Influence of residual deformation after abrasive machining and centrifugal finishing on ball-bearing assembly

Experimental data are presented regarding the influence of residual deformation after abrasive machining and centrifugal finishing on ball-bearing assembly.     

Circadian reactivity rhythm of rat gastric mucosa to restraint-cold stress and indomethacin: temporal variation in the protective effect of iloprost

In this study, the time-dependent ulcerogenic effects of restraint-cold stress and indomethacin on the gastric mucosa and the temporal variation in the protective effect of iloprost, a synthetic stable analog of prostacyclin, were investigated in rats synchronized to 12h light and 12h darkness, lights on at 08:00. The severity of gastric ulceration produced by either stress or indomethacin showed marked circadian variation; it was greatest at 11 HALO (hours after lights on) for restraint-cold stress and at 23 HALO for indomethacin. The severity of the induced ulcerogenesis was least at 7 HALO for both stimuli. The protective effect of iloprost against restraint-cold stress was most prominent at 15 HALO and 19 HALO with an approximately 80% protection score. On the other hand, pretreatment with iloprost reduced the indomethacin-induced mucosal injury only at 23 HALO. The circadian variation in the effect of iloprost and in the rhythmic modalities of these two experimental ulcer models are indicative of differences in their underlying mechanisms. In experimental models of ulceration, the circadian time of application of the ulcerogenic stimulus must be considered as an important experimental factor. Moreover, the protective effectiveness of antiulcer drugs can express time-dependent differences and must also be taken into account in investigative research.     

Effects of melt temperature and casting speed on the structure and defect formation during direct-chill casting of an Al-Cu alloy

A thorough experimental investigation of the effects of melt temperature and casting speed on the structure and defect formation during the steady and nonsteady stages of direct-chill (DC) casting of an Al-2.8 pct Cu alloy is performed. In addition, the temperature and melt-flow distributions in the sump of billets cast at different melt temperatures are numerically simulated and used in the discussion on the experimental results. Apart from already known phenomena such as the coarsening of the structure, deepening of the sump, and increased probability of bleed-outs during DC casting with increased casting temperature, a few new observations are made. The increased melt temperature is shown to increase the severity of subsurface segregation, whereas the macrosegregation in the rest of the billet remains virtually unaffected. Hot-tearing susceptibility is strongly diminished by an increased melt superheat. The amount and distribution of “floating” grains is demonstrated to depend on both the melt temperature and the casting speed. The porosity was found to only slightly depend on the melt temperature. The amount of nonequilibrium eutectic in the center of the billet increases with increasing melt temperature. The effects of melt temperature on the dimensions of the sump, transition region, and mushy zone and on the melt-flow pattern in the sump are discussed and used in the interpretation of experimentally observed phenomena. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Multifeedback-Layer Neural Network

The architecture and training procedure of a novel recurrent neural network (RNN), referred to as the multifeedback-layer neural network (MFLNN), is described in this paper. The main difference of the proposed network compared to the available RNNs is that the temporal relations are provided by means of neurons arranged in three feedback layers, not by simple feedback elements, in order to enrich the representation capabilities of the recurrent networks. The feedback layers provide local and global recurrences via nonlinear processing elements. In these feedback layers, weighted sums of the delayed outputs of the hidden and of the output layers are passed through certain activation functions and applied to the feedforward neurons via adjustable weights. Both online and offline training procedures based on the backpropagation through time (BPTT) algorithm are developed. The adjoint model of the MFLNN is built to compute the derivatives with respect to the MFLNN weights which are then used in the training procedures. The Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) method with a trust region approach is used to update the MFLNN weights. The performance of the MFLNN is demonstrated by applying to several illustrative temporal problems including chaotic time series prediction and nonlinear dynamic system identification, and it performed better than several networks available in the literature     

Influence of ball precision on the assembly of radial thrust ball bearings

The influence of ball precision on the assembly of ball bearings is theoretically studied.     

Effect of Cooking Method (Baking Compared with Frying) on Acrylamide Level of Potato Chips

ABSTRACT:  The effect of cooking method (baking compared with frying) on acrylamide level of potato chips was investigated in this study. Baking and frying experiments were conducted at 170, 180, and 190 °C using potato slices with a thickness of 1.4 mm. Raw potatoes were analyzed for reducing sugars and asparagine. Surface and internal temperatures of potato slices were monitored during the experiments to better explain the results. Fried and baked chips were analyzed for acrylamide content using an LC-MS method. The results showed that acrylamide level of potato chips prepared by frying increased with frying temperature (19.6 ng/g at 170 °C, 39 ng/g at 180 °C, and 95 ng/g at 190 °C). In baking, however, the highest acrylamide level was observed in potato chips prepared at 170 °C (47.8 ng/g at 170 °C, 19.3 ng/g at 180 °C, and 29.7 ng/g at 190 °C). The results showed that baking at 170 °C more than doubled the acrylamide amount that formed upon frying at the same temperature, whereas at 180 and 190 °C, the acrylamide levels of chips prepared by baking were lower than their fried counterparts.     

A multivariable predictive fuzzy PID control system

In this paper, a novel multivariable predictive fuzzy-proportional-integral-derivative (F-PID) control system is developed by incorporating the fuzzy and PID control approaches into the predictive control framework. The developed control system has two main units referred as adaptation and application parts. The adaptation part consists of a F-PID controller and a fuzzy predictor. The incremental control actions are generated by the F-PID controller. The controller parameters are adjusted with the predictive control approach. The fuzzy predictor provides the multi-step ahead predictions of the plant outputs. Therefore, the F-PID controller parameters are adjusted by minimizing the errors between the predicted plant outputs and reference trajectories over the prediction horizon. The fuzzy predictor is trained with an on-line training procedure in order to adapt the changes in the plant dynamics and improve the prediction accuracy. The Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) optimization method with a trust region approach is used to adjust both the controller and predictor fuzzy systems parameters. In the application part, an identical F-PID controller of the adaptation part is used to control the actual plant. The adjusted parameter values are transferred to this identical controller at each time step. The performance of the proposed control system is tested for both single-input single-output (SISO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) nonlinear control problems. The adaptation, robustness to noise, disturbance rejection properties together with the tracking performances are examined in the simulations.