In-Plane Cracking Behavior and Ultimate Strength for 2D Woven and Braided Melt-Infiltrated SiC/SiC Composites Tensile Loaded in Off-Axis Fiber Directions

The tensile mechanical properties of ceramic matrix composites (CMC) in directions off the primary axes of the reinforcing fibers are important for the architectural design of CMC components that are subjected to multiaxial stress states. In this study, two-dimensional (2D)-woven melt-infiltrated (MI) SiC/SiC composite panels with balanced fiber content in the 0° and 90° directions were tensile loaded in-plane in the 0° direction and at 45° to this direction. In addition, a 2D triaxially braided MI SiC/SiC composite panel with a higher fiber content in the ±67° bias directions compared with the axial direction was tensile loaded perpendicular to the axial direction tows (i.e., 23° from the bias fibers). Stress–strain behavior, acoustic emission, and optical microscopy were used to quantify stress-dependent matrix cracking and ultimate strength in the panels. It was observed that both off-axis-loaded panels displayed higher composite onset stresses for through-thickness matrix cracking than the 2D-woven 0/90 panels loaded in the primary 0° direction. These improvements for off-axis cracking strength can in part be attributed to higher effective fiber fractions in the loading direction, which in turn reduces internal stresses on weak regions in the architecture, e.g., minicomposite tows oriented normal to the loading direction and/or critical flaws in the matrix for a given composite stress. Both off-axis-oriented panels also showed relatively good ultimate tensile strength when compared with other off-axis-oriented composites in the literature, both on an absolute strength basis as well as when normalized by the average fiber strength within the composites. Initial implications are discussed for constituent and architecture design to improve the directional cracking of SiC/SiC CMC components with MI matrices.     

透明香皂的研制

介绍了生产透明香皂的新配方和新工艺 ,提出了透明香皂的企业标准。新工艺用丙二醇取代传统工艺所用的乙醇做溶剂 ,生产周期大为缩短。采用速冻隧道设备 ,可方便地实现不同品种的切换 ,操作方便 ,设备投资少 ,产品综合成本低 ,具有较大的工业应用价值     

The effect of extrudate swell on modeling the film blowing process

The extrudate swell effect has not received sufficient attention in modeling the film blowing process. This effect is addressed in this paper, and as an ab initio study, only viscous fluids were considered. The problem region was separated into two zones; the extrudate swell zone and the film blowing zone. The annular extrudate swell problem was solved using a finite element method. The film blowing process was modeled following Pearson and Petrie's (4) work. Although only viscous fluids were considered, the simulation results show a remarkable difference when swelling was included in the modeling. Viscoelastic fluids, which are more realistic for polymer melts, were not investigated here because of the so called high Weisenberg number problem. This is an open area still under investigation.     

In situ study of the mechanical properties of airborne haze particles

Particulate pollution has raised serious concerns regarding its potential impacts on human health in developing countries. However, much less attention has been paid to the threat of haze particles to machinery and industry. By employing a state-of-the-art in situ scanning electron microscope compression testing technique, we demonstrate that iron-rich and fly ash haze particles, which account for nearly 70% of the total micron-sized spherical haze particles, are strong enough to generate abrasive damage to most engineering alloys, and therefore can generate significant scratch damage to moving contacting surfaces in high precision machineries. Our finding calls for preventive measures to protect against haze related threat.     

Perceived Visual Complexity and Visual Search Performance of Automotive Instrument Cluster: A Quantitative Measurement Study

Advancements in technology have spurred the development of new in-vehicle applications. Drivers are faced with different driving contexts due to an increase in the number of devices that provide a wealth of diverse information. However, such a scenario can cause drivers to become distracted. Therefore, research on how the presentation of visual information can affect drivers’ performance is important. In this study, an analysis of quantifiable measurements that affect drivers’ perception of visual complexity and visual search performance was conducted. A questionnaire was administered to assess subjective perception of visual complexity, and a user experiment using eye tracking was designed to explore participants’ visual search performance. The results of subjective visual complexity perception and visual search performance suggested that some objective measurement variables were significantly related only to perceived visual complexity, whereas others affected both subjective and behavioral measurements. Thus it is possible to predict which quantifiable measurement variables affect subjective perception of visual complexity and which affect visual search performance. Therefore, this study allows understanding and explaining of perception of visual complexity by quantifiable measurements and the different ways by which these measurements affect visual search performance.     

The effect of handle friction and inward or outward torque on maximum axial push force

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship among friction, applied torque, and axial push force on cylindrical handles. BACKGROUND: We have earlier demonstrated that participants can exert greater contact force and torque in an "inward" movement of the hand about the long axis of a gripped cylinder (wrist flexion/forearm supination) than they can in an "outward" hand movement. METHOD: Twelve healthy participants exerted anteriorly directed maximum push forces along the long axis of aluminum and rubber handles while applying deliberate inward or outward torques, no torque (straight), and an unspecified (preferred) torque. RESULTS: Axial push force was 12% greater for the rubber handle than for the aluminum handle. Participants exerted mean torques of 1.1, 0.3, 2.5, and -2.0 Nm and axial push forces of 94, 85, 75, and 65 N for the preferred, straight, inward, and outward trials, respectively. Left to decide for themselves, participants tended to apply inward torques, which were associated with increased axial push forces. CONCLUSION: Axial push force was limited by hand-handle coupling--not the whole body's push strength. Participants appeared to intuitively know that the application of an inward torque would improve their maximum axial push force. Axial push forces were least when a deliberate torque was requested, probably because high levels of torque exertions interfered with the push. APPLICATION: A low-friction handle decreases maximum axial push force. It should be anticipated that people will apply inward torque during maximum axial push.     

