Kinetics, mechanism, isotherm and thermodynamic analysis of adsorption of cadmium ions by surface-modified Strychnos potatorum seeds

The surface-modified Strychnos potatorum seeds (SMSP) were used as an effective low-cost adsorbent for the removal of cadmium ions from aqueous solution. SMSP was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopic analyses. The effect of operating variables such as solution pH, adsorbent dose, contact time, initial cadmium ions concentration and temperature on the removal of cadmium ions were studied in a batch mode adsorption operation. The optimum conditions for the adsorption of cadmium ions onto the SMSP were found to be: pH of 5.0, SMSP dose of 2 g/L, contact time of 30min, temperature of 30 °C for an initial cadmium ions concentration of 100 mg/L. Kinetic data were analyzed using the pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order kinetic equations, intraparticle diffusion model, Boyd kinetic model and shrinking core model. The characteristic parameters for each model have been estimated. Adsorption of cadmium ions onto the SMSP follows the pseudo-second order kinetic model. The rate-limiting steps in the adsorption process were found to be external and internal diffusion. Equilibrium data were well described by the Langmuir isotherm model than the Freundlich isotherm model, which yields a maximum monolayer adsorption capacity of 200 mg/g. Thermodynamic parameters such as standard free energy change, enthalpy change and entropy change were also estimated. The results show that the removal of cadmium ions by the SMSP was found to be spontaneous and exothermic.     

Single wall nanotube and vapor grown carbon fiber reinforced polymers processed by extrusion freeform fabrication

Single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and vapor grown carbon fibers (VGCFs) were compounded with poly(acrylonitrile-co-butadiene-co-styrene) (ABS) to create composite materials for use with Extrusion Freeform Fabrication (EFF). The composite materials possessed homogeneously dispersed fibers that were oriented with EFF processing. The VGCF and SWNT reinforced materials processed by EFF displayed improved tensile modulus compared to similarly processed ABS and composite material with isotropic fiber orientation, and the SWNT reinforced material displayed the highest properties, strength and modulus, of the materials studied. The materials containing oriented VGCFs and SWNTs showed modulus improvements of 44 and 93%, respectively.     

Lubrication Analysis of a Connecting-Rod Bearing in a High-Speed Engine. Part I: Rod and Bearing Deformation

Analysis was performed on a connecting rod assembly operating at 6,500 rpm. The analysis was based on the finite element method, which includes effects of interference fitted bearings and pre-loaded bolts. The rod inertia force associated with the gas pressure was found to have a significant effect on the variation of the rod bearing shape. The shape variation of a connecting rod assembly is commonly ignored in rod bearing analyses. Investigation of bearing deformation was conducted in order to evaluate the lubrication characteristics.     

Characterisation of Microstructures,Deformation, and Fatigue Damage in Different Steels Using Magnetic Barkhausen Emission Technique

The characterization of microstructures, mechanical properties, deformation, damage initiation, and growth by Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques is assuming a vital role in various industries because of the growing awareness of the benefits that can be derived by using NDE techniques for assessing the performance of various components. NDE is widely applied for assessment of material degradation, where investment in new plants is not cost-effective and safe operational life of existing plants needs to be extended. In recent years, various advanced NDE techniques have been successfully employed for characterization of defects and microstructural features such as grain size, texture, nucleation and growth of second phases, assessment of tensile, creep and fatigue properties, deformation, and damage. With the advent of fracture mechanics concepts, microstructure, defects as well as stresses must be quantitatively characterized to have reliable and fail-safe materials and components. Any alteration in the microstructure, which reduces the life or performance, should be predicted sufficiently in advance in order to ensure safe, reliable, and economic operation of the components. This is possible when one realizes that the interaction of the nondestructive probing medium with the material depends on the substructural/microstructural features such as point defects, dislocations, voids, micro and macro cracks, secondary phases, texture, residual stress, etc. In this paper, use of Magnetic Barkhausen Emission technique for characterization of microstructures, deformation, and fatigue damage in different steels would be discussed. When a ferromagnetic material is subjected to a varying magnetic field, the magnetic flux densidy during magnetization varies in discrete steps as the magnetic domain walls have to overcome various types of obstacles during their movement. The discrete changes in magnetization induce electric voltage pulses in pickup coil placed near the surface of ferromagnetic materials. This noise like voltage pulses were, firstly observed by Barkhausen in 1919 and this phenomenon is named as magnetic Barkhausen Noise (MBN) or magnetic Barkhausen emission (MBE). Based on the two stage magnetization process modeled by the authors, the size of the grain/lath and carbides in ferritic steels could be correlated with MBE parameters. The influence of morphology of cementite (lamellar and spheroidized) on the MBE behaviour has been understood. Various stages of tensile deformation, viz. (i) perfectly elastic, (ii) micro-plastic yielding, (iii) macroyielding, and (iv) progressive plastic deformation in ferritic steels could be identified using the MBE parameters. The hardening depth and its quality with respect to the microstructure in induction hardened specimens could also be established using the MBE technique. MBE is found to be highly sensitive in detection of stress induced martensite in stainless steels with metastable austenite phase. Different stages of fatigue damage in 9Cr-1Mo steel, viz. (i) cyclic hardening, (ii) softening, (iii) saturation, and (iv) crack initiation could be identified using the MBE parameters.     

