Rheology of cementitious paste with silica fume or limestone

The rheological behaviour of cementitious pastes where cement has increasingly been replaced by densified silica fume (SF), untreated SF or limestone has been studied. The effect of SF on the flow resistance, taken as the area under the flow curve, was found to depend on the dispersing ability of the plasticizer as illustrated by pastes with naphtalene sulphonate-formaldehyde condensate (SNF) and polyether grafted polyacrylate (PA).The gel strengths increased with increasing SF replacement of cement independently of plasticizer type. The cementitious gel strength was, however, depending on the type of SF since pastes with densified SF developed lower gel strengths than pastes with untreated SF. This phenomenon was attributed to agglomerates in the densified SF which remained unbroken by the mixing and measurement sequence.Both flow resistance and gel strength decreased with increasing limestone replacement. Thus, silica fume may have an advantage over limestone filler as stabilizing agent for self-compacting concrete preventing segregation upon standing and reduced form pressure due to a more rapid gel formation.     

Increasing the usefulness of additive spline models by knot removal

Modern techniques for fitting generalized additive models mostly rely on basis expansions of covariates using a large number of basis functions and penalized estimation of parameters. For example, a mixed model approach is used to fit a model for children’s lung function that allows for non-linear influence of several covariates available in a substantial data set. While the resulting model is expected to have good prediction performance, its handling beyond simple visual presentation is problematic. It is shown how the number basis functions of the underlying B-spline representation can be reduced by knot removal techniques without refitting, while preserving the shape of the fitted functions. The condition for exact knot removal is extended towards approximate knot removal by incorporating the covariance matrix of the initial parameter estimates, resulting in considerable simplification of the model. Covariance matrices for the transformed parameter estimates are provided. It is demonstrated that enforcing the knot removal condition during estimation leads to the difference penalties employed in the P-spline approach for estimation of B-spline coefficients, and therefore provides a further justification for this type of penalty. A final transform to a truncated power basis provides a simple equation for the model. This increases transportability, while retaining properties of the initial fit such as good prediction performance.     

A knowledge-based approach to manage information systems interoperability

Interoperability is a key property of enterprise applications, which is hard to achieve due to the large number of interoperating components and semantic heterogeneity. The inherent complexity of interoperability problems implies that there exists no silver bullet to solve them. Rather, the knowledge about how to solve wicked interoperability problems is hidden in the application cases that expose those problems. The paper addresses the question of how to organise and use method knowledge to resolve interoperability problems. We propose the structure of a knowledge-based system that can deliver situation-specific solutions, called method chunks. Situational Method Engineering promotes modularisation and formalisation of method knowledge in the form of reusable method chunks, which can be combined to compose a situation-specific method. The method chunks are stored in a method chunk repository. In order to cater for management and retrieval, we introduce an Interoperability Classification Framework, which is used to classify and tag method chunks and to assess the project situation in which they are to be used. The classification framework incorporates technical as well as business and organisational aspects of interoperability. This is an important feature as interoperability problems typically are multifaceted spanning multiple aspects. We have applied the approach to analyse an industry case from the insurance sector to identify and classify a set of method chunks.     

Ultraviolet photodetectors and readout based on a-IGZO semiconductor technology

In this work, real-time ultraviolet photodetectors are realized through metal–semiconductor–metal (MSM) structures. Amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) is used as semiconductor material and gold as metal electrodes. The readout of an individual sensor is implemented by a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) consisting of an all-enhancement a-IGZO thin-film transistor (TFT) operational amplifier and a switched capacitor (SC) as feedback resistance. The photosensor and the transimpedance amplifier are both manufactured on glass substrates. The measured photosensor possesses a high responsivity R , a low response time t _{R E S} , and a good noise equivalent power value NEP .     

On the adjoint-consistent formulation of interface conditions in goal-oriented error estimation and adaptivity for fluid–structure interaction

The numerical solution of fluid–structure-interaction problems poses a paradox in that most of the computational resources are consumed by the subsystem of least practical interest, viz., the fluid. Goal-oriented adaptive discretization methods provide a paradigm to bypass this paradox. Based on the solution of a dual problem, the contribution of local residuals to the error in a specific goal functional is estimated, and only the regions that yield a dominant contribution are refined. In the present work, we address a fundamental complication in the application of goal-oriented adaptivity to fluid–structure-interaction problems, namely, that the treatment of the interface conditions has nontrivial consequences for the properties of the dual problem. In the context of a linearized model problem, we consider two equivalent discretizations differing only on the formulation of the interface coupling terms. By means of an adjoint consistency analysis, we show that only one of these discretizations is adjoint consistent. Numerical experiments convey that the two discretizations behave very differently for the dual problem, and that the adjoint-consistent discretization yields more reliable error estimates. Based on the adjoint-consistent discretization, we finally present some h- and hp-adaptive results, confirming that tremendous savings in computational cost can be realized through the use of goal-oriented refinement strategies. The numerical experiments illustrate that the goal-oriented approach effectively equilibrates the error contributions of the fluid and structure subsystems, which is imperative for efficiently resolving the coupled fluid–structure-interaction problem, and which cannot be accomplished by uniform or residual-based refinement strategies.     

Method development for epoxy resin analysis

Epoxy resin based negative photo resists are showing interesting properties which are useful for a series of applications in electronic industries (Mark et al. in Encyclopedia of polymer science and engineering, Wiley, New York, 1986; Potter in Epoxide resins, Springer, New York, 1970; May and Tanka in Epoxy resin chemistry and technology, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1973; Bauer in Epoxy resin chemistry, vol 114, American Chemical Society, Washington, 1979; Hood in RAPRA Rev Rep 38:4, 1990). Especially in micro system technologies they promise a high potential. To adjust the properties for the particular application modification of the chemical composition and crosslinker system must be performed. An actual problem is the constancy in behaviour during the LIGA-process of the resist mixture. In this work analytical techniques are used to get a detailed insight into the chemical composition of a commercial available epoxy novolac resin. Methods like size exclusion chromatography (SEC), matrix assisted laser desorption-time of flight (MALDI-ToF) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) offer information about the molecular weight and functionality. The results reveal a distribution in molecular weight and functionality. Due this the resin was chemically modified. After processing a dependency of molecular weight and therefore the amount of epoxy groups existent was obtained.