Design and implementation of a high‐efficiency LiFePO4 battery charger for electric vehicle applications

This letter studies and implements a high‐efficiency LiFePO₄ battery charger. The modular design can satisfy the requirements of series/parallel charging for electric vehicle applications. A CC‐CC‐CV charging scheme is also realized to meet the characteristics of LiFePO₄ battery stacks. A 2 kW laboratory prototype is built and tested. The experimental results are shown to verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Co基赫斯勒合金研究进展

Co基赫斯勒合金是一类具有高度有序晶体结构的金属间化合物,其化学组成常用Co2XY表示,其中X为过渡金属元素,Y为主族元素。相比于其他材料,它具有更高的自旋极化率、更高的居里温度以及更低的阻尼因子。基于这些优良特性使得Co基赫斯勒合金在自旋阀、隧道结及半导体自旋场效应管等自旋电子学器件中具有巨大的应用前景。本文回顾了近年来国际上关于的Co基赫斯勒合金在垂直磁各向异性和自旋轨道转矩上的研究,从合金成分、微观结构、磁性层的厚度、缓冲层的材料、氧化物层的材料、元素扩散等方面总结了垂直磁各向异性和自旋轨道转矩的影响因素。对垂直磁各向异性和自旋轨道转矩的影响因素的总结有助于我们更好地理解其深层物理机制以及在未来研究中的挑战与前景。     

Decreased Expression of Plakophilin-2 and αT-Catenin in Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy: Potential Markers for Diagnosis

Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) is a hereditary disease of the heart muscle. Clinical challenges remain, however, in identifying patients with ARVC in the early or concealed stages with subtle clinical manifestations. Therefore, we wanted to identify potential targets by immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis in comparison with controls. Pathogenic mutations were identified in 11 of 37 autopsied patients with ARVC. As observed from IHC analysis of the RV, expression of αT-catenin and plakophilin-2 is significantly decreased in autopsied patients with ARVC as compared to controls, and the decreased expression is consistent in patients with and without pathogenic mutations. Furthermore, ARVC specimens demonstrated a reduced localization of αT-catenin, desmocollin-2, desmoglein-2, desmoplakin, and plakophilin-2 on intercalated discs. These findings have been validated by comparing RV specimens obtained via endomyocardial biopsy between patients with ARVC and those without. The pathogenic mutation was present in 3 of 5 clinical patients with ARVC. In HL-1 myocytes, siRNA was used to knockdown CTNNA3, and western blotting analysis demonstrated that the decline in αT-catenin expression was accompanied by a significant decline in the expression of plakophilin-2. The aforementioned effect was directed towards protein degradation rather than mRNA stability. Plakophilin-2 expression decreases concurrently with the decline in CTNNA3 expression. Therefore, the expression of αT-catenin and plakophilin-2 could be potential surrogates for the diagnosis of ARVC.     

Color‐edge detection based on discrimination of noticeable color contrasts

Color‐edge detection is an important research task in the field of image processing. Efficient and accurate edge detection will lead to higher performance of subsequent image processing techniques, including image segmentation, object‐based image coding, and image retrieval. To improve the performance of color‐edge detection while considering that human eyes are ultimate receiver of color images, the perceptually insignificant edges should avoid being over‐detected. In this article, a color‐edge detection scheme based on the perceptual color contrast is proposed. The perceptual color contrast is defined as the visible color difference across an edge in the CIE‐Lab color space. A perceptual metric for measuring the visible color difference of a target color pixel is defined by utilizing the associated perceptually indistinguishable region. The perceptually indistinguishable region for each color pixel in the CIE‐Lab color space is estimated by the design of an experiment that considers the local property due to local changes in luminance. Simulation results show that the perceptual color contrast is effectively defined and the color edges in color images are detected while most of the perceptually insignificant edges are successfully suppressed through the proposed color‐edge detection scheme. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 19, 332–339, 2009     

A new point contact surface acoustic wave transducer for measurement of acoustoelastic effect of polymethylmethacrylate

