Alloy Design Strategies and Future Trends in High-Entropy Alloys

High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are newly emerging advanced materials. In contrast to conventional alloys, HEAs contain multiple principal elements, often five or more in equimolar or near-equimolar ratios. The basic principle behind HEAs is that solid-solution phases are relatively stabilized by their significantly high entropy of mixing compared to intermetallic compounds, especially at high temperatures. This makes them feasibly synthesized, processed, analyzed, and manipulated, and as well provides many opportunities for us. There are huge numbers of possible compositions and combinations of properties in the HEA field. Wise alloy design strategies for suitable compositions and processes to fit the requirements for either academic studies or industrial applications thus become especially important. In this article, four core effects were emphasized, several misconceptions on HEAs were clarified, and several routes for future HEA research and development were suggested.     

Advanced Micro-Heat Exchangers for High Heat Flux

Three micro-heat exchangers for use in a liquid cooling system with a long offset strip, short offset strip, and chevron flow path based on the traditional heat transfer enhancement concepts were designed and tested. A straight channel heat exchanger was also made for comparison. The liquid crystal thermography method described by Lin and Yang (2005) was used to observe the flow and temperature distributions in the micro-heat exchangers. The test results show that the chevron channel heat exchanger provides the lowest thermal resistance. However, its pressure drop is also the highest, approximately five times higher than that for other three heat exchangers. The offset strip heat exchangers provide better thermal performance than does the straight channel heat exchanger. The performance of the heat exchanger with the shorter strip is better than that of heat exchanger with longer strip. From the above results, all of the three micro-heat exchangers with conventional heat transfer enhancement showed less thermal resistance than the straight channel heat exchanger. The conventional heat transfer techniques may be effectively applied in the high-flux micro-heat exchanger design.     

Speed controller design of direct torque control system for induction motors by using adaptive supervisory Fuzzy-CMAC

A model-free approach was used to develop an adaptive supervisory Fuzzy-cerebellar model articulation controller (ASFCMAC) for a direct torque control system for an induction motor without shaft encoder. The two parts of the ASFCMAC are a supervisory controller for limiting tracking error to a bounded range and a Fuzzy-cerebellar model articulation controller subsystem for learning and approximating system dynamics. The ASFCMAC parameters are tuned according to adaptive rules derived from Lyapunov stability theory. Simulations and experimental comparisons with adaptive Fuzzy-cerebellar model articulation controller, adaptive cerebellar model articulation controller, fuzzy logic control, and proportional–integral control show that the proposed ASFCMAC has a superior root mean square error in operation over a wide range of speeds.     

EWMA control charts for monitoring high-yield processes based on non-transformed observations

We propose and study exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts for monitoring high-yield processes. The EWMA control charts are developed based on non-transformed geometric, binomial and Bernoulli counts. The proposed charts are evaluated based on the average number of items sampled before the first out-of-control signal is detected. By selecting small smoothing constants, the proposed EWMA control charts outperform in numerous cases the recently developed CUSUM control charts [Chang, T.C. and Gan, F.F., Cumulative sum charts for high yield processes. Statist. Sin., 2001, 11, 791–805], which are considered the most efficient control charting mechanisms in the existing literature for monitoring fraction non-conforming as small as 0.0001. Numerous simulations are included for performance comparisons. An example is also given to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed EWMA control charts.     

Optimal order quantity and product modularity for a two-echelon returnable supply chain

This study considers a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, a retailer, customers and a returnable and modular product with uncertain demand, in which customers return the unsatisfactory products to the retailer, and the retailer returns the unsold products to the manufacturer. We investigate the effects of the manufacturer’s refund for the retailer’s unsold products and the product modularity under the decentralised and the centralised strategies. We confirm that the order quantity and customer’s return probability both affect the optimal modularity level of the product, and that the optimal modularity level is related to the refund policy. Also, a strategic alliance between the supply chain members is more advantageous to product innovation based on modularity for a returnable chain. Finally, managerial insights and remarks are offered.     

