Sintering Behavior and Machinability of Phlogopite Glass Ceramics Containing Fe2O3

Mica-based glasses in the SiO₂-Al₂O₃-MgO-K₂O-F system were prepared by a sintering method to investigate the effects of different amounts of hematite (Fe₂O₃) on thermal and sintering behaviors besides machinability of the glasses by means of differential thermal analysis (DTA), X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscope techniques. DTA analysis on fine and coarse glass powders indicated that the main crystallization mechanism in this system occurred in the bulk rather than the surface. Increasing Fe₂O₃ content to 5 wt.% improved machinability of the glass ceramic. Fe₂O₃ led to the disruption of the glass matrix and facilitated the nucleation of the crystalline phase. Precipitation of sellite (MgF₂) crystals as heterogeneous nucleating sites for potassium phlogopite crystals acted as a second contribution to the machinability of the 5 wt.% Fe₂O₃-containing sample. However, introducing more than 5 wt.% Fe₂O₃ to the base glass prohibited the nucleation of MgF₂, and as a result, large micas formed within the glass. This together with precipitation of cordierite aggregates in highly doped glass with Fe₂O₃ led to lower machinability in these samples.     

Thermal and Structural Response of RCC Dams During Their Service Life

Roller compacted concrete (RCC) dams are vulnerable to cracking as a result of high tensile stresses due to material properties, thermal and mechanical loads. Making reliable prediction of stress fields, and thereby temperature cracking risk form an important part of the material modelling. The present study figures out the changes in thermal stresses and crack fields of the Kinta RCC dam at the end of the construction and its service life. Water temperature at various levels of the reservoir and its fluctuations were considered in the present study. The developed finite element program has been used in the analysis. Based on the obtained results, it is revealed that there is an increase in the thermal stresses after some years of dam completion. However, their location and distribution are mostly similar.     

Effect of Ce, Sb, and Sn on Solarization and Crystallization of an X-Ray-Irradiated Photosensitive Glass

The effect of Ce, Sb, and Sn photosensitive elements, individually and in combination with each other, on solarization and crystallization of an X-ray irradiated and a nonirradiated lithium silicate-based glass were investigated. According to the results, considering the crystallization behavior of the nonirradiated glasses, they were divided into Ce-bearing and Ce-free groups, in which the former group showed a clearer solarization tendency that manifested as an appearance of an absorbance peak at 318 nm in the spectrophotometry experiment. However, the results showed that in the irradiated glasses, the presence of Sb was more important in terms of improvement in crystallization view. Antimony decreased the differential thermal analysis (DTA) crystallization peak temperature from 655°C to 594°C and, in combination with the two other elements, changed the surface crystallization mechanism to a bulk one. The reactions that seemed to be responsible for the above-mentioned observations were discussed by spectrophotometry, DTA, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopic methods.     

Optimization of a microfluidic mixer for studying protein folding kinetics

We have applied an optimization method in conjunction with numerical simulations to minimize the mixing time of a microfluidic mixer developed for protein folding studies. The optimization method uses a semideterministic algorithm to find the global minimum of the mixing time by varying the mixer geometry and flow conditions. We describe the minimization problem and constraints and give a brief overview of the optimization algorithm. We present results of the optimization, including the optimized geometry and parameter sensitivities, and we demonstrate the improvement in mixing performance with experiments using microfabricated mixers. The dye-quenching experiments of the original and optimized mixer designs show respective mixing times of 7 and 4 mus, a 40% reduction. The new design also provides more uniform mixing across streamlines that enter the mixer. The optimized mixer is the fastest reported continuous flow mixer for protein folding.     

Inverse identification of time-harmonic loads acting on thin plates using approximated Green’s functions

In this paper, a non-iterative technique is proposed for the transverse load identification on Kirchhoff plates using approximate Green’s functions (AGFs). In this way, we firstly employ the recently introduced meshless method to construct the AGFs, as the combination of a series of Trefftz basis, i.e. Exponential basis functions (EBFs), and the fundamental solutions of the governing equation. As will be explained, using a proper set of EBFs, as well as a collocation technique, enables us to construct the AGFs for different types of domain shape and boundary conditions. In the second step, a set of artificially generated results, in the absence of realistic experimental results, are used to express the plate’s response field, i.e. deflection or velocity fields, as a series of AGFs through a collocation technique. It will be shown how the constant coefficients of the response series are related to the intensity of the reconstructed force at a set of selected points. The proposed method is capable of constructing both distributed and concentrated loads with desirable accuracy. This ability is shown in the solution of three sample problems of the static and time-harmonic force recovery.     

