Ambient and High-Temperature Stable Fracture Tests in Ceramics: Applications to Yttria-Partially-Stabilized Zirconia

A new technique that provides stable fracture tests in brittle ceramic materials at room and at high temperature is presented. This technique uses the crack mouth opening displacement signal from a laser extensometer to feed the servo control of a hydraulic testing machine. In this way it is possible to obtain—in addition to the fracture toughness—the fracture energy and the R -curve, in a single test.     

EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF NUCLEATION PHENOMENA WITHIN THERMAL BOUNDARY LAYERS—INFLUENCE ON CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION RATE PROCESSES

In carrying out partial vapor condensations using actively cooled surfaces it is known that 'mist' formation can occur within thermal boundary layers (Rosner and Epstein, 1968), dramatically modifying total deposition fluxes. Using a combination of flash-evaporation (Rosner and Liang, 1986) and laser probing techniques, we report new experimental results on binary alkali salt (K₂SO₄ + Na₂SO₄) deposition from combustion gases showing that the deposition rate of potassium sulfate first increases with the addition of sodium sulfate until the concentration of Na₂SO₄ reaches a (target surface temperature dependent) 'threshold' value. Further increases in the concentration of Na₂SO₄ dramatically decrease the total deposition rate of K₂SO₄, implying that potassium sulfate-containing microdroplets are formed within the thermal boundary layer, which, despite their thermophoretic drift toward the target, are not collected as effectively as the 'parent' K₂SO₄-vapor species. Laser light scattering measurements clearly reveal that suspended particles exist near the deposition surface under these conditions. Our experimental results on mass transfer rate and light scattering are consistent with those predicted using laminar boundary layer theory (Castillo and Rosner, 1989b) coupling both binary salt vapor deposition with particle vapor scavenging and deposition. Comparisons of our observed mist onset conditions (implying critical supersaturations near unity) with those expected using homogeneous nucleation theory suggest that the binary alkali sulfate mist nucleation mechanism is, instead, heterogeneous, even in our relatively 'clean' combustion products. Because of the; well-known vapor pressure reduction phenomenon associated here with the formation of non-ideal solutions, binary systems are shown to provide convenient 'vehicles' to investigate BL mist formation onset conditions and CVD-rate consequences without requiring the more extreme surface coolings characteristic of unary condensible vapor systems. An understanding of this dramatic phenomenon, obtained via such laboratory experiments and calculations, will allow its inclusion in future deposition rate calculations of engineering importance.     

The C-loss function for pattern classification

This paper presents a new loss function for neural network classification, inspired by the recently proposed similarity measure called Correntropy. We show that this function essentially behaves like the conventional square loss for samples that are well within the decision boundary and have small errors, and L₀ or counting norm for samples that are outliers or are difficult to classify. Depending on the value of the kernel size parameter, the proposed loss function moves smoothly from convex to non-convex and becomes a close approximation to the misclassification loss (ideal 0–1 loss). We show that the discriminant function obtained by optimizing the proposed loss function in the neighborhood of the ideal 0–1 loss function to train a neural network is immune to overfitting, more robust to outliers, and has consistent and better generalization performance as compared to other commonly used loss functions, even after prolonged training. The results also show that it is a close competitor to the SVM. Since the proposed method is compatible with simple gradient based online learning, it is a practical way of improving the performance of neural network classifiers.     

Sustainability in Web server systems

The exponential growth of Internet during the last decade leads us to make more efforts in the researching and developing of sustainable Web servers in order to decrease the global energy demand. In this paper, we cover, as a first step, a proper review of the literature related to the energy efficiency research in Web server systems to depict the state of the art to plan further contributions as more research in sustainable Web systems. We also propose and implement an energy metric that permits to establish a relation between the Quality of Service (QoS) obtained by the system and the power it consumes.     

Comparison of relative viscosity measurement of polyvinylpyrrolidone in water by glass capillary viscometer and differential dual‐capillary viscometer

The relative viscosity (RV) of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) with different molecular weights was measured with a glass capillary viscometer and with a differential dual‐capillary viscometer in water at different concentrations. For the differential dual‐capillary viscometer, RV increases with a decreasing flow rate, especially for high molecular weight PVP at a 1% concentration. A good agreement in the RV between the two methods can be obtained for PVP with different molecular weights and at various concentrations if an appropriate flow rate is selected for the differential dual‐capillary viscometer. Special precaution is needed when using the differential dual‐capillary viscometer to measure the viscosity of a pure solvent. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 86: 1312–1315, 2002     

