Water‐assisted injection molding of thermoplastic materials: Effects of processing parameters

The objective of this study was to experimentally investigate the effects of various processing parameters on the water‐assisted injection molding of thermoplastic materials. Experiments were carried out on a lab‐developed water‐assisted injection molding system, which included a water pump, a water injection pin, a water tank equipped with a temperature regulator, and a control circuit. Two types of water injection pins designs were proposed to mold the parts. After molding, the lengths of water penetration in molded parts were measured. The effects of different processing parameters on the lengths of water penetration were determined. It was found that the shrinkage rate and the viscosity of the polymeric materials, and the void shapes of the hollowed cores mainly determined the water‐penetration lengths in molded products. In addition, a comparison has been made between the parts molded by water assisted injection molding and gas‐assisted injection molding. It was found that water‐assisted injection molded parts exhibit less uniform void sizes along the water channel. The cycle time for water‐assisted injection molded parts was shorter than that of conventional injection molded parts and gas‐assisted injection molded parts.     

A contribution to the UV degradation of polyurethanes

The effects of the nature of the polyols used in polyurethane (PUR) synthesis on the structural transformations after ageing by UV irradiation has been studied. The investigations were performed on PUR prepared from polyester and polyether diol oligomers. The characterization of the samples before and after ageing in view of the structural changes, which influence the course of the photooxidative degradation and photocrosslinking as well as in view of changes of mechanical properties has been done. Comparative investigations were performed by spectroscopic and viscometric measurements. The results show pronounced heterogeneity of the degradative reactions, including the existence of crosslinking processes and producing thus very inhomogeneous polymeric material. The course and the intensity of photooxidative degradation of PUR differ together with changes of mechanical properties depending whether polyester or polyether polyol have been used. The processes of photooxidative degradation is less expressed in polyesterurethane then in polyurethane based on polyether, under the same conditions of experiments. Different structures of polyester diols caused the various ageing behaviour of PUR too.     

A low‐profile antenna with circularly polarized reconfigurable and omnidirectional radiation patterns

A low profile circularly polarized (CP) antenna with reconfigurable polarization is designed and presented, which can radiate omnidirectional patterns that can be switched between left‐hand circularly polarized (LHCP) and right‐hand circularly polarized (RHCP). A pair of arc‐shaped complementary dipoles is acted as reconfigurable elements by bridging four pin diodes at the dipole arced arms. A meander phase shift line is employed to connected the arc dipole arms and plate cavity to adjust the phase relationship of two sources. The proposed antenna exhibits the omnidirectional radiation pattern by combining six identical elements placed in a circular array configuration. 24 p‐i‐n diodes are exploited to six elements, by manipulating the dc bias voltage across the diodes, the polarization state of the antenna can be switched. The patterns of the antenna are similar to that of a dipole, but its size is only about Φ0.87 × 0.029λ₀ at 5.8 GHz. The overlapped bandwidth of measured 3‐dB axial ratio (AR) and 10‐dB return loss is 5.724‐5.87 and 5.738‐5.91 GHz for two polarization states, which are right on the target of ISM band. It can be well adapted to medical diagnosis systems.     

A pair of parallel differential magnetic‐field probes with high measurement accuracy and high electric‐field suppression ratio

Magnetic‐field probes can be used for electromagnetic interference measurement of high‐speed circuits. The main magnetic probe performance includes sensitivity, spatial resolution, electric‐field suppression ratio (EFSR), and measurement accuracy. In this article, a pair of differential magnetic‐field probes is proposed to improve measurement accuracy without reducing sensitivity. The proposed differential probes consist of two asymmetric loop probes, which are designed in the same plane and separated by a row of periodic vias. The proposed differential probes are fabricated under PCB process. High accuracy can be achieved by measuring difference between outputs of the two probes. In addition, EFSR can be improved by size optimization of the differential magnetic‐field probes. Simulation and measurement results show the operating bandwidth is from 100 MHz to 12 GHz, the measurement error is 3.4% and the EFSR is about 40 dB. The proposed probes have higher measurement accuracy and higher EFSR than the conventional single probe, and larger operation bandwidth than the stacked differential probes.     

