Integrating heterogeneous distributed COTS discrete-event simulation packages: an emerging standards-based approach

This paper reports on the progress made toward the emergence of standards to support the integration of heterogeneous discrete-event simulations (DESs) created in specialist support tools called commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) discrete-event simulation packages (CSPs). The general standard for heterogeneous integration in this area has been developed from research in distributed simulation and is the IEEE 1516 standard The High Level Architecture (HLA). However, the specific needs of heterogeneous CSP integration require that the HLA is augmented by additional complementary standards. These are the suite of CSP interoperability (CSPI) standards being developed under the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO-http://www.sisostds.org) by the CSPI Product Development Group (CSPI-PDG). The suite consists of several interoperability reference models (IRMs) that outline different integration needs of CSPI, interoperability frameworks (IFs) that define the HLA-based solution to each IRM, appropriate data exchange representations to specify the data exchanged in an IF, and benchmarks termed CSP emulators (CSPEs). This paper contributes to the development of the Type I IF that is intended to represent the HLA-based solution to the problem outlined by the Type I IRM (asynchronous entity passing) by developing the entity transfer specification (ETS) data exchange representation. The use of the ETS in an illustrative case study implemented using a prototype CSPE is shown. This case study also allows us to highlight the importance of event granularity and lookahead in the performance and development of the Type I IF, and to discuss possible methods to automate the capture of appropriate values of lookahead.     

Al-Cu-Fe QUASICRYSTALLINE PHASE FORMATION BY MECHANICAL ALLOYING

Al-Cu-Fe alloys were prepared from elemental powders in a high-energy planetary ball mill. A sequence of solid state reactions resulting in quasicrystal (QC) phase formation takes place during heating of the as-milled powder. These reactions were studied by both differential scanning calorimetry and x-ray diffraction methods. Mechanically alloyed powders were consolidated by cold and hot pressing, as well as by explosive compaction. After annealing at sufficiently high temperatures, the consolidated samples are single-phase QC, except the ones consolidated by explosion. The high reactivity of the as-milled alloys causes the appearance of high porosity of the consolidated samples after the annealing.     

Rheology and microstructure of semi-solid aluminum alloys compressed in the drop-forge viscometer

The rheological behavior and microstructure of semi-solid aluminum alloys were studied using a novel apparatus, the drop-forge viscometer (DFV). The viscometer determines force from the second-derivative-of-displacement data with respect to time and permits calculations of viscosities at shear rates in excess of 1000 s⁻¹. Alternatively, the DFV can be operated like a conventional parallel-plate viscometer, attaining shear rates as low as 10⁻⁵ s⁻¹. Rapid compression experiments (in the DFV) result in first rapidly increasing, then decreasing, shear rates. In a typical experiment, the viscosity decreased from about 100 to 1 Pa·s as the shear rate increased from approximately 200 to 1300 s⁻¹ in less than 4 ms. The viscosity later increased to about 10 Pa·s as the shear rate decreased from 1300 to 30 s⁻¹ over 2 ms. The minimum viscosity obtained depended on the maximum shear rate, not the duration of shear. The dual observed phenomena of (1) a very rapid drop of viscosity with increasing shear rate followed by (2) a relatively slow increase of viscosity with decreasing shear rate thereafter have potential significance for future machine and process design. For example, it should be possible to form higher fraction solid slurries than is now feasible by applying vigorous shear to semi-solid slurries just before the metal is introduced to the die entrance. The DFV was used to calculate viscosity as a function of shear rate for samples produced by the commercial strain-induced, melt-activated (SIMA) and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) methods, as well as the recently developed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) method. Isothermal experiments were conducted between fraction solid of 0.44 and 0.67 for the various alloys (corresponding to a temperature range of 579 °C to 611 °C). The viscosity of the commercial semi-solid Al-Si alloys A357 and A356 produced by the various methods was similar. Separation of liquid and solid phases was not observed in rapid compression experiments shorter than 10 ms, either visually or with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) characterization. At low compression velocities, segregation was observed and increased with increasing amounts of strain. The maximum fraction solid compressed at high and low shear rates were 0.67 and 0.69, respectively.     

Hybrid gas-to-particle conversion and chemical vapor deposition for the production of porous alumina films

Porous alumina films can be found in a wide variety of materials, including filters, thermal insulation components, dielectrics, biomedical and catalyst supports, coatings and adsorbents. Production methods for these films are as equally diverse as their applications. In this work, a hybrid process based upon chemical vapor deposition and gas-to-particle conversion is presented as an alternative technique for producing porous alumina films, with the main advantages of solvent-free, low substrate-temperature operation. In this process, nanoparticles were produced in the vapor phase by reaction of aluminum acetylacetonate in the presence of oxygen. Downstream of this reaction zone, these nanoparticles were collected via thermophoresis onto a cooled substrate, forming a porous film. Some deposited films were subjected to post-processing in the form of annealing in air. Fourier-transform infrared spectra and X-ray energy-dispersive spectroscopy analysis confirmed the production of alumina at processing temperatures above 973 K. X-Ray diffraction revealed that the films were amorphous. Film thickness, ranging from 30 to 250 μm, and the average deposition rate were determined from scanning electron microscopy results. From transmission electron microscopy, the average primary particle size was determined to be approximately 18 nm and the formation of nanoparticle aggregates was evident. Annealing of the films at temperatures ranging from 523 to 1173 K in the presence of air did not have an effect on particle size. The specific surface area of the powder composing the films ranged from 10 to 185 m² g⁻¹, as determined from nitrogen gas adsorption by the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method.     

