Microstructure and mechanical properties of hot-pressed SiC nanofiber reinforced SiC composites

This study reports on the preparation and mechanical properties of a novel SiC_nf/SiC composite. The single crystal SiC nanofiber(SiC_nf) reinforced SiC ceramic matrix composites (CMC) were successfully fabricated by hot pressing the mixture of β-SiC powders, SiC_nf and Al–B–C powder. The effects of SiC_nf mass fraction as well as the hot-pressing temperature on the microstructure and mechanical properties of SiC_nf/SiC CMC were systematically investigated. The results demonstrated that the 15 wt% SiC_nf/SiC CMC obtained by hot pressing (HP) at 1850 °C with 30 MPa for 60 min possessed the maximum flexural strength and fracture toughness of 678.2 MPa and 8.33 MPa m^1/2, respectively. The nanofibers pull out, nanofibers bridging and cracks deflection were found by scanning electron microscopy, which are believed can strengthen and toughen the SiC_nf/SiC CMC via consuming plenty of the fracture energy. Besides, although the relative density of the prepared SiC_nf/SiC CMC further increased with the sintering temperature rose to 1900 °C, the further coarsend composites grains results in the deterioration of the mechanical properties for the obtained composites compared to 1850 °C.     

Clinical significance of contact lens related changes of ocular surface tissue observed on optical coherence images

PurposeTo investigate the relationship between the real contact lens imprint into the conjunctival tissue, observed by optical coherence tomography (OCT) and conjunctival staining and contact lens wearing comfort.Methods17 participants (mean age = 26.6 SD ± 3.6 years; 7 females) were fitted with three different contact lenses base curves of the same silicone hydrogel custom lens type (Visell 50; Hecht Contactlinsen, Au, Germany) in a randomised order. One lens was optimally fitted according to the manufacturer's recommendation, one fitted 0.4 mm flatter and one fitted 0.4 mm steeper. After 4 h of lens wear the contact lens edge in the area of the conjunctiva was imaged nasally and temporally using OCT (Optovue iVue SD-OCT). To correct the artefact due to optical distortion with OCT, the imprint of all worn lenses was measured on a glass plate afterwards. Conjunctival staining in the limbal region after 4 h of lens wear was classified using the CCLRU Grading Scale. Comfort scoring was based on visual analog scales from 0 (very poor) to 100 (excellent).ResultsThe mean conjunctival imprint of all contact lens edges was 32.0 ± 8.1 μm before and 7.3 ± 6.5 μm after distortion correction of the OCT images. The distortion corrected conjunctival imprint with the 0.4 mm steeper lens (11.5 ± 6.2 μm) was statistically significantly greater compared to the optimally fitted lens (6.5 ± 5.9 μm) (One-way ANOVA followed Tukey-test; p = 0.017) and greater compared to the 0.4 mm flatter lens (3.9 ± 5.3 μm) (p < 0.001). There was no statistically significant difference between the optimally fitted lens and the 0.4 mm flatter lens (p = 0.209). The nasally measured imprint (11.4 ± 9.0 μm) was significantly greater than the temporally measured (3.3 ± 7.6 μm) (p < 0.001). There was no statistically significant correlation between the amount of conjunctival imprint and the graded conjunctival staining (p = 0.346) or the wearer’s comfort (p = 0.735).ConclusionsContact lens edges imaged by OCT exhibited displacement artefacts. The observed conjunctival imprints are a combination of real conjunctival compression and artefacts. A deeper imprint of the contact lens into the conjunctiva caused by a steeper base curve was not related to clinically significant staining or changes in comfort after 4 h of lens wear. The observed differences between nasal and temporal imprint are likely to be caused by variations of conjunctival thickness and the shape of the underlying sclera.     

Toughness enhancement and equivalent initial fracture toughness of cementitious composite reinforced with aligned steel fibres

Based on theoretical analysis and numerical simulation, the impact of steel fibres on the stress intensity factor (SIF) at the crack tip for cementitious composite was studied. The enhanced toughness of steel fibre reinforced cementitious composite (SFRC) in resisting cracks was explained by the decrement of SIF caused by steel fibre inclusions at the crack tip of the composite. The equivalent initial fracture toughness was used to characterize the crack initiation of SFRC. A simplified method for determining the of SFRC was proposed based on a linear regression method. Fracture tests were conducted on three‐point bending notched beams with different steel fibre volume fractions and specimen sizes to study the crack initiation behaviour of aligned steel fibre reinforced cementitious composite (ASFRC). of ASFRC was calculated, and the size effect of was analysed. The results showed that slightly increased with the steel fibre volume fraction and gradually became stable. For the tested specimens, whose heights varied between 40 and 100 mm, the specimen size had little impact on the .     

