Calculating prices and final accounts for housing construction

In countries with unstable conditions, negotiations regarding construction work takes place under conditions of great uncertainty with both sides, the purchaser and the investor, trying to minimize the difficulties. This paper gives an insight of how matters relating to costing are looked at by professionals when faced with such conditions.     

Spontaneous copolymerization of 2-phenyl-2-oxazoline with cyclic carboxylic anhydrides

Summary The copolymers obtained by the spontaneous reaction between 2-phenyl-2-oxazoline (PhOx) and different anhydrides (succinic-SA, maleic-MA and phthalic-PA) in the absence of an added initiator have been studied. The copolymers were characterized by FTIR and ¹³C-NMR spectroscopies. Compositions were determined by quantitative elemental analysis and average molecular weights were obtained by GPC. The PhOx/MA and PhOx/PA were found to be alternating copolymers, whereas the PhOx/SA copolymer was a statistical one, rich in PhOx.     

Stress computations for nearly incompressible materials by the p-version of the finite element method

In the case of nearly incompressible elastic materials the strain energy, the shear stress and the difference of normal stresses can be computed accurately by direct methods when the p-version of the finite element method is used. Computation of the sum of the normal stresses requires special procedures. In this paper such procedures are described and examples are presented.     

Thermodynamics and Stoichiometry of Reactions between Hydrogen Sulfide and Concentrated Sulfuric Acid

A thermodynamic analysis of the possible reactions between hydrogen sulfide and concentrated sulfuric acid shows that four reactions are feasible. However, only two of these reactions apparently occur in experiments at 1 atm and 0°C to 150°C. Hydrogen sulfide is first oxidized by molecular sulfuric acid, forming SO₂, sulfur and water, and then the H₂S may react with the dissolved product, SO₂, to generate sulfur and water. The stoichiometry of the consecutive reactions and their dependence on acid concentration were determined experimentally using mass balance measurements. The results of this study suggest a possible alternative method for sulfur removal and recovery that has more advantages.     

Comments on the benchmarks in "A proposal for improving the accuracy of Linguistic Modeling" and related articles

In the above paper by Cordon and Herrara (IEEE Trans. Fuzzy Syst., vol. 8, p. 335-44, 2000), the so-called accurate linguistic modeling (ALM) method was proposed to improve the accuracy of linguistic fuzzy models. A number of examples are given to demonstrate the benefits of the approach. We show that: 1) these examples are not suitable as benchmarks or demonstrators of nonlinear modeling techniques and 2) better results can be obtained by using both standard regression tools as well as other fuzzy modeling techniques. We argue that benchmark examples that are used in articles to demonstrate the effectiveness of fuzzy modeling techniques should be selected with great care. Critical analysis of the results should be made and linear models should be regarded as a lower bound on the acceptable performance.     

Theory of porous electrodes—XII. The negative plate of the lead-acid battery

Partial differential equations describing the transport of mass and electricity in the pores of the negative electrode of a lead-acid battery were derived. The theory is based on exact transport equations and on the assumption that the electrode potential is governed by the Nernst equation. Volume changes in both phases are taken into account. Numerical solutions depend on the product of electrode thickness times current density and on the initial porosity. Differences between the negative and positive plates are discussed.     

Bestimmung des Grenzumformgrades mit dem Torsionsversuch

Die Bestimmung des Grenzumformgrades eines Stahles, der während der plastischen Verformung nicht überschritten werden kann, ist von großer Bedeutung. Die vorliegende Arbeit berichtet über Ergebnisse von Warmtorsionsversuchen, aus denen der Grenzumformgrad als Funktion von Temperatur und Umformgeschwindigkeit ermittelt wurde. Die Versuche wurden an den Stählen X 10 CrNiTi 18 9, 10 CrMo 9 10, X 10 CrNiMoTi 18 12, X 20 CrMoV 12 1 und X 2 NiCrNb 25 18 durchgeführt.     

Calculation of effectiveness factor for multiple claus reactions with single-step rate-controlling

Most of the bountiful literature on the calculation of effectiveness factors for catalyst particles deals with relatively simple reactions and kinetics. The performance of catalyst particles in the industrially important, modified Claus reaction introduces multiple reactions, sulphur vapour equilibria, non-linear kinetics and limiting thermodynamic conversions into the calculation of local effectiveness factors. This analysis demonstrates a means for generating local effectiveness factors, during reactor design calculations by the use of a single calculated curve of versus a modified Thiele parameter for spherical particles.     

A quantitative study of air-borne particulate matter collected on membrane filters by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

The capability of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, XPS or ESCA, in analysing oxidation states and measuring the concentration of elements present in air pollution particulates collected on membrane filters is evaluated. Semi-quantitative data are compared with those from XRF and wet chemical analysis. Differences of about a factor of 2.0–2.5 are found which are critically discussed in relation to particle size and the distribution of ionic species. The importance of intrinsic properties of matrix materials and instrumental factors is also discussed.