Investigation of the action of flame retardants in cellulose. I. Investigation of the flame retardant action of 2,2′-oxybis(5,5-dimethyl-1,3,2-dioxaphosphorinane-2,2′-disulfide) in cellulose

Pyrolysis experiments were performed in high vacuum and under reduced air pressure (100 Pa). The volatile products of pure cellulose and cellulose containing various amounts of flame retardant 2,2′-oxybis (5,5-dimethyl-1,3,2-dioxaphosphorinane-2,2′-disulfide), i.e., Sandoflam 5060 of Sandoz AG, were studied by means of gas chromatography in combination with mass spectroscopy. The volatile products were characterized with infrared spectroscopy. The studied revealed that the incorporation of the flame retardant enhanced the water release and shifted the onset of this reaction to lower temperature. On the basis of these findings an explanation for the mechanism of flame retardancy in generated cellulose fibers modified with this particular flame retardant is attempted. From experiments with different residual air pressure the influence of oxygen on the primary processes of the pyrolytic degradation of cellulose is being discussed.     

Phase-insensitive all-optical transistors based on second-ordernonlinearities

We demonstrate and compare two phase-insensitive all-optical transistors (AOT's) based on frequency-degenerate quadratic three-wave interactions. In particular, we demonstrate gain using KTP in a type II geometry. Both AOT's exploit the phase insensitivity inherent to three-wave parametric processes when only two fields are input, providing amplification of a small signal at the operating frequency via the interaction with a second-harmonic wave. The first scheme is based on successive up- and down-conversion (i.e., cascading) while the second relies on parametric down-conversion. We obtain gains of 5 and 160 in the two configurations, respectively, with a significant background and output coherent to the pump in the first case, no background and coherence between output and signal in the second     

Scharnhauser公园学校和体育馆,奥斯特菲尔登

这个综合学校包括一个主建筑,一个体育馆和各种户外设施,朝向一片处在前军事基地上的住宅开发区。整个主建筑沿纵向被一个由顶部采光的回廊从中间分开,由此可以进入两侧的教室,回廊局部变宽的部分构成一个公共空间。这个构想与将城市设计理论运用于建筑内部设计的概念相符合:街道、广场和建筑被看成了建筑内部空间部分。虽然这个建筑从外部看来是个大体块,但内部空间却设计流畅,通道有的通向楼层的各个角落,也有的依着倾斜的地势因势而建。由墙面反射的散射光线加强了内部空间的肃穆和厚重感。在具有宗教感的整体风格下,整个学校的设计和装饰也显得古香古色,如一部宽阔的观光楼梯、两个塔形和壁炉形的建筑构成元素等。不同历史风格建筑的叠加给这个校区带来一种复杂的味道,堪比阿尔多·罗西(Aldo Rossi)的设计或泰辛(Tessin)新理性主义的代表作。     

Uniaxial compression of Swiss-type cheese at different strain rates

Rheological behaviour of 48 Swiss-type cheese samples in lubricated uniaxial compression was evaluated at three initial strain rates ranging from 4·76 × 10⁻³ to 7·62 × 10⁻² s⁻¹. Modulus, apparent fracture stress and apparent fracture strain increased significantly with increasing strain rate, which is attributed to the viscoelastic nature of cheese. The influence of strain rate on apparent fracture strain strongly depended on the shape of the stress-strain curves. The relationship between the rheological parameters evaluated at different strain rates proved to be significant. The strain rate dependency of the apparent fracture strain is further explained by the contribution of elastic and viscous components, which was evaluated in relaxation experiments in the linear viscoelastic region.     

A review of the sponge iron process for the storage and transmission of remotely generated marine energy

The UK's vast marine energy resource is mostly located in remote areas west and north of Scotland, and transmission of this energy to the mainland will be required. This may be achieved by using this ‘stranded’ power to generate hydrogen electrolytically, which may in turn be stored or transported using sponge iron technology. This paper reviews the technology and research needed to bring such a process on stream. We propose utilising techniques that have been developed for the oxygen carriers used in chemical looping, and also those used in early processes for hydrogen generation in the chemical industry. We briefly outline the design requirements for an energy efficient sponge iron plant. It is shown that the iron sponge system presents better energy efficiencies than alternative forms of bulk storage such as liquid hydrogen, magnesium hydride slurry, some at least of the metal hydrides, or methylcyclohexane–toluene–hydrogen, provided that requirements can be met for particle durability and reactivity.     

CU++: an object oriented framework for computational fluid dynamics applications using graphics processing units

The application of graphics processing units (GPU) to solve partial differential equations is gaining popularity with the advent of improved computer hardware. Various lower level interfaces exist that allow the user to access GPU specific functions. One such interface is NVIDIA’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) library. However, porting existing codes to run on the GPU requires the user to write kernels that execute on multiple cores, in the form of Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD). In the present work, a higher level framework, termed CU++, has been developed that uses object oriented programming techniques available in C++ such as polymorphism, operator overloading, and template meta programming. Using this approach, CUDA kernels can be generated automatically during compile time. Briefly, CU++ allows a code developer with just C/C++ knowledge to write computer programs that will execute on the GPU without any knowledge of specific programming techniques in CUDA. This approach is tremendously beneficial for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code development because it mitigates the necessity of creating hundreds of GPU kernels for various purposes. In its current form, CU++ provides a framework for parallel array arithmetic, simplified data structures to interface with the GPU, and smart array indexing. An implementation of heterogeneous parallelism, i.e., utilizing multiple GPUs to simultaneously process a partitioned grid system with communication at the interfaces using Message Passing Interface (MPI) has been developed and tested.     

Retrograde Densification of Calcined and Glass Precursors of Approximate (Bi,Pb)2Sr2Ca2Cu3O10 Stoichiometry

Retrograde densification of pelletized calcines and glasses having an approximate (Bi,Pb)₂Sr₂Ca₂Cu₃O₁₀ starting stoichiometry and sintered at ∼850°C can be described by first-order rate equations. Retrograde densification in the calcine precursors was largely due to the development of open pores, and was approximately proportional to the concentration of the (Bi,Pb)₂Sr₂CaCu₃O₁₀ phase. In the glasses, retrograde densification is mainly caused by porosity accompanying the growth of a needlelike Sr─Ca─Cu─O phase, together with (Bi,Pb)₂Sr₂Ca₂Cu₃O₁₀ and (Bi,Pb)₂Sr₂CaCu₂O₈.     

Surrogate modeling approximation using a mixture of experts based on EM joint estimation

An automatic method to combine several local surrogate models is presented. This method is intended to build accurate and smooth approximation of discontinuous functions that are to be used in structural optimization problems. It strongly relies on the Expectation−Maximization (EM) algorithm for Gaussian mixture models (GMM). To the end of regression, the inputs are clustered together with their output values by means of parameter estimation of the joint distribution. A local expert is then built (linear, quadratic, artificial neural network, moving least squares) on each cluster. Lastly, the local experts are combined using the Gaussian mixture model parameters found by the EM algorithm to obtain a global model. This method is tested over both mathematical test cases and an engineering optimization problem from aeronautics and is found to improve the accuracy of the approximation.