Effects of SiC content on the densification,microstructure, and mechanical properties of HfB2–SiC composites

To investigate the effects of SiC on microstructure, hardness, and fracture toughness, 0, 10, 20, and 30 vol% SiC were added to HfB₂ and sintered by SPS. Upon adding SiC to 30 vol%, relative density increased about 4%; but HfB₂ grain growth had a minimum at 20 vol% SiC. This may be due to grain boundary silicate glass, responsible for surface oxide wash out, enriched in SiO₂ with higher fraction of SiC. By SiO₂ enrichment, the glass viscosity increased and higher HfO₂ remained unsolved which subsequently lead to higher grain growth. Hardness has increased from about 13 to 15 GPa by SiC introduction with no sensible variation with SiC increase. Residual stress measurements by Rietveld method indicated high levels of tensile residual stresses in the HfB₂ Matrix. Despite the peak residual stress value at 20 vol% SiC, fracture toughness of this sample was the highest (6.43 MPa m^0.5) which implied that fracture toughness is mainly a grain size function. Tracking crack trajectory showed a mainly trans-granular fracture, but grain boundaries imposed a partial deflection on the crack pathway. SiC had a higher percentage in fracture surface images than the cross-section which implied a weak crack deflection.     

On Cost Aware Cloudlet Placement for Mobile Edge Computing

As accessing computing resources from the remote cloud inherently incurs high end-to-end (E2E) delay for mobile users, cloudlets, which are deployed at the edge of a network, can potentially mitigate this problem. Although some research works focus on allocating workloads among cloudlets, the cloudlet placement aiming to minimize the deployment cost (i.e., consisting of both the cloudlet cost and average E2E delay cost) has not been addressed effectively so far. The locations and number of cloudlets have a crucial impact on both the cloudlet cost in the network and average E2E delay of users. Therefore, in this paper, we propose the Cost Aware cloudlet PlAcement in moBiLe Edge computing (CAPABLE) strategy, where both the cloudlet cost and average E2E delay are considered in the cloudlet placement. To solve this problem, a Lagrangian heuristic algorithm is developed to achieve the suboptimal solution. After cloudlets are placed in the network, we also design a workload allocation scheme to minimize the E2E delay between users and their cloudlets by considering the user mobility. The performance of CAPABLE has been validated by extensive simulations.      

Comparative studies on thermal and toughness properties of polybenzoxazine composites with two functionalized graphene oxides

Abstract

Graphene oxide (GO) was functionalized by polyether amine (PEA) via two methods which were one-pot modification in acetone (GON) and two steps with the intermediate product of GOCO-Cl generated (GONS). There were more PEA successfully grafted onto GO for GONS than GON. The onset polymerization temperatures of the benzoxazine (Bz) composites decreased by the inclusion of 1?wt% of GO, GON or GONS. Thermal stability of the polybenzoxazine (PBz) composites was significantly improved indicated from the increase of weight loss temperature. T₁₀, T₂₀ and T₅₀ values of the composites with GONS were higher than that of the others. Toughness of PBzs may be enhanced by the incorporation of nanofillers, and GONS had stronger interfacial interaction with PBz matrix than GON.     

具有细小组织的高强度和高延性钢管的开发

介绍了日本川崎制铁公司技术研究所开发出的电焊钢管采用热张力减径工艺的特性 ,及这种钢管的高强度、高延性等基本特性。用这种钢管制造的汽车零部件 ,经弯曲、冲击和疲劳特性等实验 ,证明具有良好的机械加工性能 ,是制造汽车用零部件的优良材料。     

A probabilistic model for cleavage fracture with a length scale--parameter estimation and predictions of stationary crack experiments

This study presents a large experimental investigation in the transition temperature region on a modified A508 steel. Tests were carried out on single-edge-notch-bend specimens with three different crack depth over specimen width ratios to capture the strong constraint effect on fracture toughness. Three test temperatures were considered, covering a range of 85 °C. All specimens failed by cleavage fracture prior to ductile tearing. A recently proposed probabilistic model for the cumulative failure by cleavage was applied to the comprehensive sets of experimental data. This modified weakest link model incorporates a length scale, which together with a threshold stress reduce the scatter in predicted toughness distributions as well as introduces a fracture toughness threshold value. Model parameters were estimated by a robust procedure, which is crucial in applications of probabilistic models to real structures. The conformity between predicted and experimental toughness distributions, respectively, were notable at all the test temperatures.     

A VLSI architecture for a half-edge-based corner detector

Corner detection is a low-level feature detection operator that is of great use in image processing applications, for example, optical flow and structure from motion by image correspondence. The detection of corners is a computationally intensive operation. Past implementations of corner detection techniques have been restricted to software. In this paper we propose an efficient very large-scale integration (VLSI) architecture for detection of corners in images. The corner detection technique is based on the half-edge concept and the first directional derivative of Gaussian. Apart from the location of the corner points, the algorithm also computes the corner orientation and the corner angle and outputs the edge map of the image. The symmetrical properties of the masks are utilized to reduce the number of convolutions effectively, from eight to two. Therefore, the number of multiplications required per pixel is reduced from 1800 to 392. Thus, the proposed architecture yields a speed-up factor of 4.6 over conventional convolution architectures. The architecture uses the principles of pipelining and parallelism and can be implemented in VLSI.