Stress intensity factors of a surface crack near an interface end

Due to the singular behavior of the stress field near the interface edge of bonded dissimilar materials, fracture generally initiates near the interface edge, or just from the interface edge point. In this paper, an edge crack near the interface, which can be considered as being induced by the edge singularity and satisfying two conditions, is analyzed theoretically, based on the singular stress field near the interface edge and the superposition principle. It is found that the stress intensity factor can be expressed by the stress intensity coefficient of the edge singular stress field, the crack length, the distance between the interface and the crack, as well as the material combination. Boundary element method analysis is also carried out. It is found that the theoretical result coincides well with the numerical result when the crack length is small. Therefore, the theoretical representation obtained by this study can be used to simply evaluate the stress intensity factor of an edge singularity induced crack for this case. However, when the crack length becomes larger than a certain value, a significant difference appears, especially for the case with large edge singularity.     

Relationship between characteristics of oil droplets and solidification of thermally treated creams

The relationship between the characteristics of oil droplets and the change in appearance of cream was investigated. The model creams (40 wt% oil-in-water emulsion), similar to commerical products, were prepared with vegetable fat, milk protein, and emulsifier. The thermal treatment, in which the cream was exposed to a certain temperature and subsequently recooled, was performed on the assumption that the temperature was temporarily elevated during transportation and storage of commercial products. Solidification of the cream was observed when it was exposed to a temperature where there was a small percentage in solid fat content (SFC) of fat in oil droplets and recooled, whereas the cream remained in the liquid state when it was exposed to the temperature where SFC was zero and recooled. When the SFC of oil droplets was 0% at the treated temperature, greater supercooling prior to fat crystallization occurred and the crystallization rate after the initial formation of crystals was much higher. On the other hand, the polymorphism of fat in the droplets was not directly affected by the thermal treatment. These results indicate that the crystallization in oil droplets at the heating temperature may be closely connected with the destablization of oil droplets via a partial coalescence mechanism, which will cause the solidification of cream.     

A 1-V high-speed MTCMOS circuit scheme for power-down applicationcircuits

This paper proposes a new multithreshold-voltage CMOS circuit (MTCMOS) concept aimed at achieving high-speed, ultralow-power large-scale integrators (LSI's) for battery-driven portable equipment. The “balloon” circuit scheme based on this concept preserves data during the power-down period in which the power supply to the circuit is cut off in order to reduce the standby power. Low-power, high-speed performance is achieved by the small preserving circuit which can be separated from the critical path of the logic circuit. This preserving circuit is not only three times faster than a conventional MTCMOS one, but it consumes half the power and takes up half the area. Using this scheme for an LSI chip, 20-MHz operation at 1.0 V and only a few nA standby current was achieved with 0.5-μm CMOS technology. Moreover, this scheme is effective for high speed and low-power operation in quarter-micrometer and finer devices     

New empirical relation for MOSFET noise unified over linear and saturation regions

This paper proposes an empirical relation, which represents noise bias condition dependence for a silicon N-channel MOSFET. No matter whether the MOSFET is operated in linear or saturation region, bias condition dependence is found to be well described by a power function of voltage gain. By introducing a device's intrinsic noise emf v_nc(ƒ), which is independent from bias condition, and empirical parameter β, input-referred noise voltage v_ni(ƒ) is clarified to be a function of v_nc(ƒ), β, and voltage gain , i.e. . This relation implies that noise voltage depends implicitly on bias condition through voltage gain, because transconductance g_m and drain-source differential conductance g_DS depend on bias condition. If β − 1 value is negligible, v_ni(ƒ) = v_nc(ƒ) is almost independent from bias condition, whereas, if β − 1 value is not negligible, bias condition dependence for v_ni(ƒ) appears to be observed. The β deviation from unity, which characterizes bias condition dependence, measures the difference between signal amplification and noise amplification.     

