Scale effect on the behaviour of geogrid-reinforced soil under repeated loads

One of the most useful geosynthetics in soil reinforcement is geogrid due to its high tensile strength, having a great influence on soil skeleton reinforcement and eventually, increasing bearing capacity of the foundation. In this research, a series of 36 repeated plate load tests have been carried out to investigate the scale effect on geogrid-reinforced soil, tending to further understanding of the behaviour of geogrid-reinforced soil system. Four different soil grains sizes, two different geogrid's aperture sizes (with roughly the same tensile strength) and three different loading plate sizes are the variables considered. During the tests, the applied loading and soil surface settlements were recorded to evaluate the systems' response. As it was expected, the reinforced soil exhibited higher bearing capacity than the unreinforced status, up to 635%. The results show that increasing loading plate size and soils' particle size fortify the response of foundation, especially in reinforced status, against the loading plate penetration. The results further focused on the important role of scale effect on the response of reinforced foundation. It was understood that the optimum nominal aperture size of geogrids should be about 4 times of medium grain size of soil. Also, it was found out that in order to acquisition of highest reinforcement benefits, the footing's width should be in the range 13–25 (20 in average) times of medium grain size of the backfill. Finally, to achieve the best results, it is recommended that the aperture size of geogrids should be selected roughly 0.2 times of footing width.     

Porous polyethersulfone hollow fiber membrane in gas–liquid contacting processes

Porous polyethersulfone hollow fiber membranes were fabricated via dry–wet phase inversion method with the polymer concentration in the spinning dope either 13 wt% or 15 wt%. The fabricated hollow fiber membranes were characterized by different test methods and the performance of membranes in contactor applications was tested by CO₂ absorption. The mean pore size, effective surface porosity and membrane porosity decreased while the membrane density and Liquid Entry Pressure (LEPw) increased as polymer concentration increased. The CO₂ absorption flux of the fabricated membranes was measured in two cases; i.e. when the absorbent, distilled water, was in the lumen side or in the shell side. The CO₂ flux for the membrane, fabricated from 13 wt% PES solution, was compared with some commercial and in-house made membranes. The former membrane had 111% higher flux than a commercial PTFE membrane.     

Evaluation of effective parameters in metal bellows forming process

Metal bellows have wide applications in aerospace, micro-electromechanical and industrial systems. Forming process of the metal bellows is very sensitive to increasing the ratio of crown to root diameter. In this state, precise control of the parameters is very important in order to form high-quality metal bellows with good thickness distribution and desirable dimensions and resilience. In this paper, a new method has been proposed for manufacturing of the metal bellows and important parameters such as initial length of tube, internal pressure, axial feeding and velocity, mechanical properties and the type of materials were investigated by finite element (FE) analysis (LS-Dyna) and experimental tests. The explicit time integration method is used for modeling the tube-bulging and folding processes. Meanwhile, the implicit time integration method is used for the spring back stage. Finally, the results of finite element method (FEM) and experiments show a very good agreement. The results of the present work could be used as a basis of designing a new type of the metal bellows.     

Synthesis of nanocrystalline Bi2Te3 via mechanical alloying

Bi₄₀Te₆₀ thermoelectric compound was fabricated via mechanical milling of bismuth and tellurium as starting materials. Effect of the milling time and heat treatment temperatures were investigated. In order to characterize the ball milled powders, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used. Thermal behavior of the mechanically alloyed powders was studied by differential thermal analysis (DTA). The morphological evolutions were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Results showed that the nanocrystalline Bi₂Te₃ compound was formed after 5 h of milling. Further milling (25 h) and heating to 500 °C showed that the synthesized phase was stable during these conditions. Nanocrystalline Bi₂Te₃ with 9–10 nm mean grain size and flaky morphology (lamellar structure) was obtained at the end of milling.     

Optimization of STM/FIM nanotip aspect ratio based on the Taguchi method

This paper presents optimization of electrochemical etching parameters to achieve the optimum aspect ratio of the scanning tunneling microscopy/field ion microscopy tungsten nanotip by using Taguchi method. The combination of optimum level of process parameters was obtained by using the analysis of signal-to-noise ratio. The level of importance of the process parameters on the nanotip aspect ratio was determined by using analysis of variance. It was found that the optimum level of process parameters are electrolyte concentration of 2 M/lit, wire immersion length of 2.5 mm, cathode tube inner diameter of 40 mm, and voltage of 3.5 V. Within the range of experiments and the process parameters in terms of impact significance were found to be electrolyte concentration, process voltage, wire immersion length, and inner diameter of cathode tube, respectively. By using the optimum level of the process parameters, the nanotip aspect ratio was enhanced by 263% in comparison to the mean value of the experimental results. The nanotip aspect ratio of up to 163:1 was obtained in the present research.     

