Characterization of titanium aluminide alloy components fabricated by additive manufacturing using electron beam melting

Intermetallic, γ-TiAl, equiaxed, small-grain (～2 μm) structures with lamellar γ/α₂-Ti₃Al colonies with average spacing of 0.6 μm have been fabricated by additive manufacturing using electron beam melting (EBM) of precursor, atomized powder. The residual microindentation (Vickers) hardness (HV) averaged 4.1 GPa, corresponding to a nominal yield strength of ～1.4 GPa (～HV/3), and a specific yield strength of 0.37 GPa cm³ g^?1 (for a density of 3.76 g cm^?3), in contrast to 0.27 GPa cm³ g^?1 for EBM-fabricated Ti–6Al–4V components. These results demonstrate the potential to fabricate near net shape and complex titanium aluminide products directly using EBM technology in important aerospace and automotive applications.     

Electrochemical and optical properties of biphenyl bridged-dicarbazole oligomer films: Electropolymerization and electrochromism

4,4′-Di(N-carbazoyl)biphenyl monomer (CBP) was synthesized and coated onto ITO–glass surface by electrochemical oxidative polymerization. Its CV shows two distinct one-electron and stepwise oxidation processes occurred at 1.29 and 1.61 V. By using this property, the monomer was electrochemically polymerized separately at these oxidation states and thus, two different oligomer films were obtained afterwards. Their spectro-electrochemical and electrochromic properties were also investigated. Switching ability of the oligomers was evaluated by kinetic studies upon measuring the percent transmittance (%T) at their maximum contrast point, indicating that these oligomers were found to be suitable material for electrochromic devices.     

Modeling and prediction of Turkey’s electricity consumption using Artificial Neural Networks

Artificial Neural Networks are proposed to model and predict electricity consumption of Turkey. Multi layer perceptron with backpropagation training algorithm is used as the neural network topology. Tangent-sigmoid and pure-linear transfer functions are selected in the hidden and output layer processing elements, respectively. These input–output network models are a result of relationships that exist among electricity consumption and several other socioeconomic variables. Electricity consumption is modeled as a function of economic indicators such as population, gross national product, imports and exports. It is also modeled using export–import ratio and time input only. Performance comparison among different models is made based on absolute and percentage mean square error. Electricity consumption of Turkey is predicted until 2027 using data from 1975 to 2006 along with other economic indicators. The results show that electricity consumption can be modeled using Artificial Neural Networks, and the models can be used to predict future electricity consumption.     

A generalized reduced fluid dynamic model for flow fields and electrodes in redox flow batteries

High-dimensional models typically require a large computational overhead for multiphysics applications, which hamper their use for broad-sweeping domain interrogation. Herein, we develop a modeling framework to capture the through-plane fluid dynamic response of electrodes and flow fields in a redox flow cell, generating a computationally inexpensive two-dimensional (2D) model. We leverage a depth-averaging approach that also accounts for variations in out-of-plane fluid motion and departures from Darcy's law that arise from averaging across three-dimensions (3D). Our resulting depth-averaged 2D model successfully predicts the fluid dynamic response of arbitrary in-plane flow field geometries, with discrepancies of <5% for both maximum velocity and pressure drop. This corresponds to reduced computational expense, as compared to 3D representations (<1% of duration and 10% of RAM usage), providing a platform to screen and optimize a diverse set of cell geometries.     

Medical thermograms’ classification using deep transfer learning models and methods

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Infrared thermal imaging and deep learning provide intelligent monitoring systems that detect diseases in early phases. However, deep learning models require...     

