Atmospheric corrosion of reference metals in Antarctic sites

This paper presents the results obtained at three Antarctic test sites participating in the “Ibero-American Map of Atmospheric Corrosiveness” (MICAT), a project on atmospheric corrosion carried out during the period 1988–1994 at some 70 sites distributed across 12 countries of the Latin-American region, Spain and Portugal. The three Antarctic sites are located near the coastline.The singular climatic characteristics of Antarctic regions are related with the purity of the air, the absence of rainfall and the formation of ice on the metallic surface during an important part of the exposure time. However, electrochemical activity is possible below ice layers. This situation affects the structure and morphology of corrosion product films and the resulting corrosion rates of metallic surfaces.     

Effects of grain sizes, shapes, and distribution on minimum sizes of representative volume elements of cubic polycrystals

In the literature the concept of representative volume element (RVE) was introduced to correlate the effective or macroscopic properties of materials with the properties of the microscopic constituents and microscopic structures of the materials. However, to date little quantitative knowledge is available about minimum RVE sizes of various engineering materials. In our recent paper [J. Mech. Phys. Solids 50 (2002) 881], a new definition of minimum RVE size was introduced based on the concept of nominal modulus. Numerical experiments using the finite element method (FEM) were then carried out for determining the minimum RVE sizes of more than 500 cubic polycrystals in the plane stress problem, under the assumption that all grains in a polycrystal have the same square shape––called the simple polycrystal model. The major finding is that the minimum RVE sizes for effective elastic moduli have a roughly linear dependence on crystal anisotropy degrees. The present paper takes into account the effect of grain sizes, shapes, and distribution on the minimum RVE sizes for real cubic polycrystals that are formed by crystallization processes. Similar roughly linear dependence is found again, with the slope about 19% lower than that in the simple polycrystal model. This finding is interesting and useful because numerical experiments on minimum RVE sizes for a large number of crystals are quite time-consuming and the simple polycrystal model reduces significantly the FEM pre- and post-processing works. This should be particularly true in numerically testing minimum RVE sizes for three-dimensional polycrystals and for nonelastic properties in future works. With a maximum relative error 5%, all the polycrystals tested have a minimum RVE size of 16 or less times the grain size.     

Modeling and Analysis of a Long Thin Conducting Stripline

A long thin conducting stripline embedded in a dielectric and centered between two large conducting plates, i.e., the stripline environment, is considered. The stripline is modeled as infinitely long, infinitely thin, and perfectly conducting by first considering a stripline of finite length, thickness, and conductivity in a dielectric layer. Starting from Maxwell's equations and assuming that the current on the stripline is a propagating wave in length direction, asymptotic expressions for the fields inside and in the neighbourhood of the stripline are deduced. These expressions are used to model the stripline in the stripline environment, which leads to a boundary-value problem for the electric potential. This problem is solved by two different approaches, leading to integral equations for the current and for an auxiliary function describing the electric potential. A relation between the current and the auxiliary function is deduced, which is used to obtain asymptotic expressions for current and impedance. Results are compared with a numerical solution of the integral equation for the current and with results in literature.     

MIMO系统中简单的扩展空时块编码分集技术研究

本文提出一种多输入多输出（MIMO）天线系统中简单的扩展空时块编码（SSTBC）分集技术，采用沃尔什码来区分各天线发送数据子流。采用这种方法，在系统带宽一定时，不降低发送信息速率，同时接收机简单。不同天线的发送信息经过了所有收一发天线对之间的空间子信道，获得了所有路径的部分空间分集增益，仿真结果表明，这种增益的获得不受限于接收分集阶数，并且随发射天线的增加以一定的线性关系增加。     

Enhanced light output in nitride-based light-emitting diodes by roughening the mesa sidewall