Loop diuretics act directly on adenylate cyclase in rat renal tubular basolateral membranes

We have reported previously that loop diuretics, especially azosemide and ethacrynic acid, may act not only on the AVP receptor site, but also on the post-AVP receptor site in rat renal tubular basolateral membranes. The purpose of this study was to examine whether loop diuretics (furosemide, azosemide, ethacrynic acid) affect the post-AVP receptor components, using GTP-gamma S, forskolin and cholera toxin as tools acting distal to the receptor. Adenylate cyclase activity stimulated by 10(-9)M AVP was inhibited more potently by azosemide and ethacrynic acid than by furosemide at the concentration of 10(-3) M. Azosemide and ethacrynic acid at concentrations above 10(-4) M also significantly decreased the enzyme activity that was stimulated by 10(-7) M GTP-gamma S and 10(-5)M forskolin, while significant inhibition by furosemide was observed only at 10(-3)M. In addition, the inhibitory effect of these loop diuretics on cholera toxin-stimulated enzyme activity was almost similar to the results observed in AVP-, GTP-gamma S- or forskolin-stimulated the enzyme activity. From these results, we conclude that loop diuretics, especially azosemide and ethacrynic acid, directly affect adenylate cyclase in part as well as the AVP receptor site.     

FRETTING FATIGUE OF AN AUSTENITIC STAINLESS STEEL IN SEAWATER

Abstract— Fretting fatigue tests of an austenitic stainless steel used for a propeller tail shaft were carried out in seawater and in air. In seawater, fretting significantly reduced the fatigue strength, however, the fretting fatigue lives at higher levels of stress were longer than those in air. The tangential force coefficient (defined as the ratio of the frictional force amplitude and the contact load) in seawater was much lower than that in air and varied in the range from 0.3 to 0.5 during the fretting fatigue tests. The lower tangential force coefficient in seawater seems to be the main reason for the longer fretting fatigue life in seawater. The prediction of fretting fatigue life was made on the basis of elastic-plastic fracture mechanics, where the frictional force between the specimen and the contact pad was taken into consideration. The predicted fatigue lives agreed well with the experimental results in both air and seawater.     

Fracture mechanics approach to fretting fatigue and problems to be solved

A large number of research works have been devoted to fretting fatigue from both mechanical and metallurgical viewpoints. In the present paper, fracture mechanical approaches for evaluating fretting fatigue life and strength have been briefly reviewed. Furthermore, a new approach based on a singular stress field near the contact edge and on fracture mechanics has been proposed. The directions of crack initiation and propagation as well as fretting fatigue life, which have coincided with the experimental results, could be estimated according to the new approach, in which singular stress near the contact edge and mixed mode crack growth have been taken into consideration. In the application of the new method to predict the fretting fatigue behavior, there are still several problems to be clarified, which have also been discussed in detail.     

Dynamic range improvement by narrow-channel effect suppression andsmear reduction technologies in small pixel IT-CCD image sensors

Technologies for narrow-channel effect suppression in photodiodes (PDs) and vertical CCDs (V-CCDs) and for smear reduction in PDs have been developed in order to improve dynamic range in small pixel interline-transfer CCD (IT-CCD) image sensors. The new technologies have been applied to a progressive-scan IT-CCD image sensor with 5 μm square pixels and have (1) increased the charge handling capability of its V-CCDs to 4500 electrons/V; (2) improved its smear value to -95 dB; and (3) increased the saturation charge of its PDs to 2.3×10⁴ electrons     

Design of precompensator for a diagonal interactor using Markov parameters

An interactor plays a basic role in the design problems of multivariable control systems, such as the model matching control, decoupling control, adaptive control, and disturbance decoupling control. For example, it is well known that a linear multivariable system is decouplable by the static state feedback if and only if it has a diagonal interactor. But, in general, the interactor is a lower left triangular matrix, which makes the design problems of multivariable control systems complicated. From this point of view, the precompensator such that the total system has a diagonal interactor is important for multivariable control systems to simplify their design procedure. This paper concerns the systematic design method of the precompensator for a diagonal interactor using Markov parameters of the plant. It will also be proved that this compensator is always obtained by the proposed design algorithm. Furthermore, this argument will be a basic idea when this technique is applied to the nonlinear multivariable systems. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 163(1): 65–72, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20599