Biodiesel compatibility with carbon steel and HDPE parts

Compatibility of the new environmentally-friendly alternative of diesel engine fuels, biodiesel, with storage and engine part materials, is still an open issue. In this work, the interaction between three fuels (petroleum diesel and two types of biodiesel — soybean and sunflower) and two materials (carbon steel and high density polyethylene) used in storage and automotive tanks, is analyzed in detail. A wide set of characterization techniques was used to evaluate the changes in both solid and fluid materials, as weight change measurement, optical, scanning electron and atomic force (AFM) microscopies, Raman and FTIR spectroscopies, and differential scanning calorimetry. The AFM technique allowed detecting surface roughness and morphology changes in the metallic material following the trends in the weight losses. In the case of polymeric material, weight gain by fluid absorption occurred, being detected by the spectroscopic techniques. The biodiesel fuels underwent some ageing however this phenomenon did not affect the interaction between the biodiesel fuels and the substrates. The petrodiesel, which did not age, caused more significant degradation of the substrates.     

Alumina/Silicon Carbide Laminated Composites by Spark Plasma Sintering

Ceramic laminates composed of alumina/silicon carbide composite layers were produced by spark plasma sintering (SPS). Monolithic composite disks containing up to 30 vol% of silicon carbide were fabricated by stacking together and cosintering by SPS green layers prepared by tape casting water-based suspensions. An engineered laminate with a specific layer combination that is able to promote the stable growth of surface defects before final failure was also designed and produced. Fully dense materials with an optimum adhesion between the constituting layers and a homogeneous distribution of the two phases were obtained after SPS. Monolithic composites showed an increasing strength with SiC load, and biaxial strength values as high as 700 MPa were observed for a SiC content of 30 vol%. The engineered laminate showed a peculiar crack propagation that is responsible for the high strength value of about 600 MPa and for the evident insensitivity to surface defects.     

An approach based on the catenary equation to deal with static analysis of three dimensional cable structures

In this paper a novel method to solve three dimensional cable structures based on the catenary equation is proposed. The method is a generalization of a previous engineering application to compute the initial equilibrium of railway overheads. The major contributions of this paper are: the extension of the previous engineering application to simulate arbitrary three dimensional cable structures; cable elasticity is incorporated into the formulation; and due to the fact that the method relies on the analytical catenary equations, high numerical efficiency is exhibited. In order to show the validity of the method, comparisons with several well reported cable structure problems are presented. The agreement between the proposed method and published results is excellent.     

Displacement and load transfer mechanisms of geogrids under pullout condition

Reinforcing elements embedded within soil mass improve stabilization through a load transfer mechanism between the soil and the reinforcement. Geogrids are a type of geosynthetic frequently used for soil reinforcement, consisting of equally spaced longitudinal and transverse ribs. Under pullout conditions, the longitudinal ribs are responsible for tensile resistance, while transverse ribs contribute to a passive resistance. This paper describes a new analytical model capable of reproducing both load transfer and displacement mechanisms on the geogrid length, under pullout conditions. The model subdivides the geogrid into rheological units, composed by friction/adhesion and spring elements, mounted in line. Friction/adhesion elements respond to the shear component mobilized at the soil–geogrid interface. Spring elements respond to the geogrid's tensile elongation. Model parameters are obtained through tensile strength tests on geogrids and conventional direct shear tests on soil specimens. The need for instrumented pullout tests becomes therefore eliminated. Results predicted from this new model were compared to instrumented pullout test data from two types of geogrids, under various confining stress levels. The results revealed that the new model is capable of reasonably predicting load and displacement distributions along the geogrid.     

Temperature and Pressure Dependences of Thermophysical Properties of Some Ethylene Glycol Dimethyl Ethers from Ultrasonic Measurements

In this work, the speed of sound was measured in monoglyme (monoethylene glycol dimethyl ether or MEGDME) and diglyme (diethylene glycol dimethyl ether or DEGDME) in the temperature range at pressures up to 100 MPa using a pulse echo technique operating at 3 MHz; several thermophysical properties were determined in the same P-T range from these measurements. Furthermore, the density, isothermal compressibility, and isobaric thermal expansion coefficient, determined from volumetric data (direct method) and from acoustic measurements (indirect method) for four glymes have been compared. The comparison was extended to a second-order derivative of density with pressure, namely, the nonlinear acoustic parameter B/A.     

