Anisotropic threshold stress intensity factor, KIH and crack growth rate in delayed hydride cracking of Zr-2.5Nb pressure tubes

The objectives of this study are to systematically investigate the delayed hydride cracking (DHC) velocity and the threshold-stress intensity factor, K _IH , of a Zr-2.5Nb pressure tube as a function of orientation and elucidate the cause of this anistropic DHC behavior. The DHC velocity as a function of orientation was determined using flattened cantilever beam specimens with 60 ppm H while the threshold-stress intensity factor K _IH , was evaluated as a function of orientation on the curved compact-tension (CT) and cantilever-beam (CB) specimens charged with hydrogen to 200 ppm H. To infer a difference in a stress gradient ahead of the crack tip as a function of orientation, tensile tests were conducted at temperatures ranging from room temperature (RT) to 560 °C using small tensile specimens of 2-mm-gage length taken from three directions of the tube. A textural change was investigated by comparing the inverse pole figures before and after DHC while the {10 7} pole figures were constructed to find out the growth pattern of the DHC crack as a function of orientation. Faster DHC velocity and lower K _IH were obtained over temperatures of 170 °C to 270 °C, when the DHC crack grew in the longitudinal direction of the Zr-2.5Nb pressure tube. The strain hardening after yielding and the extent of the textural change accompanied by DHC were higher in the longitudinal direction of the tube, suggesting a higher stress gradient ahead of the crack tip. Thus, the anisotropic DHC behavior of a Zr-2.5Nb pressure tube is discussed based on the stress gradient ahead of the crack tip governed by strain-hardening rate after yielding and a change in texture accompanied by DHC, and the distribution of the {10 7} hydride habit planes. This article is based on a presentation made in the symposium entitled “Defect Properties and Mechanical Behavior of HCP Metals and Alloys” at the TMS Annual Meeting, February 11–15, 2001, in New Orleans, Louisiana, under the auspices of the following ASM committees: Materials Science Critical Technology Sector, Structural Materials Division, Electronic, Magnetic & Photonic Materials Division, Chemistry & Physics of Materials Committee, Joint Nuclear Materials Committee, and Titanium Committee.     

Simulation of the effects of space charge and Schottky barriers on ferroelectric thin film capacitor using Landau Khalatnikov theory

The role of space charge induced in a ferroelectric thin film and the presence of Schottky barriers at the two electrode/film interfaces are studied by numerical simulation using Landau-Khalatnikov theory. In this work, the whole film is considered as the stacking of dipolar layers, each of which contains multilayers of perovskite cells. In the presence of a local electric field, the double-well thermodynamic potential of each layer is modified in an asymmetric manner. The local electric field distribution is determined both by the space charge and the boundary conditions imposed by the Schottky barrier heights. Asymmetric and skewed hysteresis loops are generated     

Red-green-blue laser emissions from dye-doped poly(vinyl alcohol) films

A microscope slide acting as a passive waveguide was coated by three separate poly(vinyl alcohol) films that were doped with Coumarin 460, Disodium Fluorescein, and Rhodamine 640 perchlorate. On collinear pumping by a nitrogen laser, these dyes furnished primary red-green-blue laser emissions that were collected and waveguided by the microscope slide but exited from both ends. Frosting the waveguide exit introduced light scattering at the glass-air interface and spatially overlaid the red-green-blue laser emissions that emerged as a uniform white-light beam.     

Fingerprint classification using fast Fourier transform and nonlinear discriminant analysis

In this paper, we present a new approach for fingerprint classification based on discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and nonlinear discriminant analysis. Utilizing the DFT and directional filters, a reliable and efficient directional image is constructed from each fingerprint image, and then nonlinear discriminant analysis is applied to the constructed directional images, reducing the dimension dramatically and extracting the discriminant features. The proposed method explores the capability of DFT and directional filtering in dealing with low-quality images and the effectiveness of nonlinear feature extraction method in fingerprint classification. Experimental results demonstrates competitive performance compared with other published results.     

Text classification without negative examples revisit

Traditionally, building a classifier requires two sets of examples: positive examples and negative examples. This paper studies the problem of building a text classifier using positive examples (P) and unlabeled examples (U). The unlabeled examples are mixed with both positive and negative examples. Since no negative example is given explicitly, the task of building a reliable text classifier becomes far more challenging. Simply treating all of the unlabeled examples as negative examples and building a classifier thereafter is undoubtedly a poor approach to tackling this problem. Generally speaking, most of the studies solved this problem by a two-step heuristic: first, extract negative examples (N) from U. Second, build a classifier based on P and N. Surprisingly, most studies did not try to extract positive examples from U. Intuitively, enlarging P by P' (positive examples extracted from U) and building a classifier thereafter should enhance the effectiveness of the classifier. Throughout our study, we find that extracting P' is very difficult. A document in U that possesses the features exhibited in P does not necessarily mean that it is a positive example, and vice versa. The very large size of and very high diversity in U also contribute to the difficulties of extracting P'. In this paper, we propose a labeling heuristic called PNLH to tackle this problem. PNLH aims at extracting high quality positive examples and negative examples from U and can be used on top of any existing classifiers. Extensive experiments based on several benchmarks are conducted. The results indicated that PNLH is highly feasible, especially in the situation where |P| is extremely small.     

