Application of magnetic pulse welding technique for flexible printed circuit boards (FPCB) lap joints

The magnetic pulse welding (MPW) is a high speed solid state welding process which has been used successfully to provide metallurgical and electrical bonds between flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) with using: (1) welding with aluminum driver sheet and (2) without driver sheet. The optimum bank energy for reliable bonding was about 1 kJ with 160–180 kA maximum current. The maximum tensile shearing for most welded samples was nearly same as tensile shearing strength of copper layer of FPCB sheet.     

Analysis of water in oil-impregnated kraft paper and its effect onconductivity

Oil impregnated paper or polymer film is the main insulating system for many kinds of power apparatus. The oil impregnated materials, especially oil impregnated kraft paper, include a significant amount of water, and this water disturbs the insulating performance of the devices. The amount of water in the materials usually is represented by the difference in weight between the normal material and the same material after drying. However it is difficult to measure the absolute value of the water content and to determine the state in which the water exists in the materials. In this study, we examined the IR spectra of water in oil impregnated kraft paper, because the IR spectrum of the water indicates not only the amount of water but also its state. It was found that most of the water behaves as liquid water, and some as hydrogen bonded water, interacting with the paper fiber. The dc conductivity of the kraft paper depends only on the amount and state of the water associated with it whether or not the paper is impregnated with the oil     

State of water in hydrocarbon liquids and its effect onconductivity [transformer oil]

The humidity or the dissolved water in insulating oils influences conduction and breakdown phenomena. The corrections between the amount of dissolved water and the electrical properties have been investigated. However, the effect of water has been based only on the total amount of water because in the past there was no way to observe the state of water in oil in an electrical field. With the availability of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to characterize water clusters, the effect of water in transformer oil can be reassessed based not only on the amount of water, but also on the state of water. In this paper, IR spectra of water in several liquid hydrocarbons and conduction current were measured at the same time. The selection of the liquid hydrocarbons was made on the basis of the degree of polarizability of the liquids. Because the water molecules combine with the polar structures by hydrogen bonding, the state of water depends on the polarizability of the oil. As a result, there is a difference in conduction phenomena depending on whether water is free or combined with the polar structure of the liquid     

Intelligent control for avoiding the joint limits of redundant planar manipulators

This article presents an intelligent control system for a redundant manipulator to avoid physical limits such as joint angle limits and joint velocity limits. In this method, a back-propagation neural network (NN) is introduced for the kinematic inversion of the manipulator. Since this inverse kinematics has an infinite number of joint angle vectors, a fuzzy-neuro system is constructed to provide an approximate value for that vector. This vector is fed into the NN as a hint input vector in order to guide the output of the NN within the self-motion. Simulations and a comparative study are made based on a four-link redundant manipulator to prove the efficacy of the proposed control system.     

A study on constructing a neuro-interface using the concept of a virtual master–slave system

To ease the control of a nonholonomic robot by a non-expert, a neuro-interface is proposed by using the concept of a virtual master–slave system. The design procedure for the interface is elaborated for the control of nonholonomic two-wheeled robots. In particular, it is shown that if the coordinate transformation from the slave to the master is assumed to be known, the resultant inverse mapping of the master robot can be simply realized by a neural network (NN) with all linear units. The training of the NN is performed by an offline method. As a result, the effectiveness of the proposed method is shown for some simulations to solve a trajectory tracking control problem with a nonholonomic mobile robot.This work was presented, in part, at the 9th International Symposium on Artifical Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 28–30, 2004     

Adaptive actor-critic learning for the control of mobile robots by applying predictive models

In this paper, we propose two methods of adaptive actor-critic architectures to solve control problems of nonlinear systems. One method uses two actual states at time k and time k+1 to update the learning algorithm. The basic idea of this method is that the agent can directly take some knowledge from the environment to improve its knowledge. The other method only uses the state at time k to update the algorithm. This method is called, learning from prediction (or simulated experience). Both methods include one or two predictive models, which are assumed to be applied to construct predictive states and a model-based actor (MBA). Here, the MBA as an actor can be viewed as a network where the connection weights are the elements of the feedback gain matrix. In the critic part, two value-functions are realized as a pure static mapping, which can be reduced to a nonlinear current estimator by using the radial basis function neural networks (RBFNNs). Simulation results obtained for a dynamical model of nonholonomic mobile robots with two independent driving wheels are presented. They show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches for the trajectory tracking control problem.     

