Characterization of petroleum pitch using steady shear experiments

Asphalt for highway and runway construction is processed by either air blowing or blending with different petroleum streams. In the blending process, petroleum pitch, a by-product of solvent deasphalting of the vacuum residue is mixed with heavy extract to produce asphalt of the desired specifications. The rheological response of blended asphalt hence depends to a large extent on the constitutive property of petroleum pitch. In an aim to develop robust models for blended asphalt, modeling the mechanical behavior of petroleum pitch hence becomes necessary.In this work reported here, petroleum pitch from crude sources such as Basrah Light, Arab Mix and Arab Light are subjected to steady shear for 99 min at temperatures ranging from 70 to 120 °C for different shear rates. Each of these material exhibited different stress overshoot and decay during steady shear depending on the temperature and shear rate. A viscoelastic fluid model of the rate type is selected to model the response of the material. Using the recent thermodynamic framework based on Gibbs potential proposed by Rajagopal and Srinivasa [27], restrictions on the proposed model are obtained. The rotational flow problem is solved and the material parameters are estimated. The model predictions are corroborated with the experimental observations and they are found to be reasonably good.     

Influence of circumferential curve shapes and surface options on curve length and volume of axisymmetric components in modelling for reverse engineering applications

In this work axisymmetric components are scanned using Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) and modeled using circular section/boundary curves. Surface options such as Surfaces of revolution, lofted surface and coons surface are considered in modelling. The curve length and volume are numerically evaluated for various surface options. The error percentage is obtained for curve length and volume by taking the values measured from the components as reference values. Result are presented for six different circumferential curves shapes viz., parallel (cylindrical), inclined upwards (inverted frustum), inclined downwards (frustum), convex (barrel), concave (sand-clock shape) and combined convex-concave shape. The results show that percentage error is negligible only for Surfaces of revolution and lofted surface in modelling convex, concave and combined convex-concave shapes. In modelling parallel and inclined shapes all three surface options fit well. In modelling convex, concave and combined convex-concave shapes, coons surface does not fit well. The suggestion to designers is to use surfaces of revolution and lofted surface rather than using coons surface. Otherwise the shapes of components will be different from the designed shape. Also the volume of components will be different from the designed volume. In such cases the designed components fail to meet the shape and volume requirements.     

SIR analysis and interference cancellation in uplink OFDMA with large carrier frequency/timing offsets

In uplink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), large timing offsets (TO) and/or carrier frequency offsets (CFO) of other users with respect to a desired user can cause significant multiuser interference (MUI). In this letter, we analytically characterize the degradation in the average output signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) due to the combined effect of both TOs as well as CFOs in uplink OFDMA. Specifically, we derive closed-form expressions for the average SIR at the DFT output in the presence of large CFOs and TOs. The analytical expressions derived for the signal and various interference terms at the DFT output are used to devise an interference cancelling receiver to mitigate the effect of CFO/TOinduced interferences.     

Mechanical properties of 2.45 GHz microwave sintered Si3N4–Y2O3–MgO–ZrO2 system

Mechanical properties of 2.45 GHz microwave sintered Si₃N₄–Y₂O₃–MgO–ZrO₂ system have been investigated. Microwave sintered samples exhibited higher hardness compared to conventionally sintered samples. SEM microstructures of microwave sintered samples revealed lower average grain length and width than those of the conventionally sintered samples. Fracture toughness increased with increasing sintering temperature in the case of conventionally sintered samples whereas microwave sintered samples exhibited no variation despite differences in microstructure. The results of present study demonstrated that microwave sintering could influence the microstructure and thereby improve the mechanical properties.     

Increased milk levels of transforming growth factor-alpha, beta1, and beta2 during Escherichia coli-induced mastitis

Among the gram-negative bacteria that cause mastitis, Escherichia coli are the most prevalent. The innate immune system provides initial protection against E. coli infection by detecting the presence of the foreign pathogens and by mounting an inflammatory response, the latter of which is mediated by cytokines such as IL-1β, IL-8, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α. Although changes in these cytokines during mastitis have been well-described, it is believed that other mediators moderate mammary gland inflammatory responses as well. The growth factors/cytokines transforming growth factor (TGF)-α, TGF-β1, and TGF-β2 are all expressed in the mammary gland and have been implicated in regulating mammary gland development. In other tissues, these growth factors/cytokines have been shown to moderate inflammation. The objective of the current study was to determine whether TGF-α, TGF-β1, and TGF-β2 milk concentrations were altered during the course of E. coli-induced mastitis. The contralateral quarters of 11 midlactating Holstein cows were challenged with either saline or 72 cfu of E. coli, and milk samples were collected. Basal milk levels of TGF-α, TGF-β1, and TGF-β2 were 98.81 ± 22.69 pg/mL, 3.35 ± 0.49 ng/mL, and 22.36 ± 3.78 ng/mL, respectively. Analysis of whey samples derived from E. coli-infected quarters revealed an increase in milk levels of TGF-α within 16 h of challenge, and these increases persisted for an additional 56 h. Elevated TGF-β1 and TGF-β2 milk concentrations were detected in E. coli-infected quarters 32 h after challenge, and these elevations were sustained throughout the study. Because TGF-α, TGF-β1, and TGF-β2 have been implicated in mediating inflammatory processes, their induction during mastitis is consistent with a role for these molecules in mediating mammary gland host innate immune responses to infection.     

