Strengthening and mechanical stability mechanisms in nanostructured bainite

Understanding the main relationships between the microstructure parameters controlling the strength and ductility of low temperature bainitic microstructures is of considerable importance for further development of these grades. Although the microstructure essentially consists of solely two phases, bainitic ferrite and retained austenite, the complexity of the different microstructural characteristics, the natural consequence of its unique transformation mechanisms, might not provide with one unique answer, but a set of several parameters interdependent among them. This paper will deal with some of these relationships’ microstructure properties, strength, and ductility, with special emphasis in the mechanical stability (TRIP effect) of retained austenite.     

Deposition of droplets from the trachea or bronchus in the respiratory tract during exhalation: A steady-state numerical investigation

Abstract

Respiratory droplets are bioaerosols that originate from the respiratory tract. Knowing their deposition characteristics during exhalation would facilitate the understanding of the source of large respiratory droplets and their importance in the spread of respiratory infectious diseases. In this study, computational fluid dynamics is used to simulate the motion and deposition of droplets released from either trachea or bronchi in a realistic reconstruction of the human respiratory tract. Influences of airflow structures and locations of droplet generation on droplet deposition are studied, and droplets with diameters between 1 and 50?µm are examined. The deposition of droplets is found to be influenced mainly by the droplet diameter and the flow rate of exhalation. The number of droplets released from the trachea or bronchi that can escape into the environment decreases as the flow rate increases. When the flow rate is low (10?L/min), the critical diameter of droplets generated in the lower respiratory system that can escape into the air is approximately 12?µm, but this diameter is approximately 5?µm when the flow rate is medium (30 to 60?L/min) or large (90?L/min). The larynx is the dominant site of deposition for droplets smaller than the critical diameter, while trachea and bronchus are more important locations that account for the deposition of larger droplets. This study indicates that the lower respiratory tract is an important source of fine droplets (<5?µm) in indoor environments, and larger droplets probably originate from the upper respiratory tract, which needs further investigation.

Copyright © 2020 American Association for Aerosol Research     

A second-harmonic LC-quadrature voltage controlled oscillator with direct connection of MOSFETs’ substrate

This work introduces a new low noise second-harmonic quadrature voltage controlled oscillator (QVCO) made by coupling two identical cross-connected LC voltage controlled oscillators. In each of the core oscillators the substrate nodes of the MOS varactors, and also the substrate nodes of the cross-connected MOSFETs are configured in such a way that they act as common mode nodes. Then the core oscillators are coupled together via direct connection of the substrates of the MOS varactors in one of the core oscillators to the substrates of the cross-connected MOSFETs in the other core oscillator, and vice versa. No extra elements are used for coupling of the two core oscillators and therefore no extra noise sources are imposed on the circuit. Operation of the proposed QVCO was investigated with simulation using a commercial 0.18 μm RF CMOS technology: it shows a power dissipation of 9.7 mW from a 1.8 V supply voltage and a simulated phase noise of −125.5 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from center oscillation frequency of 5 GHz. Since the tail transistor can be eliminated, the proposed QVCO can operate with supply voltages as low as 0.5 V, as confirmed with simulation.     

A joint resource allocation‐channel coding design based on distributed source coding

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have found a wide variety of applications recently. However, the challenges in WSNs still remain in improving the sensor energy efficiency and information quality (distortion reduction) of the sensing data transmissions. In this paper, we propose a novel cross‐layer design of resource allocation and channel coding to protect distributed source coding (DSC)‐based data transmission. Resource allocation strategies include rate adaptation and automatic repeat‐request retransmissions. Our proposed joint design of resource allocation, channel coding, and DSC can improve the network energy efficiency and information quality while meeting the data transmission latency requirements. Further, we investigate how the resource allocation enables the network to achieve unequal error protection among correlated DSC streams. Our simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed joint design significantly improves the DSC‐based data transmission quality and the network energy efficiency. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Iron(III) trifluoroacetate and trifluoromethanesulfonate: Recyclable Lewis acid catalysts for one-pot synthesis of 3,4-dihydropyrimidinones or their sulfur analogues and 1,4-dihydropyridines via solvent-free Biginelli and Hantzsch condensation protocols

Iron(III) trifluoroacetate [Fe(CF₃CO₂)₃] or trifluoromethanesulfonate [Fe(CF₃SO₃)₃] catalyzes three component coupling of β-dicarbonyl compounds, aldehydes and urea or thiourea to afford the corresponding 3,4-dihydropyrimidinones or their sulfur analogues under solvent-free conditions. Also, these catalysts were used for one-pot synthesis of 1,4-dihydropyridines via solvent-free Hantzsch reaction. This new protocol allows the recycling of catalysts with no loss in their potency.     

