Synergistic Effects of Polybenzimidazole and Aramide on Enhancing Flame-Retardancy and Solubility

Aromatic and functional polymers with processibility derived from biobased starting materials are prerequisite considering sustainable society. Poly(2,5-benzimidazole)s are rigid-rod polymers to show ultrahigh thermal stability such as flame retardance, while usually suffer from poor solubility. Here, poly(benzimidazole-co-amide)s are synthesized from two biobased monomers, 3,4-diaminobenzoic acid and a semirigid comonomer, 4-aminohydrocinnamic acid. The copolymers with an amide composition of 80 mol% and higher are soluble in widely used polar solvents to fabricate the films keeping high flame retardance, which is comparable with popular high-performance polymers such as aromatic polyimides, polyetheretherketone, polyphenylene sulfide, etc.     

Studies on chitin. IX. Crosslinking of water-soluble chitin and evaluation of the products as adsorbents for cupric ion

Water-soluble chitin was successfully crosslinked to varying extents with glutaraldehyde in homogeneous aqueous solutions to improve the properties as an adsorbent for metal cations, and the effects of crosslinking were discussed. Complete insolubilization was achieved with the fivefold excess aldehyde, but, in terms of adsorptivity of Cu²⁺, the chitin crosslinked at an aldehyde/amino group ratio of 1.0 was found to exhibit remarkable capacity and was much superior to others. The desorption of Cu²⁺ from the adsorption complex was also attained effectively at pH 2.0. These results indicated that the loose crosslinking was quite simple and efficient to produce high capacity adsorbents for practical use. Thermal behavior of the crosslinked chitin was examined by TMA and TGA; a softening phenomenon was observed at 145°C.     

Evaluation of inelastic constitutive models under plasticity-creep interaction for steel at 600°C

Uniaxial tests to identify plasticity-creep interaction in steel at 600°C were carried out as the Benchmark Project by the Subcommittee on Inelastic Analysis and Life Prediction, JSMS. The purpose of this paper is to present recent experimental data and predictions of constitutive models obtained in the project. Ten types of constitutive models were utilized to compare analytical predictions to sixteen benchmark experiments which are grouped into four categories: (I) tensile and creep tests under monotonic loading, (II) mixed mode tests under plastic and creep loading, (III) ratcheting deformation tests under program loads, and (IV) cyclic deformation tests under the combination of different strain rates. The benchmark tests in Group IV are used to estimate the creep-fatigue life of steel; the results will be published in a separate paper.     

Structure-activity relationships of alkylxanthines: alkyl chain elongation at the N1- or N7-position decreases cardiotonic activity in the isolated guinea pig heart

Relationships between the alkyl substitutions (C1-C6) and cardiac inotropic activities of xanthine derivatives were studied in isolated guinea pig heart muscles. Most of the alkylxanthines exhibited positive inotropic activity on the left atrium, which was increased with an elongation of alkyl chain at the N3-position but decreased by substitution of a long alkyl group at the N1- or N7-position of the xanthine skeleton. Although positive inotropic activity in the right ventricular papillary muscle was also increased by longer alkyl groups at the N3-position, the inotropic activity became negative with an increment in alkyl chain length at the N1- or N7-position. The positive inotropic activity of alkylxanthines was correlated with their inhibitory activity on the phosphodiesterase (PDE) III isoenzyme. Adenosine A1 antagonism and PDE IV inhibitory activity were also partly associated with the inotropic activity because H-89, an inhibitor of cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase, diminished the positive inotropic action and potentiated the negative inotropic action. These results indicate that the positive inotropic activity of alkylxanthines becomes weak with elongation of alkyl chains at the N1- and N7-positions; In particular, xanthines having two long alkyl chains show a negative inotropic activity on the right ventricular papillary muscle, an effect that could not be elucidated from their cyclic AMP-dependent action.     

An automatic torque ripple compensation system for direct drive motors

A serious problem in motion control is the occurrence of torque ripple. Since a direct drive (DD) motor with a magnet rotor uses a rare-earth magnet, the torque ripple is more serious than that of conventional servomotors. This paper presents an auto-compensation of torque ripple using a software-implemented torque observer. The frequency and amplitude of torque ripple can be obtained in the controller by using the estimated torque from an observer, and the autonomous generation of a compensating current component for a torque ripple is possible. The proposed algorithm has been verified by experiments.     

Construction of a control system for disturbance rejection using a dual observer

A well‐known control system which can reduce the adverse effects of disturbances is a disturbance observer. However, in many cases of mechanical systems, system disturbances which do not satisfy the matching condition may be imposed. Therefore, it may be difficult to reduce the adverse effects of the disturbances by the traditional disturbance observer. In this paper, a method of control system synthesis for disturbance rejection using a dual observer is proposed. This method is based on the zeroing induced by the disturbance localization problem. This problem may be solved by dividing the state space into observable subspace and unobservable subspace. As compared with an H_∞ controller based on perfect observation, the usefulness of the proposed control system for disturbance rejection is demonstrated by numerical simulations for a two‐mass spring system. © 2002 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 138(4): 50–60, 2002; DOI 10.1002/eej.1138     

Development of `information collection and delivery sensor basesystem' for large-scale power systems

The authors present a real-time database system capable of collecting and delivering a large amount of information accurately at a high speed and by a simple method. This system has a microprocessor unit (MPU) for each private communication line around the main memory and coordinates the independent parallel operation for a number of these MPUs with the main memory access operation, using a fixed cyclic scan method and having all the MPUs perform multi-operation. Many advantages can be expected when this method is adopted, especially for the monitoring and control of power systems. Degradation of the system can be avoided during an information rush due to accidents, and it can be easily extended when adding to or expanding the power facilities in the future. Excellent daily maintainability can be assured, and a low overall cost can be expected