Adsorption equilibrium of phenol onto chemically modified activated carbon F400

In this work the adsorption of phenol solutions onto activated carbon Calgon F400 has been studied. The carbon was modified by acid treatment, using soxhlet extraction with hydrochloric acid 2N for 120 cycles. The treatment did not affect significantly the surface area of the activated carbon but affected significatively the different functional groups, and thus its adsorption properties. Tóth model reproduced satisfactorily the experimental isotherm data and an adsorption enthalpy of -17.9 kJ mol-1 was found, which indicates that the process is exothermic. The pH affected significatively to the adsorption process and an empirical polynomial equation was able to reproduce maximum capacity as a function of pH. The isotherms obtained at pH 3 and 7 are very similar and showed a higher adsorption capacity compared with that obtained at pH 13. The use of phosphate buffer solutions decreased the maximum phenol adsorption capacity, due to the competitive adsorption between the phenol and phosphates. Finally, it was demonstrated that the acid treatment introduced chloride ions into the carbon, giving it properties of ion exchanger.     

All‐MOS implementation of RC networks for time‐controlled Gaussian spatial filtering

This paper addresses the design and VLSI implementation of MOS‐based RC networks capable of performing time‐controlled Gaussian filtering. In these networks, all the resistors are substituted one by one by a single MOS transistor biased in the ohmic region. The design of this elementary transistor is carefully realized according to the value of the ideal resistor to be emulated. For a prescribed signal range, the MOSFET in triode region delivers an interval of instantaneous resistance values. We demonstrate that, for the elementary 2‐node network, establishing the design equation at a particular point within this interval guarantees minimum error. This equation is then corroborated for networks of arbitrary size by analyzing them from a stochastic point of view. Following the design methodology proposed, the error committed by an MOS‐based grid when compared with its equivalent ideal RC network is, despite the intrinsic nonlinearities of the transistors, below 1% even under mismatch conditions of 10%. In terms of image processing, this error hardly affects the outcome, which is perceptually equivalent to that of the ideal network. These results, extracted from simulation, are verified in a prototype vision chip with QCIF resolution manufactured in the AMS 0.35µm CMOS‐OPTO process. This prototype incorporates a focal‐plane MOS‐based RC network that performs fully programmable Gaussian filtering. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

作为携带、沉积纳米荧光粉颗粒和纳米铁电体颗粒到FEDs和EL器件上的载体的可印刷的油墨、粘结剂

文章介绍了两种移植和可控纳米沉积荧光粉颗粒和纳米铁电体颗粒的载体.第一种载体是一种可以悬浮和沉积合成的具有亚微米级尺寸大小的荧光粉颗粒的油墨.解决了该油墨的聚集和沉降问题,并发现该油墨具有良好的液流学性能,从而可用于印刷高分辨率的荧光粉.测量了相关的单个象素的阴极发光密度以评定这种丝网印刷油墨的可重复性.第二种载体是一种粘结剂,这种粘结剂不仅可以携带 30 μm 以及更大的尺寸的电致发光的荧光粉,还可以携带纳米铁电体颗粒.这种新型的粘结剂可应用于不需要额外的绝缘反射层的低造价的 EL 显示器.从衬底按要求将发射层剥下来就形成了柔性薄膜,将该薄膜置于两电极之间,仍可保持其电致发光的活性.该粘结剂薄膜可以很容易地印刷和定型制成显示屏.     

A new electronic tonometer for ocular epipalpebral measurements

A new electronic tonometer is presented in this paper. This is an electromechanical device that has been designed to establish, by means of a fully automatic process, an approximate value of the intraocular pressure (IOP) without the need to be handled by an ophthalmologist. It can be applied on the closed eyelid with no danger for the patient in an easy and simple way. These have been the main prerequisites for the proposed tonometer in order for it to be used in the future in the same way as domestic clinical thermometers are used nowadays. The main benefits obtained with this measurement is a much earlier warning in cases where incipient glaucoma is already carving its silent way to an unexpected future blindness. The tonometer can also be used and has been employed as a research instrument, placed either on the eyelid or on the cornea, and a substantial flow of data on how IOP evolves is obtainable by computerized means. The tonometer is based on a microcontroller device, which is the electronic core of the equipment that manages the user interface, runs the complete test, and shows the final results. This paper describes the design in a stage previous to the "domestic tonometer": a laboratory prototype to obtain physical properties of the eye under a variable static, radial, and epipalpebral force.     

Uplink Channel Estimation for Multi-user OFDM-based Systems

In this paper we propose a simple, yet flexible and efficient, channel estimator for the uplink in broadband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The processing is performed in the time-domain, by extracting the Channel’s Impulse Response (CIR) for each user from a joint training signal. In this OFDM system, the pilot sequence we advocate, where all users share the same pilot sub-carriers, consists of one OFDM-symbol endowed with time-shifted properties per user, which isolates each user’s CIR and is robust against multi-user interference. The feasibility of our approach is substantiated by system simulation results obtained using BRAN-A broadband mobile wireless channel model.