Electrorheological behavior of side‐chain polysiloxane containing 3‐(4‐amidophenyl) sydnone moieties

Side‐chain polysiloxane containing 3‐(4‐amidophenyl) sydnone moieties at terminal and aliphatic spacer has been synthesized and its structure was confirmed by FTIR and ¹H‐NMR. Low mass molar weight sydnone exhibited electrorheological effect, which was enhanced by electron‐donor substituted group at phenyl, but weakened by electron‐acceptor substituted group. By introducing sydnone into polysiloxane, the polymer displays the higher electrorheological effect due to the increased interaction between sydnone molecules. The oxide states of sydnone affect the electrorheological effect as well as the color of the product. Moreover, the temperature is higher than the glass transfer temperature of the polymer; the electrorheological fluids show a very large leakage current. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 2523–2528, 2004     

EM modeling of aircraft at low frequencies

An efficient computational technique for obtaining scattering cross sections of electrically small aircraft is presented. The technique is based on the wire-grid reaction method. The aircraft shape is approximated by a grid of thin wires, leading to a mathematical representation of the aircraft in the form of an impedance matrix. The inverted matrix yields the scattering data. A variety of wire-grid models were tested. The results show that with proper choice of radius of the wire segments, good agreement with experimental data can be obtained for polarizations parallel to the fuselage axis. For polarizations perpendicular to the fuselage axis, only fair agreement was observed. This computational technique is used to simulate realistic scattering data, which serves as input to information processors for target identification.     

GPC data interpretation

A rigorous procedure for reducing gel permeation chromatography elution data to differential molecular weight distribution curves is discussed and demonstrated by two sample calculations. The errors introduced by failure to correct the ordinates of the elution curve by means of a differential calibration curve are identified, and a simple graphical conversion procedure is illustrated.     

An experimental reactor for kinetic studies: continuously-fed batch reactor

The use of a continuously-fed batch reacter (CFBR) as an experimental tool for the kinetic studies is presented for liquid- and gas-phase reactions, and noncatalytic gas-solid reactions. An experimental CFBR run is demonstrated using the reaction involving sucrose conversion to substantiate the theoretical results. The concept used for the CFBR is the fact that at an extremum of concentration the rate of concentration change is zero. For the liquid- and gas-phase reactions, the CFBR can be used as an alternative to the CSTR. For slow reactions, the rate determined from a CFBR run is more accurate than the rate determined from a CSTR run. Determination of the rates over the entire conversion range is made easy for fast reactions with the use of the CFBR. Results are extended to noncatalytic gas-solid reactions. It is shown that the fractional change of reacting surface area of the solid reactant can be obtained using the CFBR under the limiting condition of negligible effect of mass transfer.     

Development of integrated acceleration/deceleration look-ahead interpolation technique for multi-blocks NURBS curves

Modern motion control adopts acceleration/deceleration before interpolation (ADBI) motion planning to eliminate path command errors. However, the individual velocity profiles might not be continuous at the junction of the blocks. Acceleration/deceleration after interpolation (ADAI) method may provide an alternative for solving the discontinuous problems, but it causes path command errors. In this paper, an integrated acceleration/deceleration interpolation (IAD) scheme which integrates the ADBI and ADAI modules is proposed. The ADBI provides a look-ahead function which plans the feedrate profiles based on chord errors, command errors, curvatures, and acceleration limits. Within the look-ahead function, the command error equation is utilized to determine the feedrate at the junction of adjacent blocks. Then the ADBI performs non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) interpolation using the planned feedrate profile and outputs the position points to the ADAI module. The ADAI module processes the points by a digital convolution technique such that the continuity of the block junction velocity is ensured. Finally, the IAD is applied to the multi-block NURBS interpolation to validate its effectiveness. Simulations and experiments are conducted to demonstrate the IAD scheme. It is shown that the IAD scheme can reduce the acceleration significantly at the junctions of the blocks under the given tolerance of the command error. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm can improve tracking and contour accuracies as compared to the hybrid multi-blocks look-ahead approach.     

Application of robust iterative learning algorithm in motion control system

Robustness issue is considered to be one of the major concerns in application of the iterative learning control in motion control systems. The robustness in servo systems is related to parameter uncertainties and noise accumulation. In this paper, both parameter uncertainties and noise are considered in derivation of the error dynamic equation of the ILC algorithm. Based on the error dynamics, the H_∞ framework is utilized to design the robust learning controller. An optimization design process in selecting the proper learning gain and determining the learning function is proposed to ensure that both tracking performance and convergence condition are achieved. Simulations and experiments are conducted to validate the robust learning algorithm which can be applied efficiently to machine tools with the payload varying from 0 to 20 kg. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the tracking and contouring performances significantly when performing a complex NURBS curve on a three-axis milling machine.     

A fast low‐density parity‐check code simulator based on compressed parity‐check matrices

Low‐density parity‐check (LDPC) codes are very powerful error‐correction codes with capabilities approaching the Shannon's limits. In evaluating the error performance of an LDPC code, the computer simulation time taken becomes a primary concern when tens of millions of noise‐corrupted codewords are to be decoded, particularly for codes with very long lengths. In this paper, we propose modeling the parity‐check matrix of an LDPC code with compressed parity‐check matrices in the check‐node domain (CND) and in the bit‐node domain (BND), respectively. Based on the compressed parity‐check matrices, we created two message matrices, one in the CND and another in the BND, and two domain conversion matrices, one from CND to BND and another from BND to CND. With the proposed message matrices, the data used in the iterative LDPC decoding algorithm can be closely packed and stored within a small memory size. Consequently, such data can be mostly stored in the cache memory, reducing the need for the central processing unit to access the random access memory and hence improving the simulation time significantly. Furthermore, the messages in one domain can be easily converted to another domain with the use of the conversion matrices, facilitating the central processing unit to access and update the messages. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

X-ray Powder Diffraction Structural Phase-Transition Study of La(Cr1-xMnx)O3 (x = 0 to 0.25) Using the Rietveld Method of Analysis

The La(Cr_1-xMn_x)O₃ (x = 0 to 0.25) system exhibited a displacive phase transformation from an orthorhombic to a rhombohedral structure at temperatures ranging from about 256°C at x = 0 to 305°C at x = 0.25. The Rietveld method of X-ray analysis was used to determine structural characteristics and to assay phase concentrations when multiple phases were present. Indications were that the Mn ions on the B site affected the transition temperature through an ionic size effect; i.e., Mn³⁺, with a larger ionic size than Cr³⁺, increased the transition temperature while the presence of the smaller Mn⁴⁺ ions reduced it. A hysteresis was also observed with respect to the phase transformation as a function of temperature. The phase transformation was associated with a change in the rotation of the oxygen octahedra from an antiphase to an in-phase tilt sequence.