The influence of reactive milling on the structure and magnetic properties of nanocrystalline MnFe2O4

Nanocrystalline manganese ferrites (MnFe₂O₄) have been synthesized by direct milling of metallic manganese (Mn) and iron (Fe) powders in distilled water (H₂O). In order to overcome the limitation of wet milling, dry milling procedure has also been utilized to reduce crystallite size. The effects of milling time on the formation and crystallite size of wet milled MnFe₂O₄ nanoparticles have been investigated. It has been observed that single phase 18.4 nm nanocrystalline MnFe₂O₄ is obtained after 24 h milling at 400 rpm. Further milling caused deformation of the structure as well as increased crystallite size. With the aim of reducing the crystallite size of 18.4 nm, MnFe₂O₄ sample dry milling has been implemented for 2 and 4 h at 300 rpm. As a result, the crystallite size has been reduced to 12.4 and 8.7 nm, respectively. Effects of the crystalline sizes on magnetic properties were also investigated. Magnetization results clearly demonstrated that crystallite size has much more effect on the magnetic properties than average particle size.     

Structure-based object representation and classification in mobile robotics through a Microsoft Kinect

A new approach enabling a mobile robot to recognize and classify furniture-like objects composed of assembled parts using a Microsoft Kinect is presented. Starting from considerations about the structure of furniture-like objects, i.e., objects which can play a role in the course of a mobile robot mission, the 3D point cloud returned by the Kinect is first segmented into a set of “almost convex” clusters. Objects are then represented by means of a graph expressing mutual relationships between such clusters. Off-line, snapshots of the same object taken from different positions are processed and merged, in order to produce multiple-view models that are used to populate a database. On-line, as soon as a new object is observed, a run-time window of subsequent snapshots is used to search for a correspondence in the database.Experiments validating the approach with a set of objects (i.e., chairs, tables, but also other robots) are reported and discussed in detail.     

A fuzzy logic procedure for ventilation control in case of fire in long tunnels

Ventilation is a crucial element while managing fire events in tunnels. This paper deals with ventilation strategies to be applied in case of fire in a long tunnel. The Frejus road tunnel has been considered as an application. This is a single tube road tunnel with semi-transversal ventilation. Ordinary and emergency ventilations are operated by using dedicated supply and extraction ducts.     

Synthesis of MnFe2O4 nanocrystals by wet-milling under atmospheric conditions

This work reports an original method for synthesis of well-crystallized manganese ferrite (MnFe₂O₄) nanoparticles via a high energy wet milling technique under atmospheric conditions, starting from metallic Mn and Fe powders in the presence of distilled water. The effects of milling conditions on the formation and magnetic properties of MnFe₂O₄ nanoparticles were investigated in detail. Fully stoichiometric MnFe₂O₄ nanocrystals with an average crystallite size of 14.5 nm were produced after 24 h of milling. As-synthesized MnFe₂O₄ nanocrystals were found to show soft magnetic behavior at room temperature with saturation magnetization of 53 emu/g. Due to reduced thermal effects, the saturation magnetization increased to 68 emu/g at 5 K. Results show that this method is simple and efficient for the mass production of MnFe₂O₄ nanoparticles.     

A new conducting polymer of 2,5-bis(2-thienyl)-1H-(pyrrole) (SNS) containing carbazole subunit: Electrochemical, optical and electrochromic properties

We report here the synthesis of a new electroactive monomer 3,6-di-tert-butyl-[4-(2,5-di-2-thienyl-1H-pyrrol-1-yl)phenyl]-9H-carbazole in five steps and polymerization of this monomer by two different procceses: Kumada Coupling and electro-oxidative. The product obtained by chemical polymerization exhibits a high thermal stability and narrow molecular weight distribution. While, in the UV–vis absorption spectrum of monomer the absorption peaks appear at 338 nm, the chemically synthesized polymer absorbs at 428 nm with 90 nm red shift. Cyclic voltammogram of monomer shows two separate oxidation processes which reflect the first oxidation at +0.84 V and a second one at +1.43 V. When the polymeric film prepared by electrochemical process was subjected to a repeated cyclic scan between −0.2 V and +1.0 V, it switches among three different colors (orange, green and blue). The oxidation and reduction response times were calculated as 2.0 s for this polymer film and exhibits high redox stability. The results anticipate that this kind of polymers can be used for designing electrochromics based on the use of one molecule for the generation of three basic colors (RGB).