PLASTIC AND DRYING PROPERTIES OF CERTAIN CLAYS AS INFLUENCED BY ELECTROLYTE CONTENT*

Electrodialyzed samples of several clays were saturated at pH 7 with various cations, and measurements were made to determine the effect of these cations on the workability and drying behavior of the clays. Excellent correlations were noted between the influence of these ions on clays in the plastic state and their behavior in causing flocculation or denocculation of dilute suspensions of clay. The results should be valuable for such industrial forming processes as throwing, jiggering, hot pressing, and extruding.     

PVD‐Metallisierung von Polymerfolien für elektronische Anwendungen

The steady growing miniaturisation in the interconnection technique make the use of new techniques for structuring and basic materials for the steady growing mass market necessary. The new generation of flex materials affords high reliability in respect to the FPC rules to make product innovations in a big market possible. Especially the long time stable adhesion which is important for the use of the flexible materials in a large application field is object for further efforts of developments.     

Weldability and weld performance of candidate austenitic alloys for advanced ultrasupercritical fossil power plants

Advanced ultrasupercritical steam conditions of up to 760°C and 34·5 MPa have been investigated in various programmes around the world over the last two decades. To date, much progress has been made, and three candidate materials, namely ferritic, austenitic and nickel base superalloys, have been investigated for high temperature strength, corrosion resistance and weldability. In an earlier published paper, welding and weldability of ferritic alloys were discussed. This paper considers the unique weldability characteristics for utilisation of austenitic stainless steels in future advanced ultrasupercritical fossil power plant designs and covers topics such as fundamentals of austenitic stainless steel welds, including weldability, filler metals and dissimilar metal welds, and discusses the prognosis for this class of materials for advanced ultrasupercritical fossil fired power plants.     

Hepatitis G virus co-infection in liver transplantation recipients with chronic hepatitis C and nonviral chronic liver disease

Hepatitis G virus (HGV) is a newly described RNA virus that is parenterally transmitted and has been found frequently in patients with chronic hepatitis C infection. To determine the impact of hepatitis G virus co-infection on morbidity and mortality following liver transplantation, we measured HGV RNA by polymerase chain reaction in pre and posttransplantation sera from a cohort of patients transplanted for chronic hepatitis C and a control group of patients transplanted for nonviral causes who were negative for hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA in serum. The overall prevalence rate of HGV RNA in transplanted patients with chronic hepatitis C was 20.7%. HGV infection was present before transplantation in 13% while it appeared to have been acquired at the time of transplantation in 7.4%. Mean serum alanine aminotransferase activity, hepatic histological activity, and patient and graft survival were similar between HGV-positive and HGV-negative patients. The prevalence rate of HGV RNA in transplanted controls was 64% (P < .01) with a significantly higher rate of acquisition of HGV infection following transplantation (53%, P < .001) when compared with patients with chronic hepatitis C. Mean serum alanine aminotransferase activity was significantly lower in the control patients with HGV infection alone following transplantation than in patients co-infected with hepatitis C (37 +/- 9 vs. 70 +/- 33 U/L, P < .01). Thus, HGV is frequently found in transplantation patients co-infected with hepatitis C although it appears to have minimal clinical impact. In patients transplanted for nonviral causes of end-stage liver disease, a high rate of hepatitis G acquisition at the time of transplantation may occur but does not appear to predispose to chronic hepatitis.     

Considerations in development of CCT diagrams for complex ferritic materials

A recent literature review of available data for the bainitic creep strength enhanced ferritic steel grade 23 revealed significant variations among available continuous cooling transformation (CCT) diagrams. Substantial differences in these diagrams were noted with respect to the observed transformation products, reported transformation temperatures and the data provided with the CCT diagram. While it is recognised that grade 23 is a complex material exhibiting up to three transformations on-cooling from austenitisation, there does not seem to be a standardised or uniform procedure for the development of CCT diagrams for such metallurgically diverse materials. This paper details development of a CCT diagram for this material through integration of results from thermal analysis, hardness measurements and microstructural observations.     

Lichtbogengestützte Prozesse zur Beschichtung von Kunststoffen

In the past ten years plasma enhanced deposition techniques have gained much increased importance due to the possibilities of improving and developing new film properties. Among these properties are adhesion and film structure. One of the new plasma assisted film deposition techniques is the Arc enhanced thermal evaporation technique. This new deposition technique and the film properties that are possible with this technique and its applications are described in this paper.