A hybrid extended finite element/level set method for modeling phase transformations

A hybrid numerical method for modelling the evolution of sharp phase interfaces on fixed grids is presented. We focus attention on two‐dimensional solidification problems, where the temperature field evolves according to classical heat conduction in two subdomains separated by a moving freezing front. The enrichment strategies of the eXtended Finite Element Method (X‐FEM) are employed to represent the jump in the temperature gradient that governs the velocity of the phase boundary. A new approach with the X‐FEM is suggested for this class of problems whereby the partition of unity is constructed with C¹(Ω) polynomials and enriched with a C⁰(Ω) function. This approach leads to jumps in temperature gradient occurring only at the phase boundary, and is shown to significantly improve estimates for the front velocity. Temporal derivatives of the temperature field in the vicinity of the phase front are obtained with a projection that employs discontinuous enrichment. In conjunction with a finer finite difference grid, the Level Set method is used to represent the evolution of the phase interface. An iterative procedure is adopted to satisfy the constraints on the temperature field on the phase boundary. The robustness and utility of the method is demonstrated with several benchmark problems of phase transformation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A geometry-based error estimation for cross-ratios

For choosing specific cross-ratios as 2D projective coordinates in various computer vision applications, a reasonable error analysis model is usually required. This investigation adopts the assumption of normal distribution for positioning errors of point features in an image to formulate the error variances of cross-ratios. Based on a geometry-based error analysis, a straightforward way of identifying the cross-ratios with minimum error variances is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed approach, as well as a further simplified alternative, yield much better estimations of minimum error variances in terms of accuracy, cost, and stability compared with some other methods, e.g., the one based on the rule given by Georis et al. (IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 20 (4) (1998) 366). Some causes of the performance differences in the estimations are explained using a special configuration of point features.     

Approximate channel identification via δ‐signed correlation

A method of approximate channel identification is proposed that is based on a simplification of the correlation estimator. Despite the numerical simplification (no multiplications or additions are required, only comparisons and an accumulator), the performance of the proposed estimator is not significantly worse than that of the standard correlation estimator. A free (user selectable) parameter moves ‘smoothly’ from a situation with small sum‐squared channel estimation error but hard‐to‐identify channel peaks, to one with a larger sum‐squared estimation error but easy‐to‐identify channel peaks. The proposed estimator is shown to be biased and its behaviour is analysed in a number of situations. Applications of the proposed estimator to sparsity detection, symbol timing recovery and to the initialization of blind equalizers are suggested. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Kinetic analysis of the crystallization of poly(p-phenylene sulphide)

Growth rates of spherulites were measured in poly(p-phenylene sulphide) crystallized from the melt and the quenched glass over the temperature range 100°C–280°C, possibly the most extensive overall range yet reported for any polymer and, as such, most propitious for study of régime III crystallization. For a medium M.wt. polymer, a régime II → III transition was obtained at 208°C using values of transport parameters common to many polymers ($\text{U1 = 1400}\text{cal mol}{}^{\mathrm{?1}}$, T_∞ ? T_g = 30°C) together with experimentally determined values of T⁰_m(315°C) and T_g(92°C). Under these conditions, the régime III/II slope ratio was found to be 2.07 (i.e. only 3.5% higher than predicted by régime theory), and reasonable estimates of surface free energies and of the work of chain folding were obtained. Other choices of the transport terms, including WLF and zero values, did not allow successful kinetic analyses. Although a régime I → II transition is predicted to occur at the high-temperature end of our growth-rate data, we found no experimental evidence for it. For a low M.wt. polymer, our analysis showed that régime III kinetics is obeyed at low temperatures, while at higher ones there is a continuous departure from that behaviour without, however, full attainment of régime II kinetics.     

High modulus of isotactic polypropylene attained by coextrusion with atactic polystyrene

Orientation-induced crystallization of crystallizable polymer melts can occur, under certain conditions, during flow through converging channels. Attempts have been made to achieve this phenomenon in a two-phase system, i.e., during simultaneous extrusion of a continuous concentric core of polypropylene within a polystyrene matrix through a conical duct. On one occasion, using Carlona P SY6100 (MFI = 11.0) with Hostyren N2000-V-01 (MFI = 25.0), a highly oriented polypropylene thread with a modulus of 14.6 GPa and a melting point of 178°C was extruded at a die temperature of approximately 170°C and a pressure lower than 40 MPa. It is, in principle, possible to form highly oriented, fiber-like structures as reinforcing elements in a polymer matrix.