Cleaning method of InSb [111] B of n-InSb [111] A/B for the growth of epitaxial layers by liquid phase epitaxy

The crystal structure of InSb[111]A/B surfaces shows that this structure is polarized.This means that the surfaces of InSb[111]A and InSb[111]B contain two different crystallized directions and they have different physical and chemical properties.Experiments were carried out on the InSb[111]A/B surfaces,showing that tartaric acid etchant could create a very smooth surface on the InSb[111]B without any traces of oxides and etch pit but simultaneously create etch pit on InSb[111]A surfaces.After lapping and polishing,some particles remained on the InSb[111]B surface,they could not be removed easily by standard cleaning process and if these particles remain on the surface of the substrate,the growth layer was not uniform and some island-like regions were observed.The purpose of this work is to remove these particles on the InSb[111]B surface.Some morphology images of both surfaces,InSb[111]A/B,will be presented.     

Analysis and test procedures for NOR flash memory defects

Widespread use of non-volatile memories, especially flash memories, in diverse applications such as in mobile computing and system-on-chip is becoming a common place. As a result, testing them for faults and reliability is drawing considerable interest of designers and researchers. One of the most predominant failure modes for which these memories must be tested is called disturb faults. In this paper, we first analyze different defects that are responsible for disturb faults using a 2-dimension device simulator. We determine the impact of various defects on cell performance and develop a methodology based on channel erase technique to detect these defects. Our tests are efficient and can be converted to march tests prevalently used to test memories. We also propose a very low cost design-for-testability approach that can be used to apply the test technique developed in this paper.     

Cleaning Method of InSb [-1-1-1] B of n- InSb [111] A/B for growth of epitaxial layers by liquid phase epitaxy

The crystal structure of InSb [111] A/B surfaces shows that this structure is polarized. This means that the surfaces of InSb [111] A and InSb [1 1 1] B contain two different crystallized directions and they have different physical and chemical properties. Experiments were carried out on the InSb [111] A/B surfaces, showing that tartaric acid etchant could create a very smooth surface on the InSb [1 1 1] B without any traces of oxides and etch pit but simultaneously create etch pit on InSb [111] A surfaces. After lapping and polishing, some particles remained on the InSb [1 1 1] B surface, they could not be removed easily by standard cleaning process and if these particles remain on the surface of the substrate, the growth layer was not uniform and some island-like regions were observed. The purpose of this work is to remove these particles on the InSb [1 1 1] B surface. Some morphology images of both surfaces, InSb [111] A/B, will be presented.     

The AIMS2-SF: a short form of the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales 2. French Quality of Life in Rheumatology Group

OBJECTIVE: To develop a short form of the Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales 2 (AIMS2) questionnaire, preserving content validity as the priority criterion. METHODS: A 2-step reduction procedure was used: 1) Delphi technique, with 1 panel of patients and 1 panel of experts each selecting 1 set of items independently; and 2) nominal group technique, where members of both panels reached consensus on the final selection of items, using information derived from item analysis. Psychometric properties of the AIMS2-Short Form (AIMS2-SF) and AIMS2 were compared using data from a cohort of 127 rheumatoid arthritis patients who completed the AIMS2 twice prior to the initiation of methotrexate (MTX) treatment and 3 months post-initiation of MTX treatment. RESULTS: The 2 panels reached consensus on a 26-item AIMS2-SF (54.4% reduction from the AIMS2). Factor analysis showed preservation of the 5-component structure. Convergent validity (Physical and Symptom components with clinical variables: r = 0.24-0.59), test-retest reproducibility (intraclass correlation coefficient >0.7), and sensitivity to change at 3 months (standardized response mean 0.36-0.8, except Social Interaction component [0.08]) were very close to the values for the original AIMS2. CONCLUSION: The AIMS2-SF is a shorter version of the AIMS2 (i.e., available in 2-page format) and has psychometric properties similar to those of the AIMS2.