Electroplating of nickel-cadmium alloys from alkaline solutions

The electroplating of Ni-Cd alloy coatings was carried out from alkaline baths (pH 10). For comparison, electroplating of the parent metals, Ni and Cd, was performed individually under the same conditions. The cathodic current efficiency for codeposition was high and decreased with increasing current density. The codeposition process is an anomalous type of plating with Cd being the preferentially deposited metal. The Ni content in the deposits increased with increasing current density. This increase in Ni content improves the corrosion resistance and microhardness of the deposits. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the deposits consist of a mixture of Ni, β, γ, γ¹ phases.     

Inversion of three-stage stress-strain relation for stainless steel in tension and compression

Presented in this paper is a new stress-strain relation for stainless steel alloys that provides the stress as an explicit function of the strain. The relation is an approximate inversion of a recently proposed three-stage stress-strain relation based on a modified Ramberg-Osgood equation. The three-stage relation is a much more accurate formulation than the previous two-stage formulations and is applicable to both tensile as well as compressive stresses. The new relation is derived by making a rational function assumption on the fractional deviation of the actual stress-strain curve from an idealized linear elastic behaviour. The new expression is valid over the full range of the stress well beyond the elastic region. The validity of the inverted expression is tested over a wide range of material parameters. These tests demonstrate that, the new expression results in stress-strain curves which are both qualitatively and quantitatively in excellent agreement with the fully iterated numerical solution of the full-range stress-strain relation with a maximum error below 4%.     

Review on river bank filtration as an in situ water treatment process

Surface and ground water are valuable sources for drinking water. Certain industrial, mining, and agricultural practices pollute these critical resources. Riverbank filtration (RBF) is a cost-effective in situ water treatment process, which removes suspended solids and organic and inorganic pollutants. The RBF process is defined as a natural filter of soils and aquifer sediments at the river site. In RBF, river water moves through the pores of the natural soils of the riverbed and riverbank. RBF improves several physical, chemical, and biological properties of the river water. Several treatment actions including, filtration, sorption, and biological degradation occur during this process. Under specific conditions, RBF could be used as a treatment or pretreatment process to remove or decrease pollutants in surface water. In this paper, the effectiveness of RBF in improving the river water quality is presented. RBF as a cost-effective water treatment process is also discussed. Furthermore, factors that affect the performance of the RBF process and its overall effectiveness for developing countries are also discussed.     

The trinion Fourier transform of color images

Any color may be represented in terms of three components (RGB or HSL) or four components (CMYK). For the four component color representation the use of quaternions, with one real and three imaginary components, is natural. By setting one component to zero, quaternions have been used in RGB or HSL representation of colors and color images. In this paper a new quantity, trinion, with one real and two imaginary components, is introduced and its use in color image representation is examined. The goal is to see if significant efficiencies in representation, analysis and computation involving three component color images accrue with the use of trinions. Two versions of the trinion Fourier transform (TFT) are introduced and it is shown that using TFT is preferable for combined analysis of three component color images rather than separate monochromatic analysis of each component and use of quaternions. Joint space-wavenumber localized trinion S (TS) transform with a two-dimensional Gaussian window function that scales with wavenumbers is also presented. Invertibility, rotation invariance, and computational aspects of the TS transform are discussed.     

Biosorption of mercury from aqueous solutions by powdered leaves of castor tree (Ricinus communis L.)

A new biosorbent produced from castor leaves powder [Ricinus communis L.] was used to remove mercury(II) from aqueous solutions. The initial mercury concentrations, contact time and initial pH were evaluated. The ability of castor leaves to remove mercury at various pH (2-8) was studied. The maximum capacity (Qmax) of biomass was found to be 37.2mg Hg(II)/g at pH 5.5. Biosorption equilibrium was established in approximately 1h. The equilibrium data were described well by Langmuir and Freundlich models. The adsorbed mercury on biomass was desorbed using 10 ml of 4M HCl solution. The biomass could be reused for other biosorption assays. The ability of biomass to adsorb mercury(II) in a column was investigated. These studies consider the possibility of using leaves of castor tree as an inexpensive adsorbent for the removal of Hg(II) from contaminated chemical and mining industry wastewaters. It is also suggested that the dried biomass might be simply kept and used in a very low cost metal ion removal system.     

Variable Selection‐based Multivariate Cumulative Sum Control Chart

High‐dimensional applications pose a significant challenge to the capability of conventional statistical process control techniques in detecting abnormal changes in process parameters. These techniques fail to recognize out‐of‐control signals and locate the root causes of faults especially when small shifts occur in high‐dimensional variables under the sparsity assumption of process mean changes. In this paper, we propose a variable selection‐based multivariate cumulative sum (VS‐MCUSUM) chart for enhancing sensitivity to out‐of‐control conditions in high‐dimensional processes. While other existing charts with variable selection techniques tend to show weak performances in detecting small shifts in process parameters due to the misidentification of the ‘faulty’ parameters, the proposed chart performs well for small process shifts in identifying the parameters. The performance of the VS‐MCUSUM chart under different combinations of design parameters is compared with the conventional MCUSUM and the VS‐multivariate exponentially weighted moving average control charts. Finally, a case study is presented as a real‐life example to illustrate the operational procedures of the proposed chart. Both the simulation and numerical studies show the superior performance of the proposed chart in detecting mean shift in multivariate processes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Total mercury distribution in sediment cores from Kuwait Bay

Five sediment cores from Kuwait Bay were taken in order to study the present distribution of total mercury (THg) in the vicinity of the Salt and Chlorine Plant (SCP) operated in the 1963–1985 period. The THg concentration profiles were also determined in four sediment cores from the northern part of Kuwait Bay. Additionally, average THg contents were measured in the surface layer (40 cm) of five sediment samples in the entrance of Kuwait Bay, in order to compare the present Hg levels in other parts of this reservoir. The cores were dated by ²¹⁰Pb method. The observed contents of mercury were in the range of 35 to 2000 µg/kg dry weight (ppb). Thus, the bottom sediments in these three areas of Kuwait Bay are still contaminated by Hg. In a few cases, the depth concentration profiles of THg were disturbed as an effect of partial mixing of the sediment layers, especially in the shallow, northern part of Kuwait Bay. This suggestion was supported by the results of additional measurements of the anthropogenic ¹³⁷Cs profiles in the same cores.     

Post-buckling analysis of piezo-magnetic nanobeams with geometrical imperfection and different piezoelectric contents

Microsystem Technologies - Thermal post-buckling behavior of a geometrically imperfect/perfect piezo-magnetic nano-scale beams made of two-phase composites is analyzed in the present paper based on...     

Power loss minimization in distribution systems using multiple distributed generations

In this work, an efficient analytical method is proposed for optimally allocating distributed generations (DGs) in electrical distribution systems to minimize power losses. The proposed analytical method can be employed for obtaining the optimal combination of different DG types in a distribution system for loss minimization. The validity of the proposed method is demonstrated using two test systems with different configurations by comparing with the exact optimal solution obtained from the exhaustive optimal power flow (OPF) algorithm. The calculated results and the comprehensive comparisons with existing methods prove the superiority of the proposed method in terms of accuracy and calculation speed. The proposed loss minimization method can be a useful tool for any general DG allocation problem since it provides effective and fast loss evaluation taking into account other benefits. © 2015 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.