Knowledge-based systems as operational aids in power systemrestoration

The background of power system restoration is analyzed and how this process might benefit from the use of knowledge-based systems is discussed. After describing the state of the art of knowledge-based systems for power system restoration, efforts are made to review knowledge-based techniques to handle system restoration problems. The experiences of system development are reported and evaluation of the systems is addressed. Some needed technological innovations are listed that are required before knowledge-based systems can extensively be applied to power system restoration     

An Efficient SQUID NDE Defect Detection Approach by?Using?an?Adaptive?Finite-Element?Modeling

Incorporating the finite-element method for the modeling of the SQUID NDE response to a predefined defect pattern, an adaptive algorithm has been developed for the reconstruction of unknown defects using an optimization algorithm for updating of the forward problem. The defect reconstruction algorithm starts with an initial estimation for the defect pattern. Then the forward problem is solved and the obtained field pattern is compared with the measured signal from the SQUID NDE system. The result is used by an optimization algorithm to update the defect structure to be incorporated in the FEM forward problem for the next iteration. Since the mentioned model based inverse algorithm normally consumes a lot of computational resources, the number of iterations plays an important role in the determination of the total response convergence time. Consequently, different optimization algorithms have been applied and their performances are compared. In this work by incorporating an efficient forward model and using the stochastic and deterministic optimization algorithms for defect updating we have investigated their performance on the inversion of the SQUID NDE signal and also their ability to defect reconstruction in the noisy environment.     

Synthesis and solubility of calcium fluoride/hydroxy-fluorapatite nanocrystals for dental applications

As the mineral phase of tooth enamel consists of apatite containing fluoride, the “CaF₂-like” salts are of significant interest in dentistry for their roles as labile fluoride reservoirs in caries prevention. Fluoride ion is required for normal dental development because of its therapeutic ability of osteoporosis healing and stimulating osteoblast activity both in vitro and in vivo. In this research, biphasic Calcium fluoride/fluorinated-hydroxyapatite (CF/FHAp) nanocrystals have been successfully synthesized via co-precipitation method. The synthesized powder was characterized by the commonly used bulk techniques such as chemical analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analyses. The obtained results confirmed the formation of biphasic powder composed of about 46% CF and 54% (w/w%) apatite phase which was a solid solution composed of more than 50% fluorapatite (FAp). In addition, in vitro evaluations of the powder were performed, and for investigating their bioactive capacity they were soaked in simulated body fluid (SBF) at different time intervals. The samples showed significant enhancement in bioactivity within few hours of immersion in SBF solution. Also, the EDS analysis clearly showed dissolution and deposition of calcium and phosphate ions on the surface of synthesized biphasic powder after the first week of immersion in SBF solution.     

A new robust capacitively coupled second harmonic quadrature LC oscillator

A study of some reported superharmonic LC quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (LC-QVCO) is performed in which it is shown that robustness of the quadrature oscillation varies depending on the coupling configuration. Next, a new superharmonic LC-QVCO is proposed in which the common source node in either of two identical cross-connected LC-VCOs is coupled via a capacitor to the node common between the two varactors in the LC-tank of the other LC-VCO. As a result of connecting common mode nodes, the currents flowing through the two coupling capacitors are comprised of only the even harmonics. In the proposed coupling configuration there exists a closed loop through which the second harmonic signals circulate. A qualitative argument is presented to justify the robustness of the quadrature nature of the proposed QVCO by applying the Barkhausen phase criterion to the second harmonic signals in the loop. Since the coupling devices are only two capacitors, no extra noise sources and power consumption are added to the core VCOs. A Monte-Carlo simulation showed that the phase error of the proposed QVCO caused by device mismatches is no more than 1°. Also, generalizing this method to several numbers of VCOs in a loop, multiphase signals can be generated. The proposed circuits were designed using a 0.18-μm RF CMOS technology and simulation results are presented.     

Abnormal event detection in crowded scenes using one-class SVM

In this paper, a new method for detecting abnormal events in public surveillance systems is proposed. In the first step of the proposed method, candidate regions are extracted, and the redundant information is eliminated. To describe appearance and motion of the extracted regions, HOG-LBP and HOF are calculated for each region. Finally, abnormal events are detected using two distinct one-class SVM models. To achieve more accurate anomaly localization, the large regions are divided into non-overlapping cells, and the abnormality of each cell is examined separately. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms existing methods based on the UCSD anomaly detection video datasets.