SIR-optimized weighted linear parallel interference canceller on fading channels

In this letter, we present a weighted linear parallel interference canceller (LPIC) where the multiple access interference (MAI) estimate in a stage is weighted by a factor before cancellation on Rayleigh fading and diversity channels. We obtain exact expressions for the average signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) at the output of the cancellation stages which we maximize to obtain the optimum weights for different stages. We also obtain closed-form expressions for the optimum weights for the different stages. We show that this SIR-optimized weighted LPIC scheme clearly outperforms both the matched filter (MF) detector as well as the conventional LPIC (where the weight is taken to be unity for all stages), in both near-far as well as non-near-far conditions on Rayleigh fading and diversity channels.     

Performance analysis of UDP with energy efficient link layer on Markov fading channels

In this paper, we analyze the throughput and energy efficiency performance of user datagram protocol (UDP) using linear, binary exponential, and geometric backoff algorithms at the link layer (LL) on point-to-point wireless fading links. Using a first-order Markov chain representation of the packet success/failure process on fading channels, we derive analytical expressions for throughput and energy efficiency of UDP/LL with and without LL backoff. The analytical results are verified through simulations. We also evaluate the mean delay and delay variation of voice packets and energy efficiency performance over a wireless link that uses UDP for transport of voice packets and the proposed backoff algorithms at the LL. We show that the proposed LL backoff algorithms achieve energy efficiency improvement of the order of 2-3 dB compared to LL with no backoff, without compromising much on the throughput and delay performance at the UDP layer. Such energy savings through protocol means will improve the battery life in wireless mobile terminals.     

Performance of closed-loop power control in DS-CDMA cellularsystems

In situations where the round-trip delay between the mobile and the base stations is smaller than the correlation time of the channel, power control schemes using feedback from the base station can effectively compensate for the fast fading due to multipath. We study several closed-loop power control (CLPC) algorithms by analysis and detailed simulation. We introduce a new loglinear model for analyzing the received power correlation statistics of a CLPC scheme. The model provides analytical expressions for the temporal correlation of the power controlled channel parameterized by the update rate, loop delay, and vehicle speed. The received power correlation statistics quantify the ability of closed-loop power control to compensate for the time-varying channel. To study more complex update strategies, detailed simulations that estimate the channel bit-error performance are carried out. Simulation results are combined with coding bounds to obtain quasi-analytic estimates of the reverse link capacity in a direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) cellular system. The quasi-analytic approach quantifies the performance improvements due to effective power control in both single-cell and multicell DS-CDMA systems operating over both frequency-nonselective and frequency-selective fading channels. The effect of nonstationary base stations on the system performance is also presented     

SNR estimation in Nakagami-m fading with diversity combining and its application to turbo decoding

We propose an online signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation scheme for Nakagami-m (1960) fading channels with L branch equal gain combining (EGC) diversity. We derive the SNR estimate based on the statistical ratio of certain observables over a block of data, and use the SNR estimates in the iterative decoding of turbo codes on Nakagami-m fading channels with L branch EGC diversity. We evaluate the turbo decoder performance using the SNR estimate under various fading and diversity scenarios (m = 0.5, 1, 5 and L = 1, 2, 3) and compare it with the performance using perfect knowledge of the SNR and the fade amplitudes.     

Electrical properties of vacuum annealed CdS films

Cadmium sulphide (CdS) films were evaporated in vacuum on glass substrates maintained at room temperature. These films were later annealed in vacuum at temperatures in the range 30 to 300° C. The variation of d.c. electrical conductivity was studied in the temperature range 100 to 300 K. While the conductivity data in the range 100 to 150 K were observed to follow Mott's variable range hopping process, the conductivity in the high-temperature region (150 to 300 K) could be explained by Seto's model.