Explosion characteristics tests for micrometer-sized Ag dust cloud with a concentration of 0.8 g/L

A dust explosion is triggered by the rapid combustion of burnable particulate matter suspended in air. Two blank tests and three Ag-dust-cloud explosion tests were performed in a 20-L spherical steel chamber using a 5 kJ pyrotechnic igniter as the energy source in each test. In the explosion tests, no apparent increase in pressure above that found in the blank tests was observed for Ag dust cloud with a concentration of 0.8 g/L. In addition, fine solid particles remaining after the tests showed no evidence of a combustion reaction at the end of the tests. In this research, the thermal decomposition of Ag powders was measured using a differential scanning calorimeter, and the thermal analysis technique to estimate hazards in relation to the samples was employed. The change in enthalpies (H) of the Ag powders were approximately 180, 93, and 53 J/g, and the onset temperatures (T₀) were approximately 211.76, 201.41, and 240.46 °C for P3032, P3012, and P3072, respectively. These results support the conclusion that Ag samples with concentrations below 0.8 g/L do not pose a dust explosion hazard.     

Applying tabu search and simulated annealing to the optimal design of sewer networks

Optimizations of sewer network designs create complicated and highly nonlinear problems wherein conventional optimization techniques often get easily bogged down in local optima and cannot successfully address such problems. In the past decades, heuristic algorithms possessing robust and efficient global search capabilities have helped to solve continuous and discrete optimization problems and have demonstrated considerable promise. This study applied tabu search (TS) and simulated annealing (SA) to the optimization of sewer network designs. For a case study, this article used the sewer network design of a central Taiwan township, which contains significantly varied elevations, and the optimal designs from TS and SA were compared with the original official design. The results show that, in contrast with the original design's failure to satisfy the minimum flow-velocity requirements, both TS and SA achieved least-cost solutions that also fulfilled all the constraints of the design criteria. According to the average performance of 200 trials, SA outperformed TS in both robustness and efficiency for solving sewer network optimization problems.     

Study on the Crystallization,Miscibility, Morphology,Properties of Poly(lactic acid)/Poly(ε-caprolactone) Blends

A series of blends of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) with different mass ratio were prepared by means of the melt blending method to study their crystallization, miscibility, morphology, and thermal and mechanical properties. The result of DSC tests showed that the melting temperatures of PLA and PCL shifted toward each other, and that the largest shift appeared at the PLA₇₀PCL₃₀ blend. This result reveals that the PLA₇₀PCL₃₀ blend gives the strongest interaction intensity among the blends. Combined the result of dynamic mechanical analysis and SEM morphologies, it was found that PLA and PCL form a partial miscible blend, in which an amount of amorphous PCL (amorphous PLA) is dissolved in the PLA-rich phase (PCL-rich phase), leading to a depression of the T_g. value. The polarized optical micrographs showed that PCL can serve as a nucleating agent to promote PLA crystallization in the PLA/PCL blend. Moreover, the PLA₇₀PCL₃₀ blend gave the largest growth rate of PLA spherulite. Finally, the mechanical property of PLA/PCL blends indicated that PLA can easily be tuned from rigid to ductile by the addition of PCL.     

Stability analysis of TE01 gyrotron travelling wave amplifiers

The fundamental harmonic TE₀₁ gyrotron travelling wave amplifier (gyro-TWT) is a high-power, broadband, millimetre-wave amplifier with a low ohmic dissipation and a large guiding centre radius. However, spurious oscillations may reduce the amplification of the gyro-TWT. The stability of severed and distributed-loss gyro-TWTs is analysed, using a self-consistent simulation code. A nonlinear analysis of typical oscillations, including absolute instability, gyrotron backward oscillation (gyro-BWO) and reflective oscillation, is presented. Simulation results indicate that attenuating severs in the severed gyro-TWT do not suppress spurious oscillations, and that increasing the wall losses to suppress gyro-BWO in the distributed-loss gyro-TWT degrades the efficiency of the gyro-TWT amplifier. A multi-stage distributed-loss gyro-TWT design is developed to stabilize the amplification. The lossy and severed sections of the multi-stage gyro-TWT seem to increase effectively the start-oscillation currents of absolute instability and gyro-BWO, respectively. The multi-stage gyro-TWT is predicted to yield a peak output power of 155?kW at 32.9?GHz with an efficiency of 15%, a saturated gain of 45?dB and a bandwidth of 2.2?GHz for a 100?kV, 10?A electron beam with an axial velocity spread Δv_z /v_z = 5%.