Object illumination angle measurement in speckle interferometry

Errors in measurement of the object illumination angle affect fringe interpretation accuracies in speckle interferometry. To measure the object illumination angle we propose a method based on the moiré effect. The technique is easy to implement and was found to yield fast and accurate measurements.     

White-light reconstruction setup for shearograms using optical-fiber waveguides

A white-light reconstruction setup for shearograms using optical-fiber waveguides is presented. The setup is compact, is not susceptible to dust and scratches, and enables the two-dimensional fringe pattern on shearograms to be viewed directly under uniform and enhanced illumination with minimal image distortion.     

Non fermi liquid ground states in strongly correlated f-electron materials

Experimental efforts to characterize and develop an understanding of non Fermi liquid (NFL) behavior at low temperature in f-electron materials are reviewed for three f-electron systems: M_1–xU_xPd₃ (M = Sc, Y), U_1–xTh_xPd₂Al₃, and UCu_5–xPd_x. The emerging systematics of NFL behavior in f-electron systems, based on the present sample of nearly ten f-electron systems, is updated. Many of the f-electron systems exhibit the following temperature dependences of the electrical resistivity p, specific heat C, and magnetic susceptibility for T T₀, where T_o is a characteristic temperature: P(T) 1 –aT/T ₀, where a < 0 or > 0, C(T)/T (-1/T _o) In (T/bT ₀), and (T) 1 –c(T/T_o)^1/2. In several of the f-electron systems, the characteristic temperature T_o can be identified with the Kondo temperature T_k.     

Bifurcation of crack pattern in arrays of two-dimensional cracks

Theoretical calculations based on simple arrays of two-dimensional cracks demonstrate that bifurcation of crack growth patterns may exist. The approximation used involves the dipole asymptotic or pseudo-traction method to estimate the local stress intensity factor. This leads to a crack interaction parametrized by the crack length/spacing ratio =a/h. For parallel and edge crack arrays under far field tension, uniform crack growth patterns (all cracks having same size) yield to nonuniform crack growth patterns (bifurcation) if is larger than a critical value _cr. However, no such bifurcation is found for a collinear crack array under tension. For parallel and edge crack arrays, respectively, the value of _cr decreases monotonically from (2/9)^1/2 and (2/15.096)^1/2 for arrays of 2 cracks, to (2/3)^1/2/ and (2/5.032)^1/2/ for infinite arrays of cracks. The critical parameter _cr is calculated numerically for arrays of up to 100 cracks, whilst discrete Fourier transform is used to obtain _cr for infinite crack arrays. For infinite parallel crack arrays under uniaxial compression, a simple shear-induced tensile crack model is formulated and compared to the modified Griffith theory. Based upon the model, _cr can be evaluated numerically depending on (the frictional coefficient) and c ₀/a (c ₀ and a are the sizes of the shear crack and tensile crack, respectively). As an iterative method is used, no closed form solution is presented. However, the numerical calculations do indicate that _cr decreases with the increase of both and c ₀/a.     

SVM for English semantic classification in parallel environment

Semantic analysis is very important and very helpful for many researches and many applications for a long time. SVM is a famous algorithm which is used in the researches and applications in many different fields. In this study, we propose a new model using a SVM algorithm with Hadoop Map (M)/Reduce (R) for English document-level emotional classification in the Cloudera parallel network environment. Cloudera is also a distributed system. Our English testing data set has 25,000 English documents, including 12,500 English positive reviews and 12,500 English negative reviews. Our English training data set has 90,000 English sentences, including 45,000 English positive sentences and 45,000 English negative sentences. Our new model is tested on the English testing data set and we achieve 63.7% accuracy of sentiment classification on this English testing data set.     

A decision tree using ID3 algorithm for English semantic analysis

Natural language processing has been studied for many years, and it has been applied to many researches and commercial applications. A new model is proposed in this paper, and is used in the English document-level emotional classification. In this survey, we proposed a new model by using an ID3 algorithm of a decision tree to classify semantics (positive, negative, and neutral) for the English documents. The semantic classification of our model is based on many rules which are generated by applying the ID3 algorithm to 115,000 English sentences of our English training data set. We test our new model on the English testing data set including 25,000 English documents, and achieve 63.6% accuracy of sentiment classification results.     

Modeling of axis-symmetric steam plasma flow in a non-transferred torch

This paper discusses the numerical modeling of steam plasma in a DC non-transferred torch equipped with well-type cathode, where the non-trivial azimuthal velocity component and turbulent effect are both taken into account. In order to investigate the complicated flow characteristics of thermal plasma due to the interaction between steam and electric arc, the flow filed inside the plasma torch is modeled by the magnetic–hydrodynamic (MHD) equations. The governing equations are then solved numerically using a non-staggered finite volume discretization based on Cartesian grid system. The anode location and maximum current density at cathode are fixed by the corresponding experimental measurement at a given flow rate. The predicted result suggests that the steam plasma can be accelerated to a mean velocity of 1500 m/s at torch outlet with the mass flow rate of 5 g/s and the system current of 180 A. A strong vortex flow structure is found inside the torch due to the introduction of azimuthal velocity at the gas inlet, which should help to stabilize the rotating arc during the torch operation.     

Morphology and intersections of crazes in polystyrene films

Craze network with interconnecting crazes was produced in thin (~60nm) polystyrene films by using a spherical stretching method. For 30% and 45% radial strain, the average mesh size, defined as the square root of average non-crazed areas enclosed by crazes, decreased from about 28m to 4.6 and 2.7m, respectively, as the molecular weight increased from 46 900 to 1 350 000. At a molecular weight of about 10⁶, the interactions between crazes became evident by the split and change of directions at the end of their propagation. Two types of intersection appeared to exist in parallel. The first type showed void formation at the intersections with no apparent fibril displacement effect. The second type showed that the fibrils at the intersection of two perpendicular crazes reoriented to a new direction which seemed to be determined by the relative displacements of the two crazes at the intersections. This observation suggests that the craze fibrils can be displaced and further stretched by a second crazing process.