A preconcentration factor more than 200 was achieved and the average recovery of uranyl(VI) was 99.5%. The relative standard deviation was 1.1% for 10 replicate determinations of uranyl(VI) ion in a solution with a concentration of 5 μg mL(-1). This method was successfully used for the determination of spiked uranium in natural water samples.