In this letter, we will report on a nitride-based light emitting diode with a mesa sidewall roughening process that increases light output power. The fabricated GaN-based light-emitting diode (LED) wafers were first treated through a photoelectrochemical (PEC) process. The Ga/sub 2/O/sub 3/ layers then formed around the GaN : Si n-type mesa sidewalls and the bottoms mesa etching regions. Selective wet oxidation occurred at the mesa sidewall between the p- and the n-type GaN interface. The light output power of the PEC treated LED was seen to increase by about 82% which was caused by a reduced index reflectance of GaN-Ga/sub 2/O/sub 3/-air layers, by a rough Ga/sub 2/O/sub 3/ surface, by a microroughening of the GaN sidewall surface, and by a selective oxidation step profile of the mesa sidewall that increases the light-extraction efficiency from the mesa sidewall direction. Consequently, this wet PEC treated process is suitable for high powered nitride-based LEDs lighting applications.     

Strategies to improve the performance of very low bit rate speech coders and application to a variable rate 1.2 kb/s codec

This paper presents several strategies to improve the performance of very low bit rate speech coders and describes a speech codec that incorporates these strategies and operates at an average bit rate of 1.2 kb/s. The encoding algorithm is based on several improvements in a mixed multiband excitation (MMBE) linear predictive coding (LPC) structure. A switched-predictive vector quantiser technique that outperforms previously reported schemes is adopted to encode the LSF parameters. Spectral and sound specific low rate models are used in order to achieve high quality speech at low rates. An MMBE approach with three sub-bands is employed to encode voiced frames, while fricatives and stops modelling and synthesis techniques are used for unvoiced frames. This strategy is shown to provide good quality synthesised speech, at a bit rate of only 0.4 kb/s for unvoiced frames. To reduce coding noise and improve decoded speech, spectral envelope restoration combined with noise reduction (SERNR) postfilter is used. The contributions of the techniques described in this paper are separately assessed and then combined in the design of a low bit rate codec that is evaluated against the North American Mixed Excitation Linear Prediction (MELP) coder. The performance assessment is carried out in terms of the spectral distortion of LSF quantisation, mean opinion score (MOS), A/B comparison tests and the ITU-T P.862 perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) standard. Assessment results show that the improved methods for LSF quantisation, sound specific modelling and synthesis and the new postfiltering approach can significantly outperform previously reported techniques. Further results also indicate that a system combining the proposed improvements and operating at 1.2 kb/s, is comparable (slightly outperforming) a MELP coder operating at 2.4 kb/s. For tandem connection situations, the proposed system is clearly superior to the MELP coder.     

Generalized difference control of parallel streams temperatures

A furnace with multiple parallel passes and multiple burners is commonly seen in petroleum refineries. In order to maintain the furnace running in a safe, stable, and high-efficiency state it is necessary to control the outlet temperatures of the multiple passes to be the same. Due to the fact that the process of the oil heating in such furnace is nonlinear, multivariable, time varying, has serious coupling among passes, has frequent dynamic changes and a large time delay, traditional control methods have trouble in controlling these temperatures, and some advanced control methods, including predictive control, adaptive control, and robust control, are usually too complex for convenient use. In this paper, a control technique, called differences control technique (DsCT), is proposed to distribute the stream flowrates such that the stream temperatures are as identical as possible. The principle of the proposed technique is explained and demonstrated, and the results of its application to a real-life petroleum refinery furnace are also reported. The DsCT technique has the following advantages: it does not need complicated design procedures, the controller structure is simple, it is easy to apply, and it can be canonically applied to furnaces with different number of passes.     

Integration of prior knowledge of measurement noise in kernel density classification

Samples can be measured with different precisions and reliabilities in different experiments, or even within the same experiment. These varying levels of measurement noise may deteriorate the performance of a pattern recognition system, if not treated with care. Here we seek to investigate the benefit of incorporating prior knowledge about measurement noise into system construction. We propose a kernel density classifier which integrates such prior knowledge. Instead of using an identical kernel for each sample, we transform the prior knowledge into a distinct kernel for each sample. The integration procedure is straightforward and easy to interpret. In addition, we show how to estimate the diverse measurement noise levels in a real world dataset. Compared to the basic methods, the new kernel density classifier can give a significantly better classification performance. As expected, this improvement is more obvious for small sample size datasets and large number of features.