Online FPS games: effect of router buffer and multiplexing techniques on subjective quality estimators

First Person Shooters are a genre of online games in which users demand a high interactivity, because the actions and the movements are very fast. They usually generate high rates of small packets which have to be delivered to the server within a deadline. When the traffic of a number of players shares the same link, these flows can be aggregated in order to save bandwidth. Certain multiplexing techniques are able to merge a number of packets, in a similar way to voice trunking, creating a bundle which is transmitted using a tunnel. In addition, the headers of the original packets can be compressed by means of standard algorithms. The characteristics of the buffers of the routers which deliver these bundled packets may have a strong influence on the network impairments (mainly delay, jitter and packet loss) which determine the quality of the game. A subjective quality estimator has been used in order to study the mutual influence of the buffer and multiplexing techniques. Taking into account that there exist buffers which size is measured in terms of bytes, and others measured in packets, both kinds of buffers have been tested, using different sizes. Traces from real game parties have been merged in order to obtain the traffic of 20 simultaneous players sharing the same Internet access. The delay and jitter produced by the buffer of the access router have been obtained using simulations. In general, the quality is expected to be reduced as the background traffic grows, but the results show an anomalous region in which the quality rises with the background traffic amount. Small buffers present better subjective quality results than bigger ones. When the total traffic amount gets above the available bandwidth, the buffers measured in bytes add to the packets a fixed delay, which grows with buffer size. They present a jitter peak when the offered traffic is roughly the link capacity. On the other hand, buffers which size is measured in packets add a smaller delay, but they increase packet loss for gaming traffic. The obtained results illustrate the need of knowing the characteristics of the buffer in order to make the correct decision about traffic multiplexing. As a conclusion, it would be interesting for game developers to identify the behaviour of the router buffer so as to adapt the traffic to it.     

Evolutionary robustness analysis for multi-objective optimization: benchmark problems

This paper presents a new approach to robustness analysis in multi-objective optimization problems aimed at obtaining the most robust Pareto front solutions and distributing the solutions along the most robust regions of the optimal Pareto set. A new set of test problems accounting for the different types of robustness cases is presented in this study. Non-dominated solutions are classified according to their degree of robustness and are distributed along the Pareto front according to specific algorithm parameter values. Verification of the proposed method is carried out using the developed test problems and artificial and real world benchmark test problems present in the literature.     

Synthesis of UHMW-PE by a Highly Active Homogeneous System: η5-(C5H5)2Ti(η1-OC(O)C6H5)2/MAO

Summary The complex ⁵-(C₅H₅)₂Ti (¹-OC(O)C₆H₅)₂ was synthesized and activated with MA0 for ethylene polymerization. The resultant polymer is UHMW-PE with a viscosimetric molecular weight of Mv = 6.8 x 10⁶ to 0.7 x 10⁶ g/mol dependent on the temperature of the reaction. The effects of the Al/Ti molar ratio and temperature of the reaction on the catalytic activity and polymer properties were studied.     

Solvent free liquid phase oxidation of benzyl alcohol using Au supported catalysts prepared using a sol immobilization technique

Solvent free oxidation of benzyl alcohol was investigated in the absence of a base using Au catalysts prepared by sol immobilization on titania and carbon supports. Comparison between the Au supported catalysts revealed that activity and distribution of products was dependent on the nature of support and heat treatment. Specifically, heat pre-treatment of the Au catalysts has a beneficial effect in terms of activity, but is detrimental in terms of selectivity to the benzaldehyde. We conclude that sol immobilization is a suitable technique for preparing gold catalysts with small particle size and narrow particle size distributions and very high activity and selectivity for benzyl alcohol oxidation.     

Time-Temperature-Transformation Curves for Kaolinite-α-Alumina

The C-shaped time-temperature-transformation curves (T-T-T curves) of cristobalite formation and the L-shaped T-T-T curves of α-alumina reaction were established for a high-purity kaolinite-α-alumina mixture during heating. The results revealed that cristobalite formation in kaolinite was retarded by the presence of α-alumina between 1250° and 1350°C and was totally prohibited above 1380°C due to the reaction of kaolinite with α-alumina to form secondary mullite. The reaction of α-alumina with kaolinite was initiated at about 1250°C. It became quite extensive above 1380°C and was extremely fast at 1600°C and above, indicating the strong effect of the eutectic liquid formation at ∼1587°C in silica-alumina. The effectiveness of the established T-T-T curves was demonstrated and discussed.