A light refractory concrete for thermal insulation

Compositions have been developed for nonshrinking vibrocast thermally insulating light refractory concretes with densities of 1.0, 1.3, 1.5, and 1.8 g/cm³ for temperatures of use up to 1400°C. The structure and properties have been examined for the concrete of density 1.3 g/cm³. __________ Translated from Novye Ogneupory, No. 4, pp. 29–32, April, 2008.     

Total and Fractional Performance of Granular Dust Traps in Refractory Production

Methods are proposed for designing interpolation models for the preliminary determination and subsequent forecasting of general and fractional breakthrough coefficients for dust used with granular filters, as employed in energy-saving and high-performance dust trapping from technological gases and ventilation discharges in refractory production. The models are supplied with nomograms, which makes them widely suitable for experts working in environmental protection at refractory-producing organizations. The main factors are identified that influence the performance. The results are of interest to experts in related areas of industry such as building materials and engineering ceramics and so on. Translated from Novye Ogneupory, No. 4, pp. 64–67, April, 2008.     

Granular-structure chromium-bearing refractories: Properties and uses

Results are presented on the corrosion resistance of chromium-bearing refractories of granular structure acted on by corrosive molten slags, metals, and glasses. It is possible to recommend these refractories to customers for particular conditions of use. Chromium-bearing refractories increase the working lives of furnaces considerably. __________ Translated from Novye Ogneupory, No. 1, pp. 55–61, January, 2008.     

Aggregate stability of ZrO2 aqueous sols in electrolyte solutions

The aggregate stability of submicron and nanosized ZrO₂ aqueous sols of different origins and different dispersities at pH 3–10 in the KCl concentration range 10^?3–10^?1 M is investigated by flow ultramicroscopy and photometry. The results obtained are analyzed in the framework of the extended Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek theory and the Muller-Martynov theory of reversible aggregation. The extension of boundary layers of water near the surface of the ZrO₂ particles is estimated.     

Study of the microstructure of ceramics from different producers used for protecting precious metal thermocouples

Results are provided for a study of the microstructure of ceramics from four different producers by means of a scanning electron microscope and x-ray microanalysis. Results show that ceramic specimens often do not correspond to claimed parameters. The main disadvantages are ceramic structural inhomogeneity, presence of phases of a different nature, intergranular pores and cracks, and alkali impurities. The ceramics of only one producer correspond to the main parameters for this class, and this is provided by high production technology and starting material quality. Translated from Novye Ogneupory, No. 7, pp. 31–35, July 2008.     

Noise–Power Optimization of Incremental Data Converters

Incremental data converters (IDCs) are useful in instrumentation and measurement applications, where low-frequency analog signals need to be converted into digital form with high accuracy and low power dissipation. They are particularly well suited for applications where a single analog-digital converter is multiplexed between many channels. This paper proposes an exact design methodology for IDCs, which optimizes the signal-to-noise ratio of the converter under practical design constraints. The process also allows the designer to apportion the noise budget in an arbitrary manner between thermal and quantization noise. The design process is illustrated by an example which describes the optimization of a third-order multiplexed IDC.     

Cost-Efficient SHA Hardware Accelerators

This paper presents a new set of techniques for hardware implementations of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) hash functions. These techniques consist mostly in operation rescheduling and hardware reutilization, therefore, significantly decreasing the critical path and required area. Throughputs from 1.3 Gbit/s to 1.8 Gbit/s were obtained for the SHA implementations on a Xilinx VIRTEX II Pro. Compared to commercial cores and previously published research, these figures correspond to an improvement in throughput/slice in the range of 29% to 59% for SHA-1 and 54% to 100% for SHA-2. Experimental results on hybrid hardware/software implementations of the SHA cores, have shown speedups up to 150 times for the proposed cores, compared to pure software implementations.      

Enhancing Chaotic Communication Performances by Manchester Coding

A numerical analysis of an optical chaotic transmission system, based on the synchronization of two chaotic lasers, in a master-slave closed loop configuration is presented. At the transmitter, the master chaotic wave is superposed on the information message; at the receiver, the message is recovered by subtracting the synchronized slave chaotic wave from the received signal. The performances are analyzed in terms of the Q-factor, considering two different message modulation formats: the nonreturn-to-zero and the Manchester coding. The Manchester coding shows enhanced performances due to the shift of the signal spectrum to higher frequencies.     

Effect of hot pressing on processing and properties of BBN ceramics

BBN (BaBi₂Nb₂O₉) is very interesting and promising lead free material with relaxor properties in capacitors, sensors and actuators.