Cd-free buffer layers for CIGS solar cells prepared by a dry process

ZnSe buffer layers for Cu(ln,Ga)Se₂/buffer/ZnO solar cells have been prepared by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Using photoassisted MOCVD, deposition temperatures down to 265°C are possible. It is shown that deposition temperatures well below 300°C are essential as well as deposition times not much longer than 3 min. Higher temperatures and longer deposition times lead to absorber degradation. With optimized buffer deposition efficiencies of 11% have been obtained on CIGS absorbers from the Siemens pilot production line.     

Phase field simulations of coupled microstructure solidification problems via the strong form particle difference method

This paper presents the development of a strong form-based collocation method called the particle difference method (PDM), capable of predicting the spatiotemporal evolution of polycrystalline material solidification through coupling of multi-phase and temperature fields. Cross coupled phase field evolution and heat transfer equations are discretized via the PDM to obtain the interface kinematics of polycrystalline boundary during solidification. A distinct feature of the PDM is its ability to represent derivative operators via a moving least-square approximation of the Taylor expansion through point-wise computations at collocation points. The method discretizes directly the strong forms using the pre-computed derivative operators at each collocation point and elegantly overcomes the topological difficulty in modeling intricate moving interfaces. To verify the efficacy of the PDM, numerical results are compared with those obtained from the conventional finite difference method for uniform and irregular distributions of the collocation points. The scalability of the parallelized PDM is tested by measuring its efficiency with increasing the number of processors. We also provide a solidification simulation with two ellipsoidal inclusions to demonstrate the capability of the PDM in complex moving interface problems with high curvature.     

Computational model generation and RVE design of self-healing concrete

Computational homogenization is a versatile tool that can extract effective properties of heterogeneous or composite material through averaging technique. Self-healing concrete (SHC) is a heterogeneous material which has different constituents as cement matrix, sand and healing agent carrying capsules. Computational homogenization tool is applied in this paper to evaluate the effective properties of self-healing concrete. With this technique, macro and micro scales are bridged together which forms the basis for multi-scale modeling. Representative volume element (RVE) is a small (microscopic) cell which contains all the microphases of the microstructure. This paper presents a technique for RVE design of SHC and shows the influence of volume fractions of different constituents, RVE size and mesh uniformity on the homogenization results.     

High velocity impact of metal sphere on thin metallic plate using smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method

The modeling of high velocity impact is an important topic in impact engineering. Due to various constraints, experimental data are extremely limited. Therefore, detailed numerical simulation can be considered as a desirable alternative. However, the physical processes involved in the impact are very sophisticated; hence a practical and complete reproduction of the phenomena involves complicated numerical models. In this paper, we present a smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method to model two-dimensional impact of metal sphere on thin metallic plate. The simulations are applied to different materials (Aluminum, Lead and Steel); however the target and projectile are formed of similar metals. A wide range of velocities (300, 1000, 2000, and 3100 m/s) are considered in this study. The goal is to study the most sensitive input parameters (impact velocity and plate thickness) on the longitudinal extension of the projectile, penetration depth and damage crater.     

Extreme narrow photonic bands and strong photonic localization produced by 2D defect two-segment-connected quadrangular waveguide networks

In this paper, we investigate the properties of optical transmission and photonic localization of two-dimensional (2D) defect two-segment-connected quadrangular waveguide networks (DTSCQWNs) and find that many groups of extreme narrow photonic bands are created in the middle of the transmission spectra. The electromagnetic (EM) waves in DTSCQWNs with the frequencies of extreme narrow photonic bands can produce strong photonic localizations by adjusting defect broken degree. On the other hand, we obtain the formula of extreme narrow photonic bands’ frequencies dependent on defect broken degree and the formula of the largest intensity of photonic localization dependent on defect broken degree, respectively. It may possess potential application for designing all-optical devices based on strong photonic localizations. Additionally, we propose a so-called defecton mode to study the splitting rules of extreme narrow photonic bands, where decomposition-decimation method is expanded from the field of electronic energy spectra to that of optical transmission spectra.     