A new acoustic transducer and measurement method have been developed for precise measurement of surface wave velocity. This measurement method is used to investigate the acoustoelastic effects for waves propagating on the surface of a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) sample. The transducer uses two miniature conical PZT elements for acoustic wave transmitter and receiver on the sample surface; hence, it can be viewed as a point- source/point-receiver transducer. Acoustic waves are excited and detected with the PZT elements, and the wave velocity can be accurately determined with a cross-correlation waveform comparison method. The transducer and its measurement method are particularly sensitive and accurate in determining small changes in wave velocity; therefore, they are applied to the measurement of acoustoelastic effects in PMMA materials. Both the surface skimming longitudinal wave and Rayleigh surface wave can be simultaneously excited and measured. With a uniaxial-loaded PMMA sample, both acoustoelastic effects for surface skimming longitudinal wave and Rayleigh waves of PMMA are measured. The acoustoelastic coefficients for both types of surface wave motions are simultaneously determined. The transducer and its measurement method provide a practical way for measuring surface stresses nondestructively.     

CFD simulation of particle segregation in a rotating drum. Part I: Eulerian solid phase kinetic viscosity

Although the Eulerian approach coupling the kinetic theory of granular flow is usually used to study granular flows with relative lower solid fractions, it can be used to study relative denser granular flows if appropriate solid phase kinetic viscosity values were adopted. A granular bed surface fitting (BSF) method is proposed to determine the appropriate solid phase kinetic viscosities of the granular flows in a rotating drum. The specularity coefficient is also used to address the interaction between particles and the drum wall. The BSF solid phase kinetic viscosity increases with decreasing of particle sizes and drum rotational speeds. The BSF solid phase kinetic viscosity and the specularity coefficient follow a power-law relationship with 0.6–1.1 as the exponent of the specularity coefficient. The BSF solid phase kinetic viscosities for the particles of two different sizes are used to study particle segregation in a rotating drum. The core thickening segregation mechanism and the segregation band formations are well predicted.     

Lower-error and area-efficient antilogarithmic converters with bit-correction schemes

In this article, we have proposed fast lower-error and area-efficient antilogarithmic converters. By employing new approximation schemes with two-region shift-and-add operations, our proposed converters can perform high-speed conversions from logarithmic numbers to binary numbers. Synthesis results show that our proposed converters can achieve time savings of over 32.5% and can save 42.3% of the area used compared with previously proposed methods. In addition, the percent error ranges for various logarithmic number system (LNS)-based operations used by our proposed logarithmic processor are lower than those of previous methods. Our proposed converters can be applied to LNS-based processors to ease the tremendous computation overhead and boost the performance.     

Optimization by random search with jumps

We give a random optimization (RO) algorithm to optimize a real‐valued function of n real variables. During the optimization process, interpolation points are examined to follow valleys, and jumps to new starting points are executed to avoid numerous iterations in local minima. Convergence with probability one to the global minimum of a function is proved. The proposed RO method is a simple, derivative‐free and computationally moderate algorithm, with excellent performance compared to other RO methods. Seven functions, which are commonly used to test the performance of optimization methods, are used to evaluate the performance of the RO algorithm given here. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

微纳结构表面防冰研究进展

首先从冰的2种形成机理—均相成核和非均相成核进行了阐述,并介绍了液体在固体表面上的润湿现象。在此基础上,根据微纳结构防冰机理,分别综述了在固体表面结冰的前、中、后不同时期的最新防冰除冰策略。结冰前,借助液滴的脱落和自除预防固体表面结冰;结冰时,可通过延长冰的冻结时间,延缓冰在固体表面上的覆盖;结冰后,降低冰在固体表面的附着力,使之更易脱离固体表面,达到防冰除冰的需求。最后,对于如何提高微纳结构表面的耐久性进行了总结,对有关这些问题的最新研究成果进行了归纳和讨论,并对今后微纳结构表面防冰除冰的研究进行了展望。     

超长年限服役后铸铁烘缸的组织和性能

研究了某造纸厂2台分别服役62 a和43 a的铸铁烘缸不同位置的显微组织和力学性能.结果表明:2台烘缸缸体及端盖均无明显的表面缺陷和裂纹缺陷,基体组织均为无明显球化的珠光体,石墨片的尺寸和分布均主要为A型,服役62 a烘缸前端盖和服役43 a烘缸后端盖的石墨片长度均较长;2台烘缸缸体和端盖的硬度均满足标准要求;除服役6...