A knowledge-based system for the recycling of non-hazardous industrial residuals in civil engineering applications

Abstract: It is estimated that 4.6 billion tons of non‐hazardous solid waste materials are produced annually in the USA. The potential reuse for a portion of the materials in the construction of highways and roads suggests that valuable benefits in terms of economic and environmental gains are possible. This paper describes the development of a prototype computer‐assisted tool or expert system to help manufacturers assess and analyze their industrial residuals as potential road construction material. This represents an expansion in the application of intelligent systems to domains where a few, hard‐to‐find technical reports have represented the main source of expertise available to practitioners for years. The system, developed through the use of an object‐oriented software shell, Level5 Object, was designed in a user‐friendly Windows environment which allows users with little or no computer training to effectively evaluate material residuals.     

A framework to visualize equivalences between computational models of regular languages

We discuss how to increase and simplify the understanding of the equivalence relations between machine models and/or language representations of formal languages by means of the animation tool SAGEMoLiC. Our new educational tool permits the simulation of the execution of models of computation, as many other animation systems do, but its philosophy goes further than these of the usual systems since it allows for a true visualization of the key notions involved in the formal proofs of these equivalences. In contrast with the proposal of previous systems, our approach to visualize equivalence theorems is not a simple “step by step animation” of specific conversion algorithms between computational models and/or grammatical representations of formal languages, because we make emphasis on the key theoretical notions involved in the formal proofs of these equivalences.     

Focal-plane processing architectures for real-time hyperspectral image processing

Real-time image processing requires high computational and I/O throughputs obtained by use of optoelectronic system solutions. A novel architecture that uses focal-plane optoelectronic-area I/O with a fine-grain, low-memory, single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) processor array is presented as an efficient computational solution for real-time hyperspectral image processing. The architecture is evaluated by use of realistic workloads to determine data throughputs, processing demands, and storage requirements. We show that traditional store-and-process system performance is inadequate for this application domain, whereas the focal-plane SIMD architecture is capable of supporting real-time performances with sustained operation throughputs of 500-1500 gigaoperations/s. The focal-plane architecture exploits the direct coupling between sensor and parallel-processor arrays to alleviate data-bandwidth requirements, allowing computation to be performed in a stream-parallel computation model, while data arrive from the sensors.     

Thermal AFM: a thermopile case study

In this work, an atomic force microscope (AFM) with an integrated thermal sensor has been used to obtain the local spatial distribution of temperatures in a micromachined thermopile with submicron resolution. In this communication, we will show how the dimensional, structural and functional characteristics of a thermopile suits well with the requirements for AFM thermal imaging, and how a deeper insight of the thermopile operation can be gained with the aid of these advanced scanning probe-based tools.     

On the growth mechanism of single-walled carbon nanotubes by catalytic carbon vapor deposition on supported metal catalysts

A comprehensive kinetic study was performed to throw light on the formation mechanism of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in chemical vapor deposition processes. SWNTs were synthesized by catalytic decomposition of methane or ethylene on supported transition metal catalysts. Kinetic curves (the amount of SWNT as a function of time) were obtained as a function of the nature and the preparation of the supported catalysts, temperature, the fluxes of the gases (the reagent hydrocarbon and the carrying gas), and the partial pressure of the hydrocarbon. The final products were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, chemical analysis, and thermogravimetric measurements. The fundamental factors determining the SWNT formation are discussed in detail, taking into consideration several observations from the literature as well.     

Hydrocarbon decomposition in alumina membrane: an effective way to produce carbon nanotubes bundles

Carbon nanotubes were synthesised within the pores of an alumina membrane. The membrane had 200 nm diameter pores and 60 microm thickness, and ethylene was used as carbon source. Membrane dissolution by HF results in a bundle of parallel open tubes, aligned without macroscopic defects. The external diameter of the tubes is uniform and there is no evidence of any amorphous carbon. Wall thickness control was obtained by varying the reaction time, length by the thickness of alumina membrane, and external tube diameter by the membrane pore size. Scanning (SEM) and transmission (TEM) electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis (TG) and surface area evaluation by nitrogen adsorption were used for the characterization of membrane and nanotubes.     

Influence of the starting condition on the kinetics of sensitization and loss of toughness in an AISI 304 steel

This work describes the investigation of the embrittlement of AISI 304 steel sensitized at 650°C by Charpy impact test, comparing two starting conditions: (1) mill annealed and machined (MA-M); and (2) solution treated at 1050°C by 1 h followed by oil quenching (ST). The degree of sensitization for both samples was assessed by Optical Microscopy (OM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and by Double Loop Electrochemical Potentiodynamic Reactivation test. The results showed that MA-M samples undergo more severe and rapid embrittlement than ST ones and a higher kinetics of sensitization due to small strains concentrated in grain boundaries and martensite phase produced during the machining operations. The martensite phase is found to be quite stable at the sensitization treatment at 650°C. The increase of microvoids nucleation at the grain boundaries seems to be the mechanism of embrittlement in the sensitized 304 steel.     

Stress Power Dependent Self-Heating Degradation of Metal-Induced Laterally Crystallized n-Type Polycrystalline Silicon Thin-Film Transistors

Using a fluorinated high-k/metal gate stack combined with a stress relieved preoxide (SRPO) pretreatment before high-k deposition, we show significant device reliability and performance improvements. This is a critical result since threshold voltage instability may be a fundamental problem, and performance degradation for high-fc is a concern. The novel fluorinated Ta_infinC_y/HfZrO_infin/SRPO gate stack device exceeds the positive-bias-temperature-instability and negative-bias-temperature-instability targets with sufficient margin and has electron mobility at 1 MV/cm comparable to the industrial high-quality polySi/SiON device on bulk silicon.     

High-voltage LDMOS transistors fully compatible with a deep-submicron 0.35 μm CMOS process

This work presents the design of LDMOS transistors fully compatible with a standard CMOS process, only requiring mask layout manipulation. A conventional 0.35 μm CMOS process was elected to demonstrate the viability of the approach. The prototyped LDMOS transistor exhibits a breakdown voltage of 24 V, which represents an improvement of 31% when compared with the high-voltage extended-drain NMOS available in the process library, while other static parameters remain in the same range. Furthermore, this solution enables the CMOS integration of a high-voltage pass-transistor, as a consequence of the formation of an isolated lightly doped p-type region inside the n-well.     

Influence of temperature and aging time on hardness and magnetic properties of the maraging steel grade 300

The magnetic properties and hardness of a Ni–Co–Mo–Ti maraging steel 300 grade were measured as function of aging temperature. The austenite and martensite phase quantifications in the different heat treatment conditions were carried out by X-ray diffraction using direct comparison method. The behavior of the hardening, magnetization saturation and coercive force against aging temperature and time were explained taking into account the variation of austenite volume fraction with aging time and temperature.