Sliding wear of Al2O3P/6061 Al composite

The mild sliding wear behaviour of a 15 vol % Al₂O_3P/6061 Al composite has been investigated by using a pin-on-disc reciprocating sliding machine. The composite has been shown to exhibit an excellent wear resistance as compared to the unreinforced matrix alloy. The wear rate of the composite under dry wear conditions with a 12N load is approximately one tenth of that in the 6061 aluminium alloy. The wear rate of the composite under lubrication with 15W/40 gear oil under a 100N load is only one thousandth ofthat in the 6061 aluminium alloy.The dry wear resistance of an over-aged sample is shown here to be better than a peak aged or under-aged sample when the composite was aged at 160°C. The coefficient of friction of the composite was approximately 0.5–0.6 under dry conditions and 0.07 in lubricated wear experiments.In the initial stage, the worn surface of the composite under dry conditions is primarily composed of ploughed grooves and ductile tear. The composite makes a conducting contact with the steel pin. The worn surface is composed of compacted powder and the contact potential gradually increases when the period of the wear experiment goes beyond 2 h.     

1999年长江洪水及几点认识

Following the basin wide heavy flood on Changjiang River in 1998, a si gnificant flood occurred in 1999. Comparative analysis of both floods in terms of flows and flooding situations shows that both floods had one common feature, that is, the flood stages were fairly high. But they differed greatly at the sa me time, that is, the 1998 flood was a basin wide heavy one while the 1999 flood was a significant local one. At Yichang station there occurred eight flood pea ks in 1998, while in 1999 only three peaks took place. The maximum peak dischar ge at this station in 1999 was 57 600 cubic meters per second, which was smaller than that in 1998. The maximum flood-volume in 30 d of the 1998 flood at this s t ation equaled that in 1954, when an extraordinary heavy flood happened on the River, while the maximum flood-volume in 30 d in 1999 was 25.8 billion cubic me t ers per second smaller than the 1998 one. It is seen that inflow floods from th e upstream Changjiang River (above Yichang) in 1999 were not so big. Comparison of flood volumes in longer period shows that the 1999 flood was relatively conc entrated while the 1998 one had lasted longer duration. Analysis shows that flo oding situations in both years differed significantly in terms of the flood volu mes diverted from river channels due to dyke breaches and collapses, the cases o f polder embankment collapses, the areas of inundated cultivated land and the nu mbers of dangerous events for hydraulic structures. These differences had been resulted from the different properties of both floods and the dyke strengthening efforts made after the 1998 flood. It is seen that flood control engineering c onstructions initiated in the days following the 1998 flood have played an impor tant role in fighting the 1999 flood.     

Observation of atomic steps on CaCO3 crystal surface

By using scanning polarization force microscopy,the deliquescence process and the atomic steps on the cleavage surface of CaCO3 in air were studied in situ.Under an exposure to medium umidity(-57%),the sloiw step movement has been observed.     

Efficiency improvement of near-ultraviolet InGaN LEDs using patterned sapphire substrates

The use of conventional and patterned sapphire substrates (PSSs) to fabricate InGaN-based near-ultraviolet (410 nm) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) was demonstrated. The PSS was prepared using a periodic hole pattern (diameter: 3 /spl mu/m; spacing: 3 /spl mu/m) on the (0001) sapphire with different etching depths. From transmission-electron-microscopy and etch-pit-density studies, the PSS with an optimum pattern depth (D/sub h/=1.5 /spl mu/m) was confirmed to be an efficient way to reduce the thread dislocations in the GaN microstructure. It was found that the output power increased from 8.6 to 10.4 mW, corresponding to about 29% increases in the external quantum efficiency. However, the internal quantum efficiency (@ 20 mA) was about 36% and 38% for the conventional and PSS LEDs, respectively. The achieved improvement of the output power is not only due to the improvement of the internal quantum efficiency upon decreasing the dislocation density, but also due to the enhancement of the extraction efficiency using the PSS. Finally, better long-time reliability of the PSS LED performance was observed.     