Dual‐horizon peridynamics

In this paper, we develop a dual‐horizon peridynamics (DH‐PD) formulation that naturally includes varying horizon sizes and completely solves the ‘ghost force’ issue. Therefore, the concept of dual horizon is introduced to consider the unbalanced interactions between the particles with different horizon sizes. The present formulation fulfills both the balances of linear momentum and angular momentum exactly. Neither the ‘partial stress tensor’ nor the ‘slice’ technique is needed to ameliorate the ghost force issue. We will show that the traditional peridynamics can be derived as a special case of the present DH‐PD. All three peridynamic formulations, namely, bond‐based, ordinary state‐based, and non‐ordinary state‐based peridynamics, can be implemented within the DH‐PD framework. Our DH‐PD formulation allows for h‐adaptivity and can be implemented in any existing peridynamics code with minimal changes. A simple adaptive refinement procedure is proposed, reducing the computational cost. Both two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional examples including the Kalthoff–Winkler experiment and plate with branching cracks are tested to demonstrate the capability of the method. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Agglomeration Effects on Static Stability Analysis of Multi-Scale Hybrid Nanocomposite Plates

We propose a multiscale approach to study the influence of carbon nanotubes’ agglomeration on the stability of hybrid nanocomposite plates. The hybrid nanocomposite consists of both macro- and nano-scale reinforcing fibers dispersed in a polymer matrix. The equivalent material properties are calculated by coupling the Eshelby-Mori-Tanaka model with the rule of mixture accounting for effects of CNTs inside the generated clusters. Furthermore, an energy based approach is implemented to obtain the governing equations of the problem utilizing a refined higher-order plate theorem. Subsequently, the derived equations are solved by Galerkin’s analytical method to predict the critical buckling load. The influence of various boundary conditions is studied as well. After validation, a set of numerical examples are presented to explain how each variant can affect the plate’s natural frequency.     

Biodegradation of Medicinal Plants Waste in an Anaerobic Digestion Reactor for Biogas Production

Glycyrrhiza glabra, Mint, Cuminum cyminum, Lavender and Arctium medicinal are considered as edible plants with therapeutic properties and as medicinal plants in Iran. After extraction process of medicinal plants, residual wastes are not suitable for animal feed and are considered as waste and as an environmental threat. At present there is no proper management of waste of these plants and they are burned or buried. The present study discusses the possibility of biogas production from Glycyrrhiza Glabra Waste (GGW), Mentha Waste (MW), Cuminum Cyminum Waste (CCW), Lavender Waste (LW) and Arctium Waste (AW). 250 g of these plants with TS of 10% were digested in the batch type reactors at the temperature of 35°C. The highest biogas production rate were observed to be 13611 mL and 13471 mL for CCW and GGW (10% TS), respectively. While the maximum methane was related to GGW with a value of 9041 mL (10% TS). The highest specific biogas and methane production were related to CCW with value of 247.4 mL.(g.VS)-1 and 65.1 mL.(g.VS)-1, respectively. As an important result, it was obvious that in lignocellulose materials, it cannot be concluded that the materials with similar ratio of C/N has the similar digestion and biogas production ability.     

A new crack tip element for the phantom‐node method with arbitrary cohesive cracks

We have developed a new crack tip element for the phantom‐node method. In this method, a crack tip can be placed inside an element. Therefore, cracks can propagate almost independent of the finite element mesh. We developed two different formulations for the three‐node triangular element and four‐node quadrilateral element, respectively. Although this method is well suited for the one‐point quadrature scheme, it can be used with other general quadrature schemes. We provide some numerical examples for some static and dynamic problems. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parkinson’s Disease Detection Using Biogeography-Based Optimization

In recent years, Parkinson's Disease (PD) as a progressive syndrome of the nervous system has become highly prevalent worldwide. In this study, a novel hybrid technique established by integrating a Multi-layer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP) with the Biogeography-based Optimization (BBO) to classify PD based on a series of biomedical voice measurements. BBO is employed to determine the optimal MLP parameters and boost prediction accuracy. The inputs comprised of 22 biomedical voice measurements. The proposed approach detects two PD statuses: 0-disease status and 1- good control status. The performance of proposed methods compared with PSO, GA, ACO and ES method. The outcomes affirm that the MLP-BBO model exhibits higher precision and suitability for PD detection. The proposed diagnosis system as a type of speech algorithm detects early Parkinson’s symptoms, and consequently, it served as a promising new robust tool with excellent PD diagnosis performance.