Plasma-sprayed composite coatings with reduced friction coefficient

The study analyses the tribological properties of a composite plasma sprayed with Al₂O₃-3TiO₂ mixed in various proportions with CaF₂, which is known as a solid lubricant. The coatings were plasma-sprayed in air and were tested using a pin-on-disc tribological set-up. The tests enabled to study their wear resistance and determine the coefficient of friction on the basis of friction force obtained in the course of continuous measurement at a set load. Experiments were optimized by the use of the two-level experiment design aimed at finding the optimal content of CaF₂ in the composite. The influence of the spraying parameters on the coefficient of friction, hardness and surface roughness was determined by means of regression analysis. Metallographical studies of the plasma-sprayed composite were conducted with the use of a scanning microscope with an energy dispersion spectrometer (EDS).     

Xonotlite: Cell parameters,thermogravimetry and analytical electron microscopy

These methods were used to study 15 synthetic and natural xonotlites. The results indicate that xonotlite tends to be defective in Ca, charge balance being maintained by incorporation of additional H atoms, which are attached to the silicate anion. This tendency increases as the temperature of preparation decreases. A?-free xonotlites show only small, barely significant variability in cell parameters, but A?-substitution causes distinct changes.     

Enhancements of SDR-Based FPGA System for V2X-VLC Communications

This pilot study focuses on a real measurements and enhancements of a software defined radio-based system for vehicle-to everything visible light communication (SDR-V2X-VLC). The presented system is based on a novel adaptive optimization of the feed-forward software defined equalization (FFSDE) methods of the least mean squares (LMS), normalized LMS (NLMS) and QR decomposition-based recursive least squares (QR-RLS) algorithms. Individual parameters of adaptive equalizations are adjusted in real-time to reach the best possible results. Experiments were carried out on a conventional LED Octavia III taillight drafted directly from production line and universal software radio peripherals (USRP) from National Instruments. The transmitting/receiving elements used multistate quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) implemented in LabVIEW programming environment. Experimental results were verified based on bit error ratio (BER), error vector magnitude (EVM) and modulation error ratio (MER). Experimental results of the pilot study unambiguously confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed solution (longer effective communication range, higher immunity to interference, deployment of higher state QAM modulation formats, higher transmission speeds etc.), as the adaptive equalization significantly improved BER, MER and EVM parameters. The best results were achieved using the QR-RLS algorithm. The results measured on deployed QR-RLS algorithm had significantly better Eb/N0 (improved by approx. 20 dB) and BER values (difference by up to two orders of magnitude).     

Rapid Models for Predicting the Low‐Temperature Behavior of Diesel

The cold filtration plugging point (CFPP) is the method most commonly applied to characterize the low‐temperature behavior of diesel and its components. However, this method is time‐consuming and does not have good repeatability, especially for samples with very low CFPP values like kerosene, light cycle oil, etc. Three new models for CFPP prediction were developed and compared: a combined density and distillation curve, differential scanning calorimetry, and near‐infrared. A set of 133 samples of diesel components were used to create the models, containing streams from different sources and levels of treatment. A further 28 diesel samples were used to validate and compare the models. All three models not only were faster than the standard method but also were found to be in good agreement with CFPP values. Each model has its own particular advantages suiting it to a particular type of diesel sample and stage of the diesel production process.