Generalized sampling theorems in multiresolution subspaces

It is well known that under very mild conditions on the scaling function, multiresolution subspaces are reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs). This allows for the development of a sampling theory. In this paper, we extend the existing sampling theory for wavelet subspaces in several directions. We consider periodically nonuniform sampling, sampling of a function and its derivatives, oversampling, multiband sampling, and reconstruction from local averages. All these problems are treated in a unified way using the perfect reconstruction (PR) filter bank theory. We give conditions for stable reconstructions in each of these cases. Sampling theorems developed in the past do not allow the scaling function and the synthesizing function to be both compactly supported, except in trivial cases. This restriction no longer applies for the generalizations we study here, due to the existence of FIR PR banks. In fact, with nonuniform sampling, oversampling, and reconstruction from local averages, we can guarantee compactly supported synthesizing functions. Moreover, local averaging schemes have additional nice properties (robustness to the input noise and compression capabilities). We also show that some of the proposed methods can be used for efficient computation of inner products in multiresolution analysis. After this, we extend the sampling theory to random processes. We require autocorrelation functions to belong to some subspace related to wavelet subspaces. It turns out that we cannot recover random processes themselves (unless they are bandlimited) but only their power spectral density functions. We consider both uniform and nonuniform sampling     

A low-complexity eigenfilter design method for channel shortening equalizers for DMT systems

We present a new low-complexity method for the design of channel shortening equalizers for discrete multitone (DMT) modulation systems using the eigenfilter approach. In contrast to other such methods which require a Cholesky decomposition for each delay parameter value used, ours requires only one such decomposition. Simulation results show that our method performs nearly optimally in terms of observed bit rate.     

Monte Carlo Simulation of Carbon Nanotube Devices

A self-consistent Monte Carlo simulator for carbon-nanotube, field-effect transistors (CNTFETs) is reported. Transport is simulated in zigzag (n, 0) nanotubes having a coaxial gating geometry, and key aspects of the Monte Carlo implementation are described. The simulator is used to extract the channel mean-free path (MFP) of CNTFETs. Although the mean-free path of acoustic phonons in metallic tubes is known to be very large (on the order of a micron), our results show that the channel MFP is much shorter and bias dependent in CNTFETs, and that CNTFETs therefore operate near the ballistic limit only at channel lengths that are considerably shorter than those required for near-ballistic transport in metallic tubes.     

Parallel integer sorting using small operations

We consider the problem of sortingn integers in the range [0,n ^c -1], wherec is a constant. It has been shown by Rajasekaran and Sen [14] that this problem can be solved optimally inO(logn) steps on an EREW PRAM withO(n) n -bit operations, for any constant >O. Though the number of operations is optimal, each operation is very large. In this paper, we show thatn integers in the range [0,n ^c -1] can be sorted inO(logn) time withO(nlogn)O(1)-bit operations andO(n) O(logn)-bit operations. The model used is a non-standard variant of an EREW PRAMtthat permits processors to have word-sizes ofO(1)-bits and (logn)-bits. Clearly, the speed of the proposed algorithm is optimal. Considering that the input to the problem consists ofO (n logn) bits, the proposed algorithm performs an optimal amount of work, measured at the bit level.This work was partially supported by The Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC) at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244 and The Rome Air Development Center, under contract F30602-88-D-0027.