Solving the bi-objective personnel assignment problem using particle swarm optimization

A particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm combined with the random-key (RK) encoding scheme (named as PSORK) for solving a bi-objective personnel assignment problem (BOPAP) is presented. The main contribution of this work is to improve the f₁_f₂ heuristic algorithm which was proposed by Huang et al. [3]. The objective of the f₁_f₂ heuristic algorithm is to get a satisfaction level (SL) value which is satisfied to the bi-objective values f₁, and f₂ for the personnel assignment problem. In this paper, PSORK algorithm searches the solution of BOPAP space thoroughly. The experimental results show that the solution quality of BOPAP based on the proposed method is far better than that of the f₁_f₂ heuristic algorithm.     

A flowchart‐based intelligent tutoring system for improving problem‐solving skills of novice programmers

Intelligent tutoring and personalization are considered as the two most important factors in the research of learning systems and environments. An effective tool that can be used to improve problem‐solving ability is an Intelligent Tutoring System which is capable of mimicking a human tutor's actions in implementing a one‐to‐one personalized and adaptive teaching. In this paper, a novel Flowchart‐based Intelligent Tutoring System (FITS) is proposed benefiting from Bayesian networks for the process of decision making so as to aid students in problem‐solving activities and learning computer programming. FITS not only takes full advantage of Bayesian networks, but also benefits from a multi‐agent system using an automatic text‐to‐flowchart conversion approach for engaging novice programmers in flowchart development with the aim of improving their problem‐solving skills. In the end, in order to investigate the efficacy of FITS in problem‐solving ability acquisition, a quasi‐experimental design was adopted by this research. According to the results, students in the FITS group experienced better improvement in their problem‐solving abilities than those in the control group. Moreover, with regard to the improvement of a user's problem‐solving ability, FITS has shown to be considerably effective for students with different levels of prior knowledge, especially for those with a lower level of prior knowledge.     

Simulation of solid thermal explosion and liquid thermal explosion of dicumyl peroxide using calorimetric technique

Dicumyl peroxide (DCPO), is produced by cumene hydroperoxide (CHP) process, is utilized as an initiator for polymerization, a prevailing source of free radicals, a hardener, and a linking agent. DCPO has caused several thermal explosion and runaway reaction accidents in reaction and storage zone in Taiwan because of its unstable reactive property. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to determine thermokinetic parameters including 700 J g^–1 of heat of decomposition (ΔH_d), 110 °C of exothermic onset temperature (T₀), 130 kJ mol^–1 of activation energy (E_a), etc., and to analyze the runaway behavior of DCPO in a reaction and storage zone. To evaluate thermal explosion of DCPO with storage equipment, solid thermal explosion (STE) and liquid thermal explosion (LTE) of thermal safety software (TSS) were applied to simulate storage tank under various environmental temperatures (T_e). T_e exceeding the T₀ of DCPO can be discovered as a liquid thermal explosion situation. DCPO was stored under room temperature without sunshine and was prohibited exceeding 67 °C of self-accelerating decomposition temperature (SADT) for a tank (radius = 1 m and height = 2 m). SADT of DCPO in a box (width, length and height = 1 m, respectively) was determined to be 60 °C. The TSS was employed to simulate the fundamental thermal explosion behavior in a large tank or a drum. Results from curve fitting demonstrated that, even at the earlier stage of the reaction in the experiments, ambient temperature could elicit exothermic reactions of DCPO. To curtail the extent of the risk, relevant hazard information is quite significant and must be provided in the manufacturing process.     

MTPSO algorithm for solving planar graph coloring problem

In this paper, we proposed a modified turbulent particle swarm optimization (named MTPSO) model for solving planar graph coloring problem based on particle swarm optimization. The proposed model is consisting of the walking one strategy, assessment strategy and turbulent strategy. The proposed MTPSO model can solve the planar graph coloring problem using four-colors more efficiently and accurately. Compared to the results shown in Cui et al. (2008), not only the experimental results of the proposed model can get smaller average iterations but can get higher correction coloring rate when the number of nodes is greater than 30.     

An expert system to classify microarray gene expression data using gene selection by decision tree

Gene selection can help the analysis of microarray gene expression data. However, it is very difficult to obtain a satisfactory classification result by machine learning techniques because of both the curse-of-dimensionality problem and the over-fitting problem. That is, the dimensions of the features are too large but the samples are too few. In this study, we designed an approach that attempts to avoid these two problems and then used it to select a small set of significant biomarker genes for diagnosis. Finally, we attempted to use these markers for the classification of cancer. This approach was tested the approach on a number of microarray datasets in order to demonstrate that it performs well and is both useful and reliable.