Multi-objective crashworthiness optimization of tapered thin-walled tubes with axisymmetric indentations

In this paper, the effects of tapering and introducing axisymmetric indentations on the crash performances of thin-walled tubes are investigated. The crash performances of the tubes are evaluated using two metrics: the crush force efficiency (CFE, the ratio of the average crushing load to the peak load), and the specific energy absorption (SEA, absorbed energy per unit mass). The optimum values of the number of the axisymmetric indentations, the radius of the indentations, the taper angle and the tube thickness are sought for maximum CFE and maximum SEA using surrogate based optimization. In addition, multi-objective optimization of the tubes is performed by maximizing a composite objective function that provides a compromise between CFE and SEA. The CFE and SEA values at the training points of surrogate models (metamodels) are computed using the finite element analysis code LS-DYNA. Polynomial response surfaces, radial basis functions, and Kriging are the different surrogate models used in this study. Surrogate based optimization of the tubes showed that the tubes with indentations have better crush performance than tubes without indentations. It is found that maximum CFE requires large number of indentations with high radius, small thickness, and medium taper angle, while maximum SEA requires small number of indentations with low radius, large thickness and small taper angle. It is also found that the globally most accurate surrogate model does not necessarily lead to the optimum.     

Cubic Phase GaN on Nano‐grooved Si (100) via Maskless Selective Area Epitaxy

A method of forming cubic phase (zinc blende) GaN (referred as c‐GaN) on a CMOS‐compatible on‐axis Si (100) substrate is reported. Conventional GaN materials are hexagonal phase (wurtzite) (referred as h‐GaN) and possess very high polarization fields (～MV/cm) along the common growth direction of <0001>. Such large polarization fields lead to undesired shifts (e.g., wavelength and current) in the performance of photonic and vertical transport electronic devices. The cubic phase of GaN materials is polarization‐free along the common growth direction of <001>, however, this phase is thermodynamically unstable, requiring low‐temperature deposition conditions and unconventional substrates (e.g., GaAs). Here, novel nano‐groove patterning and maskless selective area epitaxy processes are employed to integrate thermodynamically stable, stress‐free, and low‐defectivity c‐GaN on CMOS‐compatible on‐axis Si. These results suggest that epitaxial growth conditions and nano‐groove pattern parameters are critical to obtain such high quality c‐GaN. InGaN/GaN multi‐quantum‐well structures grown on c‐GaN/Si (100) show strong room temperature luminescence in the visible spectrum, promising visible emitter applications for this technology.     

Orthonormal FBs With Rational Sampling Factors and Oversampled DFT-Modulated FBs: A Connection and Filter Design

Methods widely used to design filters for uniformly sampled filter banks (FBs) are not applicable for FBs with rational sampling factors and oversampled discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-modulated FBs. In this paper, we show that the filter design problem (with regularity factors/vanishing moments) for these two types of FBs is the same. Following this, we propose two finite-impulse-response (FIR) filter design methods for these FBs. The first method describes a parameterization of FBs with a single regularity factor/vanishing moment. The second method, which can be used to design FBs with an arbitrary number of regularity factors/vanishing moments, uses results from frame theory. We also describe how to modify this method so as to obtain linear phase filters. Finally, we discuss and provide a motivation for iterated DFT-modulated FBs.     

On the Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Packet and $M$-Band Transforms

The two-band discrete wavelet transform (DWT) provides an octave-band analysis in the frequency domain, but this might not be ldquooptimalrdquo for a given signal. The discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT) provides a dictionary of bases over which one can search for an optimal representation (without constraining the analysis to an octave-band one) for the signal at hand. However, it is well known that both the DWT and the DWPT are shift-varying. Also, when these transforms are extended to 2-D and higher dimensions using tensor products, they do not provide a geometrically oriented analysis. The dual-tree complex wavelet transform , introduced by Kingsbury, is approximately shift-invariant and provides directional analysis in 2-D and higher dimensions. In this paper, we propose a method to implement a dual-tree complex wavelet packet transform , extending the as the DWPT extends the DWT. To find the best complex wavelet packet frame for a given signal, we adapt the basis selection algorithm by Coifman and Wickerhauser, providing a solution to the basis selection problem for the . Lastly, we show how to extend the two-band to an -band (provided that ) using the same method.     

Conjugated polythiophene/Ni doped ZnO hetero bilayer nanocomposite thin films: Its structural,optical and photoluminescence properties

In this study, synthesis and characterization of plasma polymerized Thiophene/ Nickel doped Zinc Oxide (PTNZO) bilayer nanocomposite films were carried out. Nickel doped zinc oxide (NZO) thin films were obtained by magnetron sputtering technique on glass substrates at 40 W Radio Frequency (RF) power. Plasma polymerized Thiophene (PT) thin films were deposited on the NZO thin films obtained on the glass substrate by Radio Frequency (RF) plasma polymerisation technique. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), FTIR and Photoluminescence (PL) analyzes were performed for the characterization of PTNZO hetero bilayer nanocomposite films. In the XRD spectra of PTNZO bilayer nanocomposite thin films, (002) planes were determined as the most basic peak, and it was determined that the intensity of this peak, changed depending on the RF power of polymer thin films. Optical properties of nanocomposite thin films such as transmittance, absorbance and optical band gap were determined by UV–Vis spectroscopy. Optical band gap for PTNZO nanocomposites were 2.72?eV, 2.34?eV, and 2.45?eV, respectively, with increasing RF power. For NZO thin films, this value is 3.12?eV. The optical band gaps calculated from the absorption and transmittance spectra obtained using UV–visible spectroscopy had a good compatibility with those of the optical band spectra calculated from the PL spectra. The tetragonal wurtzite structure of the NZO thin films was examined by SEM analysis. The grain size of NZO nanostructure was found to be approximately 59?nm.     