Fabrication of silicon membrane using fusion bonding and two-step electrochemical etch-stopping

A new type of silicon membrane structure was fabricated using wafer fusion bonding and two-step electrochemical etch-stopping methods. An active wafer of p-type epi/n-type epi/p-type substrate was first elctrochemically etched to form a shallow cavity on the p-type epitaxial layer. Then, the cavity-formed side was fusionally bonded with p-type silicon working wafer and, afterwards, the p-type substrate of the active wafer part was removed by a second electrochemical etch-stopping leaving only the n-type membrane on the shallow cavity. Using the new membrane structure in mechanical sensors, more precise control of cavity depth and membrane thickness was achievable and the influence of crystalline imperfections on the sensing circuits located near the bonding seam was avoidable.     

Metal Single-Site Molecular Complex–MXene Heteroelectrocatalysts Interspersed Graphene Nanonetwork for Efficient Dual-Task of Water Splitting and Metal–Air Batteries

Development of multifunctional electrocatalysts with high efficiency and stability is of great interest in recent energy conversion technologies. Herein, a novel heteroelectrocatalyst of molecular iron complex (Fe_MC)-carbide MXene (Mo₂TiC₂T_x) uniformly embedded in a 3D graphene-based hierarchical network (GrH) is rationally designed. The coexistence of Fe_MC and MXene with their unique interactions triggers optimum electronic properties, rich multiple active sites, and favorite free adsorption energy for excellent trifunctional catalytic activities. Meanwhile, the highly porous GrH effectively promotes a multichannel architecture for charge transfer and gas/ion diffusion to improve stability. Therefore, the Fe_MC–MXene/GrH results in superb performances towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline medium. The practical tests indicate that Zn/Al–air batteries derived from Fe_MC–MXene/GrH cathodic electrodes produce high power densities of 165.6 and 172.7 mW cm⁻², respectively. Impressively, the liquid-state Zn–air battery delivers excellent cycling stability of over 1100 h. In addition, the alkaline water electrolyzer induces a low cell voltage of 1.55 V at 10 mA cm⁻² and 1.86 V at 0.4 A cm⁻² in 30 wt.% KOH at 80 °C, surpassing recent reports. The achievements suggest an exciting multifunctional electrocatalyst for electrochemical energy applications.     

Android IoT Lifelog System and Its Application to Motion Inference

In social science, health care, digital therapeutics, etc., smartphone data have played important roles to infer users’ daily lives. However, smartphone data collection systems could not be used effectively and widely because they did not exploit any Internet of Things (IoT) standards (e.g., oneM2M) and class labeling methods for machine learning (ML) services. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel Android IoT lifelog system complying with oneM2M standards to collect various lifelog data in smartphones and provide two manual and automated class labeling methods for inference of users’ daily lives. The proposed system consists of an Android IoT client application, an oneM2M-compliant IoT server, and an ML server whose high-level functional architecture was carefully designed to be open, accessible, and internationally recognized in accordance with the oneM2M standards. In particular, we explain implementation details of activity diagrams for the Android IoT client application, the primary component of the proposed system. Experimental results verified that this application could work with the oneM2M-compliant IoT server normally and provide corresponding class labels properly. As an application of the proposed system, we also propose motion inference based on three multi-class ML classifiers (i.e., k nearest neighbors, Naive Bayes, and support vector machine) which were created by using only motion and location data (i.e., acceleration force, gyroscope rate of rotation, and speed) and motion class labels (i.e., driving, cycling, running, walking, and stilling). When compared with confusion matrices of the ML classifiers, the k nearest neighbors classifier outperformed the other two overall. Furthermore, we evaluated its output quality by analyzing the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves with area under the curve (AUC) values. The AUC values of the ROC curves for all motion classes were more than 0.9, and the macro-average and micro-average ROC curves achieved very high AUC values of 0.96 and 0.99, respectively.     

Design of a 2-DOF-PID controller using an improved sine–cosine algorithm for load frequency control of a three-area system with nonlinearities

This paper proposes an improved sine–cosine algorithm (ISCA) based 2-DOF-PID controller for load frequency control. A three-area test system is built for study, while some physical constraints (nonlinearities) are considered for the investigation of a realistic power system. The proposed method is used as the parameter optimizer of the LFC controller in different scenarios. The 2-DOF-PID controllers are used because of their capability of fast disturbance rejection without significant increase of overshoot in set-point tracking. The 2-DOF-PID controllers’ efficacy is observed by examining the responses with the outcomes obtained with PID and FOPID controllers. The simulation results with the suggested scheme are correlated with some of the existing algorithms, such as SCA, SSA, ALO, and PSO in three different scenarios, i.e., a disturbance in two areas, in three areas, and in the presence of physical constraints. In addition, the study is extended to a four-area power system. Statistical analysis is performed using the Wilcoxon Sign Rank Test (WSRT) on 20 independent runs. This confirms the supremacy of the proposed method.