Spontaneous hydrolytic degradability of copolyesters having tetrahydropyran rings in their backbones

Homo- and copolyesters, containing 2,5-linked tetrahydropyran rings in their backbones, were prepared by cationic ring-opening polymerization of bicyclic lactones, 2,6-dioxabicyclo [2.2.2] octan-3-one ( 1 ), and its 4-methoxy-carbonyl and 4-methoxy-carbonyl and 4-benzyloxycarbonyl derivatives ( 3 and 4 ). Copolyesters, having pendant carboxyl groups, were derived from the copolymers containing 4 as one of the comonomers by the catalytic hydrogenolysis of the pendant benzyloxy–carbonyl groups. Copolyesters, containing both 2,5-linked and 2,6-linked tetrahydropyran rings in the main chains, were obtained by the copolymerization of 1 with 6,8-dioxabicyclo [3.2.1] octan-7-one ( 13 ), which is a structural isomer of 1 . Spontaneous hydrolytic degradability of these polyesters was investigated in a phosphate buffer solution (pH 7.5) at 27°C. The degradability of the polyesters markedly depended on the molecular structure: hydrophobic pendant groups retarded the hydrolytic degradation, whereas hydrophilic pendant groups accelerated it. In particular, a small amount of pendant carboxyl groups significantly enhanced the hydrolytic degradability of the copolyesters from 1 . Polyesters, containing 2,6-linked tetrahydropyran rings in their backbones, underwent hydrolytic degradation more readily than those entirely consisting of 2,5-linked tetrahydropyran rings. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Water mist formation in vapor-mist dielectrics and its effect

It has been proposed that vapor-mist dielectrics in which mixing liquid droplets such as tetrachloroethlene in a gas have the ability of increasing flashover, impulse voltage, and of suppressing partial discharge. Vapor-mist methods have been performed on other materials and the effect of the mist can also be obtained on benzene, hexane, and even water as general materials. Although these studies have been carried out, neither the discharge mechanism on vapor-mist nor the reason for the increase of the discharge voltage is understood fully because the mist is of various sizes. On the other hand, agglomeration of water molecules can be studied with the FR-IR method, and are classified into monomer, dimer, trimer (including polymer). Water gives mist stats which are significant in discussing effects. This paper describes states of water mist and their effect under nonuniform field with positive and negative polarities. Water mist in vapor exists as dimer and trimer, and their amount decreases with the reduction of temperature. These mists have no effect on discharge suppression. However, when the mists are formed by space charges, the inception voltage is increased by these mists in the negative polarity.     

Observation of polarization property in near-field optical imaging by a polarization-maintaining fiber probe

We fabricated an original near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) fiber probe made of polarization-maintaining and attenuation-reducing (PANDA)-type polarization-maintaining optical fiber, and observed the polarization property of propagation light in a polymer optical waveguide. The distribution of the transmission coefficient in polarization angles through this NSOM probe showed that the linear polarization is maintained in the two crossing directions: the fast and slow axes. The polarization degree parallel to the slow axis decreases from 1000:1 to 2:1 by bending the fiber probe and the decrease is independent of the bending direction. Using this PANDA-type NSOM probe, we investigated the polarization property of periodic intensity modulation. It was found that the intensity modulation was observed clearly with the electric vector parallel to the radius direction of the waveguide, but was observed vaguely with the electric vector perpendicular to the radius direction.