Oxidation Resistance Coating of LSM and LSCF on SOFC Metallic Interconnects by the Aerosol Deposition Process

Conductive La_0.8Sr_0.2MnO₃ (LSM) and La_0.6Sr_0.4Co_0.2Fe_0.8O₃ (LSCF) layers with a thickness of ∼10 μm were deposited on ferritic stainless steel (SS) by the aerosol deposition method, for use as an oxidation resistance-coating layer in the metallic interconnector of a solid oxide fuel cell. The coated layers were fairly dense without pores or cracks, and maintained good adhesion even after oxidation at 800°C for 100 h. The surface of the bare SS after annealing at 800°C for 100 h was covered with Cr₂O₃ and Fe₃O₄ oxide scales, and the electrical conductivity was sharply decreased. However, the LSM- and LSCF-coated SSs showed a surface microstructure with almost no oxidation and maintained good electrical conductivity after annealing at 800°C for 100 h. The area-specific resistance (ASR) of LSM- and LSCF-coated alloys after 100 h of oxidation at 800°C was 20.6 and 11.7 mΩ·cm², respectively.     

Simplified P–M interaction curve for square steel tube filled with high-strength concrete

The purpose of this study is to propose simplified strength equations that can be conveniently used to establish a P–M interaction curve of square concrete filled tubes (CFTs) with concrete strength of up to 100 MPa. The method presented in the author's previous study [Choi Y-H, Foutch DA, LaFave JM. New approach to AISC P–M interaction curve for concrete filled tube beam-columns. Eng Struct 2006;28(11):1586–98] was used as a basic unified formula for pure steel members and CFT ones, and a parametric study was performed to determine the contribution of the concrete, which were expressed by two variables: a normalized maximum moment, α, and the axial load ratio at the maximum moment, β. The two variables were formulated with respect to tube width-to-thickness ratio (b/t) and relative concrete compressive strength to yield strength of the steel tube (f′_c/F_y). Then, the proposed method were compared to experimental data found in literatures, which showed greatly improved results in terms of accuracy and amount of computation, when compared to the current AISC design methods.     

Effect of high pressure treatments combined with various levels of κ-carrageenan on cold-set binding in restructured pork

This study investigated the effects of high pressure processing and κ-carrageenan on cold-set binding in restructured pork meat. High pressure (>200 MPa) combined with carrageenan level higher than 1.5% caused increased breaking force and tensile strength ( P  < 0.05). Increasing the pressure level caused a continuous κ-carrageenan network in the junctions between meat particles, as confirmed by scanning electron microscopy imaging. With regard to the water binding properties, all treatments showed moisture content ranging between 74% and 76%. Increases in pressure levels and holding times tended to improve the water-holding capacity (WHC) of restructured pork; however, the κ-carrageenan concentration showed no relation with WHC. Cooking loss decreased significantly ( P  < 0.05) with increases in both pressure level and κ-carrageenan concentration. By increasing pressure levels, both the L ^*- and a ^*-values increased, but the b ^*-value showed no significant difference ( P  > 0.05) among the treatments, with the exception of 100 MPa for 30 min. The addition of κ-carrageenan had no effect on colour ( P  > 0.05). Therefore, the results indicate that pressure above 200 MPa and addition of 1.5% carrageenan has potential use in cold-set meat restructuring.     

Decompositions of bubbly flow PIV velocity fields using discrete wavelets multi-resolution and multi-section image method

Currently, wavelet transforms are widely used for the analyses of particle image velocimetry (PIV) velocity vector fields. This is because the wavelet provides not only spatial information of the velocity vectors, but also of the time and frequency domains. In this study, a discrete wavelet transform is applied to real PIV images of bubbly flows. The vector fields obtained by a self-made cross-correlation PIV algorithm were used for the discrete wavelet transform. The performances of the discrete wavelet transforms were investigated by changing the level of power of discretization. The images decomposed by wavelet multi-resolution showed conspicuous characteristics of the bubbly flows for the different levels. A high spatial bubble concentrated area could be evaluated by the constructed discrete wavelet transform algorithm, in which high-leveled wavelets play dominant roles in revealing the flow characteristics.     