Universal approximation using incremental constructive feedforward networks with random hidden nodes

According to conventional neural network theories, single-hidden-layer feedforward networks (SLFNs) with additive or radial basis function (RBF) hidden nodes are universal approximators when all the parameters of the networks are allowed adjustable. However, as observed in most neural network implementations, tuning all the parameters of the networks may cause learning complicated and inefficient, and it may be difficult to train networks with nondifferential activation functions such as threshold networks. Unlike conventional neural network theories, this paper proves in an incremental constructive method that in order to let SLFNs work as universal approximators, one may simply randomly choose hidden nodes and then only need to adjust the output weights linking the hidden layer and the output layer. In such SLFNs implementations, the activation functions for additive nodes can be any bounded nonconstant piecewise continuous functions g:R/spl rarr/R and the activation functions for RBF nodes can be any integrable piecewise continuous functions g:R/spl rarr/R and /spl int//sub R/g(x)dx/spl ne/0. The proposed incremental method is efficient not only for SFLNs with continuous (including nondifferentiable) activation functions but also for SLFNs with piecewise continuous (such as threshold) activation functions. Compared to other popular methods such a new network is fully automatic and users need not intervene the learning process by manually tuning control parameters.     

Efficient Internet Multicast Routing Using Anycast Path Selection

A novel efficient and dynamic multicast routing protocol based on anycast routing techniques is presented. The contributions of the protocol differ from well-known shared-tree systems in two aspects: (1) Off-tree anycast routing: The nodes in the shared tree are formed into a virtual anycast group and multicast sources use anycast routing to select a better path from the source to one router in the group to achieve short delay and fault-tolerance. (2) On-tree dynamic routing: The shared-tree approach is extended with capability of alternative path selections. If a node becomes absent from the shared tree, some predefined backup path(s) is (are) used to bypass the node and enable dynamic multicast routing to continue. The protocol requires only the routers near the faulty node to be reconfigured, thus reducing the runtime overhead as compared with global reconfiguration. The simulation data demonstrates the efficiency of our routing protocol.     

Testbed for a scalable terabit optical local area network

The design of a fiber-optic local area network (LAN) demonstration system is described. A complete LAN system would consist of an array of 16 personal computers (PC's), where each PC has a network interface card (NIC) with a parallel fiber-optic datalink to a centralized optoelectronic switch core. The centralized core switches the data generated by 16 NIC's, up to 128 Gbit/s of bandwidth. The demonstrator is designed to scale to terabits of bandwidth by use of an emerging optoelectronic technology, i.e., integrated complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) substrates with vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and photodetector optical input and output. A subset of the complete system was constructed and is operational. A prototype NIC card, with Motorola Optobus VCSEL transceivers for the optical datalinks, was constructed and is described. A prototype high-speed bipolar switch core, with statically configurable electrical positive-emitter coupled-logic 16 x 16 crossbar switches, CMOS field-programmable gate arrays, and Motorola Optobus transceivers, was constructed and is described. We successfully demonstrated the transmission of high-speed packetized data from one NIC card, through 10 m of parallel fiber ribbon and the centralized switch core, and back to the NIC. We summarize our experiences on the design and testing of our first demonstration system and our development toward a terabit switch core.     

Field-programmable smart-pixel arrays: design, VLSI implementation, and applications

A smart-pixel array is a two-dimensional array of optoelectronic devices that combine optical inputs and outputs with electronic processing circuitry. A field-programmable smart-pixel array (FP-SPA) is a smart-pixel array capable of having its electronic functionality dynamically programmed in the field. Such devices could be used in a diverse range of applications, including optical switching, optical digital signal processing, and optical image processing. We describe the design, VLSI implementation, and applications of a first-generation FP-SPA implemented with the 0.8-microm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor-self-electro-optic effect device technology made available through the Lucent Technologies-Advanced Research Projects Agency Cooperative (Lucent/ARPA/COOP) program. We report spice simulations and experimental results of two sample applications: In the first application, we configure this FP-SPA as an array of free-space optical binary switches that can be used in optical multistage networks. In the second, we configure the device as an optoelectronic transceiver for a dynamically reconfigurable free-space intelligent optical backplane called the hyperplane. We also describe the testing setup and the electrical and the optical tests that demonstrate the correct functionality of the fabricated device. Such devices have the potential to reduce significantly the need for custom design and fabrication of application-specific optoelectronic devices in the same manner that field-programmable gate arrays have largely eliminated the need for custom design and fabrication of application-specific gate arrays, except in the most demanding applications.