On probabilistic n-ary hypergroups

The T-fuzzy n-ary subhypergroups of an n-ary hypergroup are defined by using triangular norms and some related properties are hence obtained. In particular, we consider the probabilistic version of n-ary hypergroups by using random sets and show that the fuzzy n-ary hypergroups defined by triangular norms are consequences of some probabilistic n-ary hypergroups under certain conditions. Some results on n-ary hypergroups recently given by Davvaz and Corsini are extended.     

Combining OWL ontologies using -Connections

The standardization of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) leaves (at least) two crucial issues for Web-based ontologies unsatisfactorily resolved, namely how to represent and reason with multiple distinct, but linked ontologies, and how to enable effective knowledge reuse and sharing on the Semantic Web.In this paper, we present a solution for these fundamental problems based on -Connections. We aim to use -Connections to provide modelers with suitable means for developing Web ontologies in a modular way and to provide an alternative to the owl:imports construct.With such motivation, we present in this paper a syntactic and semantic extension of the Web Ontology language that covers -Connections of OWL-DL ontologies. We show how to use such an extension as an alternative to the owl:imports construct in many modeling situations. We investigate different combinations of the logics , and for which it is possible to design and implement reasoning algorithms, well-suited for optimization.Finally, we provide support for -Connections in both an ontology editor, SWOOP, and an OWL reasoner, Pellet.     

Benchmark Problem for Response Control of Wind-Excited Tall Buildings

This paper presents an overview and problem definition of a benchmark problem for the response control of wind-excited tall buildings. The building considered is a 76-story 306 m concrete office tower proposed for the city of Melbourne, Australia. The building is slender with a height to width ratio of 7.3; hence, it is wind sensitive. Wind tunnel tests for such a 76-story building model have been conducted at the University of Sydney and the results of across-wind data are used in the present benchmark problem. Either active, semiactive, or passive control systems can be installed in the building to reduce the wind response, although only an active control sample problem has been worked out to illustrate the control design. In the case of active control systems, either an active tuned mass damper or an active mass driver can be installed on the top floor. In the case of passive or semiactive systems, such as viscous dampers, viscoelastic dampers, electrorheological, or magnetorheological dampers, etc., control devices can be installed in selected story units. Control constraints and evaluation criteria are presented for the design problem. A simulation program based on the linear quadratic Gaussian technique has been developed and made available for the comparison of the performance of various control strategies.     

Institutionalized computer workaround practices in a Mediterranean country: an examination of two organizations

Information systems research often treats computer workarounds tangentially and as temporary phenomena. This exploratory research embraces anomalous system use in general and computer workarounds in particular by suggesting why the latter can be institutionalized and how they may be manifested in practice. Anomalous use is defined as sociomaterial actions around an IT artifact not consistent with its design or related official rules that nevertheless constitute system enactment in practice. The persistence of computer workarounds might be explained by the tension between top-down pressures from the external environment and bottom-up constraints from day-to-day operational work. These insights are drawn from an up-close study of workarounds in two cases from the Mediterranean region. The workaround practices involve decoupling and loose coupling, effectively creating ‘equilibrium’ between the aforementioned top-down and bottom-up influences. This may be attributed to parity between the influence exercised by external regulatory/accrediting bodies and the constraints of day-to-day work within the focal organization (i.e., work ethos, material constraints, and discretion to decouple). Our results show why some computer workarounds exhibit institutionalized behavior and their antecedent conditions. We also suggest that constituent workaround practices may exist as twin but distinctive behavioral patterns – non-compliance (or partial compliance) with an official rule and partially (or fully) working around designed systems.     

Soft tissue deformation with reaction-diffusion process for surgery simulation

This paper presents a new methodology to conduct modelling and analysis of soft tissue deformation from the physicochemical viewpoint of soft tissues for surgery simulation. The novelty of this methodology is that soft tissue deformation is converted into a reaction-diffusion process coupled with a mechanical load, and thus reaction-diffusion of mechanical load and non-rigid mechanics of motion are combined to govern the dynamics of soft tissue deformation. The mechanical load applied to a soft tissue to cause a deformation is incorporated into the reaction-diffusion system and consequently distributed among mass points of the soft tissue. An improved reaction-diffusion model is developed to describe the distribution of the mechanical load in the tissue. A generic finite difference scheme is presented for construction of the reaction-diffusion model on a 3D tissue surface. A gradient method is established for derivation of internal forces from the distribution of the mechanical load. Real-time interactive deformation of virtual human organs with haptic feedback has been achieved by the proposed methodology for surgery simulation. The proposed methodology not only accommodates isotropic, anisotropic and inhomogeneous materials by simply modifying diffusion coefficients, but also accepts local and large-range deformations simultaneously.