Fuzzy logic-based performance improvement on MAC layer in wireless local area networks

There are many studies that have been done to improve the quality of service of wireless local area networks (WLANs). Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) WLAN are based on IEEE 802.11 protocol. The 802.11e medium access control (MAC) protocol is generally recommended for efficient quality of service in WLANs. There are many parameters in the MAC protocol that affect quality of services. Among these parameters, request to send threshold value (RSTV), fragmentation threshold value (FTV) and buffer size (BS) directly affect network performance. RSTV is used in the request to send/clear to send (RTS/CTS) mechanism in the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol for collision prevention. This parameter specifies the threshold used to activate the CSMA/CA protocol. FTV is another parameter that is used to send large-sized packets by dividing them into appropriate fragments during CSMA/CA transmission and reduces packet loss in WLAN. BS is another parameter that has a significant cost in the CSMA/CA model and also directly affects the performance. In this article, to improve the performance of WLANs, OPNET Modeler was used and ideal values were obtained for RSTV, FTV and BS by using fuzzy logic-based method. The values obtained by fuzzy logic were re-tested in OPNET Modeler, and the achieved improvement was as follows: for delay 36–38%, for load 2–10% and for throughput 25–44%, respectively. Thus, in WLANs, performance was improved by using fuzzy logic-based method.

     

On the polymer modified cement mortars with different lightweight aggregates in marine environment

Having a light weight is a design objective for offshore and coastal structures and in order to reach this aim, use of lightweight concrete consisting lightweight aggregates and polymers is a feasible solution. In this study, materials obtained from locally available crushed volcanic scoria as main aggregate and some additional lightweight aggregates with ceramic, perlite and andesite as well polymers were used in the mixtures with different proportions (totally 14 mixtures) to propose feasible alternatives for coastal structure designers. To evaluate the design performances of the mixtures, their properties such as density, cylinder compressive strength, capillarity, loss of mass under the effects of the agents in marine environment such as sodium sulphate and sodium chloride were obtained experimentally. It was found that mixtures with scoria aggregates showed more favourable results and additional aggregates gave flexibility to the designer to lower densities up to 40 % ‐ 60 % of normal‐weight mixtures. Polymer modification also improved the performance of the related materials.     

Cell-type based semantic segmentation of histopathological images using deep convolutional neural networks

Histopathological whole-slide image (WSI) analysis is still one of the most important ways to identify regions of cancer risk. For cancer in which early diagnosis is vital, pathologists are at the center of the decision-making process. Thanks to the widespread use of digital pathology and the development of artificial intelligence methods, automatic histopathological image analysis methods help pathologists in their decision-making process. In this process, rather than producing labels for whole-slide image patches, semantic segmentation is very useful, which facilitates the pathologists’ interpretation. In this study, automatic semantic segmentation based on cell type is proposed for the first time in the literature using novel deep convolutional networks structure (DCNN). We presents semantic information on four classes, including white areas in the whole-slide image, tissue without cells, tissue with normal cells and tissue with cancerous cells. This visual information presented to the pathologist is an easy-to-understand picture of the status of the cells and their implications for the spread of cancerous cells. A new DCNN architecture is created, inspired by the residual network and deconvolution network architecture. Our network is trained end-to-end manner with histopathological image patches for cell structures to be more discriminative. The proposed method not only produces more successful results than other state-of-art semantic segmentation algorithms with 9.2% training error and 88.89% F-score for test, but also has the most important advantage in that it has the ability to generate automatic information about the cancer and also provides information that pathologists can quickly interpret.     

Effect of fexofenadine on eosinophil-induced changes in epithelial permeability and cytokine release from nasal epithelial cells of patients with seasonal allergic rhinitis

Recent studies have suggested that antihistamines, widely used in the treatment of symptoms of patients with allergic rhinitis, may also possess antiinflammatory properties. The mechanisms underlying this property, however, are not clearly understood. We have cultured epithelial cells from nasal biopsy specimens from patients with seasonal allergic rhinitis outside the pollen season and studied the effect of 0 to 10(-3) mol/L fexofenadine, the main active metabolite of terfenadine, on eosinophil-induced changes in electrical resistance (measure of permeability) and release of proinflammatory mediators from these cells. Additionally, we have studied the effect of this drug on eosinophil chemotaxis and adherence to endothelial cells induced by conditioned medium from these human nasal epithelial cell (HNEC) cultures. Incubation of HNEC in the presence of eosinophils treated with opsonized latex beads significantly decreased the electrical resistance of these cultures, an effect that was abrogated by treatment of the cultures with 10(-9) to 10(-3) mol/L fexofenadine. Similarly, incubation of HNEC in the presence of eosinophils treated with latex beads also significantly increased the basal release of the chemokine "regulated upon activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted" (RANTES) (from 96.0 to 613.0 fg/microg cellular protein; p < 0.05), IL-8 (from 42.0 to 198.5 pg/microg cellular protein; p < 0.05), granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) (from 0.54 to 3.4 pg/microg cellular protein; p < 0.05), and soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1) (from 7.8 to 18.4 pg/microg cellular protein; p < 0.05) from HNEC. The eosinophil-induced release of IL-8, GM-CSF, and sICAM-1 from the HNEC was significantly attenuated by treatment with fexofenadine. Analysis of the effects of conditioned medium from HNEC demonstrated that this significantly increased both eosinophil chemotaxis and adherence to endothelial cells. Addition of 10(-6) to 10(-3) mol/L fexofenadine to the conditioned medium significantly attenuated eosinophil chemotaxis and adherence to endothelial cells. These results suggest that fexofenadine may reduce nasal inflammation by modulating the release of proinflammatory mediators and adhesion molecules from HNEC.