Design of a broadband dielectric resonator antenna and its application in low sensitivity frequency beam‐scanning array with wide scanning angle and suppressed sidelobes

In this paper, a broadband dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with a simple H‐slot feeding structure is proposed. The broad bandwidth (~45%) and uni‐directional radiation enable this DRA suitable to work as a radiation element in the construction of a beam‐scanning array with not only low frequency sensitivity which is important for accurate angle estimation of in‐coming targets, but also a wide scanning range. Moreover, stable coupling coefficients are established around all the above three resonances with respect to its corresponding feeding line, ensuring a low sidelobe level (SLL) across the whole operating frequency range. In order to realize such a DRA, a latticed rectangular structure is utilized to generate the lower two resonances, while the upper resonance is generated by its H‐shaped feeding slot. The shape of the latticed dielectric resonator is also modified according to a 3‐D printed fixing structure for an accurate installation. A 20‐element beam‐scanning prototype is demonstrated and manufactured. The range of scanning angle is from ?36° to +13° within the bandwidth of 10 to 16 GHz, corresponding to a frequency sensitivity of only 122.5 MHz/^o. The achieved SLL are smaller than 19 dB for all scanning beams. The above performance indicates that, this array is very suitable for near‐range radar systems requiring an accurate angle estimation.     

A color image watermarking framework for copyright protection of stereo images based on binocular just noticeable difference and LU decomposition

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The copyright protection of three-dimensional (3D) content is a matter of interest in artistic and creative works due to the rights of the holder for the...     

Assessing task understanding in remote ultrasound diagnosis via gesture analysis

Pattern Analysis and Applications - This work presents a gesture-based approach to estimate task understanding and performance during remote ultrasound tasks. Our approach is comprised of...     

Guaranteeing performance for uncertain nonlinear systems with bounded state constraint and mismatching condition

The control design problem for the uncertain nonlinear system with bounded state constraint and mismatching condition is considered in this paper. The uncertainty in the system, which may be due to unknown system parameters and external disturbance, is nonlinear and time‐varying. The state of the system is constrained to be bounded. The system does not satisfy the (global) matching condition. A creative one‐to‐one state transformation is proposed by converting the bounded states into the unbounded ones. A step‐by‐step state transformation is proposed to convert the mismatched system into a matched system. The robust control is then proposed based on the transformed system. The control is demonstrated to be able to guarantee the uniform boundedness and uniform ultimate boundedness of the system in the presence of uncertainty, while the state constraint can be always guaranteed.     

Hierarchical inversion‐based output tracking control for uncertain autonomous underwater vehicles using extended Kalman filter

In this study, a hierarchical inversion‐based output tracking controller (HIOTC) is developed for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) subject to random uncertainties (e.g., current disturbances, unmodeled dynamics, and parameter variations) and noises (e.g., process and measurement noises). The proposed HIOTC respectively utilizes a combination of feedforward and feedback controls in a hierarchical structure based on the kinematic and dynamic models of the system. Moreover, to obtain uncontaminated or unavailable states for implementing the proposed control law, the extended Kalman filter (EKF) is employed to estimate the system states. Then, the position outputs, orientation, and velocity of the AUV are reached with guaranteed asymptotic stability. The robustness of the proposed HIOTC is verified through injection of random uncertainties into the system model. The closed‐loop stability of the proposed individual subsystems is respectively guaranteed to have uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) performance based on the Lyapunov stability criteria. In addition, the asymptotic tracking of the overall system is demonstrated using Barbalat's lemma. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme are evaluated through computer simulations and it is shown that the overall system achieves good asymptotic tracking performance.     

Performance‐based near‐optimal vibration control for nonlinear offshore platforms with delayed input

This paper investigates the vibration control problem for offshore platform, where the nonlinear characteristics, delayed input and external wave force are considered in time domain. By introducing a delay‐free reconstructional vector and applying the maximum principle, the original vibration problem for offshore platform is formulated as a nonlinear two‐point‐boundary‐value (TPBV) problem with delayed items. The major contribution of this paper is that a performance‐based near‐optimal vibration control strategy is proposed by solving this nonlinear TPBV problem, which includes a feedback item with offshore platform system state, a feedforward item with wave force state, and a compensator for nonlinear and delayed items with infinite supersensitive component. In particular, the designed compensator is calculated from two group series of linear differential equations by introducing a parameter for expending the Maclaurin series of nonlinear and delay items. Meanwhile, an iterative algorithm is designed to make the proposed vibration control scheme computable based on the control performance in each iterative procedure. Finally, experimental results show that the displacement, velocity and performance index of an employed offshore platform achieved small values under the proposed control strategy and designed algorithm.