Cyclic fatigue of long and short cracks in alumina

The cyclic fatigue behaviour of long and microstructurally short cracks in a 10 μm grain-size alumina has been investigated. This material was found to be stress sensitive, a modest drop in applied stress resulting in a considerable lifetime enhancement. The growth of long cracks was studied using the circular compact tension geometry and was found to follow a Paris law behaviour. The crack path was entirely intergranular in this material with long fatigue crack growth governed by the degradation of crack-wake bridging. Short-crack growth was investigated using indented discs in a biaxial flexure geometry. Short cracks were observed to grow at lower values of applied ΔK than long cracks, increasing with crack length as bridging of the crack wake increased. The fatigue crack growth of AD90 alumina was also investigated by in situ testing within the specimen chamber of an SEM. The long-crack behaviour was found to be similar to the 10 μm grain-size alumina and other data reported in the literature. However, the crack path followed a mixture of transgranular and intergranular fracture and discontinuous in nature with frequent arrests. The crack-advancement mechanisms in these two alumina materials are different and affect the short-crack behaviour. However, in both cases the long-crack behaviour is dominated by crack-wake effects. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Monte Carlo calculation of velocity-field characteristics in II-VI compound semiconductors

The velocity field characteristics of II–VI compound semiconductors at 77K have been obtained by the Monte Carlo simulation technique. The results agree with the available experimental data and with those obtained by solving the Boltzmann Transport Equation analytically. The simulation technique is described in detail and various aspects regarding the convergence of the simulation are discussed. The carrier distribution function has also been obtained from the simulation. The effects of the various simulation parameters, as well as those of the ionized impurity concentration, on the mobility values for the different semiconductors are discussed and results are presented.     

Assessment of Strength by Young's Modulus and Porosity: A Critical Evaluation

Literature data on strength, porosity, and Young's modulus at room temperature of reaction-bonded silicon nitride, sintered silicon nitride, and hot-pressed silicon nitride have been fitted into available and proposed strength-porosity relationships. In general, the Lewis method of iterative least-squares fitting in these relationships has been found to be better than conventional linearized least-squares fitting. Further a semiempirically proposed strength–Young's modulus relationship has been found to predict strength more precisely than the conventional strength-porosity relationship.     

Diffusion of chemically reactive species in Casson fluid flow over an unsteady permeable stretching surface

In this paper we investigate the two-dimensional flow of a non-Newtonian fluid over an unsteady stretching permeable surface. The Casson fluid model is used to characterize the non-Newtonian fluid behavior. First-order constructive/destructive chemical reaction is considered. With the help of a shooting method, numerical solutions for a class of nonlinear coupled differential equations subject to appropriate boundary conditions are obtained. For the steady flow, the exact solution is obtained. The flow features and the mass transfer characteristics for different values of the governing parameters are analyzed and discussed in detail.     

Synthesis, characterization and in vitro cytotoxicity assessment of hydroxyapatite from different bioresources for tissue engineering application

In the present study, hydroxyapatite (HAp) is synthesized from different biosources like eggshell, fish scale and bovine bone in a cost effective and ecofriendly way. HAp materials were synthesized from eggshell by wet precipitation method whereas thermal decomposition method was applied in case of fish scale and bovine bone. The phase purity and crystallinity of different calcined HAp powder were determined by XRD and FTIR analyses. The thermogravimetric analysis was carried out to show thermal stability of HAp powder. Average grain sizes of sintered samples were in submicron range. The morphology of the powders were observed under scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The dried powders were wet ball milled for several hours and surfactants like Triton-X small fillers (2 / 4 mm long rod-shaped) were made for in vitro testing. In order to verify the biocompatibility of HAp powders, cytotoxicity evaluation was carried out in RAW macrophage like cell line media for an incubation period of 72 h. The cell attachment studies on HAp compacts show an excellent affinity between cells and compact surface. These results proved high biocompatibility of HAp powders obtained from different biosources for tissue engineering applications.     

Eco-Friendly Smokeless Al2O3-SiC-C Brick for Hot Metal Ladle

Hot metal transfer ladles were historically lined with high alumina refractories because of compatibility of high alumina refractories with the highly acidic slag, which is transferred .from the iron making plant along with hot metal. With the introduction of higher capacity ladles, technological advancement in the process and increased productivity, calls for a higher campaign life of hot metal ladles, which could not be performed by ordinary high alumina refractories. Resin bonded Al2O3- SiC-C （hereinafter ASC ） bricks gradually developed which at present taking place replacing the conventional refractories. Considerable work has been carried out in developing the ASC refractory to reach the present state. However, for higher capacity ladles still there is a lot of scope for improvement. The present paper deals with the newly developed ASC bricks, which was used in 165 ton capacity hot metal ladles in one European plant and has given a substantial increase in performance. But, the customer was not fuUy satisfied since the brick was reported to produce smokes during preheating of the ladle. In the subsequent supply the smoke generation problem was taken care by adjusting the binders and additives and eco-friendly bricks were re-engineered and supplied to the same plant, which also performed splendidly and created all time record in their plant history.     

Brazilian Society of Simulation

Estimation of the parameters of a reducible (inflated common denominator) model for the transfer function matrix of MIMO systems is well known. However, the reduction of the model to the minimal form by pole-zero cancellation is possible only in the noise-free case. This paper presents an algorithm for the estimation of the minimal continuous-time transfer function matrix model. Monte Carlo simulation results are presented for discrete-time and continuous-time models. Least-squares and generalized least-squares methods have been used in both cases. An asymptotic analysis of convergence has also been provided for these models in the noise-free case. The computation times and space complexities of different variants of the algorithm are compared. The results show that in noisy situations, obtaining a discrete-time model by discretizing an estimated continuous-time model may be a viable proposition     

Priority-based tool allocation in a flexible manufacturing system

The tool allocation problem in a flexible manufacturing system generally aims at (1) maximizing throughput (2) minimizing machining cost (3) minimizing system imbalance. This paper presents a heuristic approach of loading a set of tools to the different machining centres in the case of variable machining time. Concepts of fuzzy set theory to determine threshold machining time and a potency index (PI) to prioritize parts are used to solve the problem.