Fuzzy QFD for supply chain management with reliability consideration

Although many products are made through several tiers of supply chains, a systematic way of handling reliability issues in a various product planning stage has drawn attention, only recently, in the context of supply chain management (SCM). The main objective of this paper is to develop a fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) model in order to convey fuzzy relationship between customers needs and design specification for reliability in the context of SCM. A fuzzy multi criteria decision-making procedure is proposed and is applied to find a set of optimal solution with respect to the performance of the reliability test needed in CRT design. It is expected that the proposed approach can make significant contributions on the following areas: effectively communicating with technical personnel and users; developing relatively error-free reliability review system; and creating consistent and complete documentation for design for reliability.     

Thermodynamic investigation of methanol and dimethyl ether synthesis from CO2 Hydrogenation

The thermodynamics involved in the catalytic hydrogenation of CO₂ have been examined extensively. By assuming that methanol and dimethyl ether (DME) are the main products, two reaction systems each consisting of two pararell reactions were analyzed and compared in terms of the equilibrium yield and selectivity of the useful products, methanol and DME. The calculation results demonstrated that the production of DME allows much higher oxygenate yield and selectivity than that of methanol.     

Direct adaptive control with integral action for nonminimum phase systems

This note presents a direct adaptive control scheme for nonminimum phase systems where controller parameters are estimated from the recursive least-squares algorithm. Some additional auxiliary parameters are obtained from the proposed polynomial identity,, and a local convergence is guaranteed without any extra conditions. Integral action is incorporated into the adaptive controller to eliminate the steady-state error, and to satisfy a condition of the unique solution for the polynomial identity as well.     

Removal of manganese from water using combined chelation/membrane separation systems.

The addition of the chelating polymer polyacrylic acid (PAA) to assist in the removal of manganese from groundwater by membranes was investigated using membranes with different pore sizes under various operating conditions. Negligible manganese removal was achieved with the UF and NF membranes at acidic pH values, but removals exceeding 90% could be achieved at elevated pH (pH 9), presumably due to the formation of manganese hydroxides. Mn removal increased substantially when PAA was added to the feed solution, due to chelation of Mn by the PAA and rejection of the chelates by the membranes. The chelate could be broken at acidic pH, releasing free PAA that could then be separated from the Mn ions and reused. Smaller PAA molecules were lost in the first regeneration cycle, but negligible PAA was lost in subsequent cycles. In the systems with PAA, nitrate ions were rejected more efficiently than in the PAA-free systems, presumably because of electrical repulsion between nitrate ions and PAA sorbed on the membrane surface. With increasing PAA dose, the volumetric flux first decreased and then increased; the latter result was accompanied by a change in the physical-chemical form of the polymers, as indicated by an increase in turbidity.     

Design tradeoff analysis of floating-point adders in FPGAs

With gate counts of ten million, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are becoming suitable for floating-point computations. Addition is the most complex operation in a floating-point unit and can cause major delay while requiring a significant area. Over the years, the VLSI community has developed many floating-point adder algorithms aimed primarily at reducing the overall latency. An efficient design of the floating-point adder offers major area and performance improvements for FPGAs. Given recent advances in FPGA architecture and area density, latency has become the main focus in attempts to improve performance. This paper studies the implementation of standard; leading-one predictor (LOP); and far and close datapath (2-path) floating-point addition algorithms in FPGAs. Each algorithm has complex sub-operations which contribute significantly to the overall latency of the design. Each of the sub-operations is researched for different implementations and is then synthesized onto a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA device. Standard and LOP algorithms are also pipelined into five stages and compared with the Xilinx IP. According to the results, the standard algorithm is the best implementation with respect to area, but has a large overall latency of 27.059 ns while occupying 541 slices. The LOP algorithm reduces latency by 6.5% at the cost of a 38% increase in area compared to the standard algorithm. The 2-path implementation shows a 19% reduction in latency with an added expense of 88% in area compared to the standard algorithm. The five-stage standard pipeline implementation shows a 6.4% improvement in clock speed compared to the Xilinx IP with a 23% smaller area requirement. The five-stage pipelined LOP implementation shows a 22% improvement in clock speed compared to the Xilinx IP at a cost of 15% more area.