Three-dimensional simulation of sacrificial etching

Sacrificial etching is one of the most important process steps in micro-electro-mechanical systems technology, since it enables the generation of free-standing structures. These structures are often the main part of micro-mechanical devices, intended to sense or induce a mechanical movement. The etching process transforms an initial multi-segmented geometry and depends on material properties and several process conditions. One of the crucial issues for etching is the etching selectivity on different materials. The major task for the simulation is to give an answer, how sacrificial layer surfaces regress in time under the influence of process parameters and to which magnitude surrounding material segments are affected by the etching process. For this purpose we have developed a fully three-dimensional topography simulation tool, Etcher-Topo3D, which is capable to deal with realistic process conditions. The main concept is demonstrated in this work. During simulation the topography of the initial multi-segment geometry is changed which is handled by a level-set algorithm. After a simulation is finished, the level-set representation has usually to be converted back to a mesh representation to enable further analysis. To illustrate the main features of our simulation tool several examples of MEMS structures with a sacrificial layer are presented.     

Densitometric determination of zinc bacitracin and nystatin in animal feed

BACKGROUND: The European Union has forbidden the use of antibiotics as additives in animal feed. Zn‐bacitracin (Zn‐BC) and nystatin (NYS) were frequently used for their growth‐promoting effects and for feed conversion in poultry, pigs and cattle. An HPTLC method has been developed for separating Zn‐BC and NYS in the mixture, for routine quality control. RESULTS: The separation was obtained using RP‐18 F_254S coated HPTLC plates with acetonitrile/methanol (equal volumes):toluene:KH₂PO₄/KOH (buffer, pH 6.8) = 57:3:40 (v/v/v), adjusted with HCl to pH 8.2, as a mobile phase. The densitograms were monitored at 192, 215 and 305 nm and both antibiotics were assayed at 215 nm. The method was shown to be specific, accurate (recoveries were 98.7 ± 0.5% and 104.8 ± 0.7% for Zn‐BC and NYS, respectively), linear over the tested range (correlation coefficients, 0.9982 and 0.9884), and precise (intermediate precision RSD below 2.2% for both analytes) with efficient separation (R_s = 3.5). CONCLUSION: The method was applied for determining Zn‐BC and NYS as additives in spiked matrices of commercial animal feedstuffs. According to LOD values for each antibiotic, the minimum detectable amount in feed is 4.5 and 5.5 ppm of Zn‐BC and NYS, respectively. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

Management of bridges with shallow foundations exposed to local scour

Abstract

The Serbian road network includes a large portion of bridges with shallow foundations vulnerable to local scour as tragically demonstrated during the extreme flooding in May 2014. Currently, the bridge management procedures in Serbia and worldwide do not comprehensively account for a risk of bridge failure due to flooding and fail to provide sufficient information for the decision-making. Thus, a novel methodology for quantitative vulnerability assessment is suggested as a tool to identify the most vulnerable bridges in a network. Herein, the essential task is evaluation of the conditional probability of a bridge failure due to local scour in a flooding event of a certain magnitude. To apply this approach on a network level, there is a dire need to establish precise practice-ready guidelines on an optimal set of information to be used and/or collected in situ, which is discussed on an example of the Serbian bridge database. The vulnerability of a bridge to local scour may be used as a comprehensive indicator of a bridge performance in a flooding event. For a network level, the vulnerability maps with respect to flooding of different magnitudes will give road operators crucial information to apply adequate quality control plans to vulnerable bridges.     

Co-deposition and densification of SiC with MgO for biomedical applications

This article focuses on the electrophoretic co-deposition of SiC and MgO, which has not been previously reported. The EPD of SiC has been widely investigated, whilst the EPD of SiC with sintering additives is usually not taken into account since every compound added to the suspension seriously affects the zeta-potential and the conductivity, the two main parameters that should be optimized to achieve a good deposit. We comprehensively observed the effects of the individual compounds on the colloidal behaviour of a suspension suitable for co-deposition to achieve good homogeneity and the highest possible green density. The obtained green densities reached up to 1.92 g/cm³, which correspond to 60% of theoretical density, whilst after sintering in open air at 1350 °C the densities reached 2.33 g/cm³. SEM and TEM analyses revealed that the microstructure is composed of SiC grains embedded in a SiO₂ matrix, whilst XRD confirmed that even though the sintering caused a partial oxidation and the appearance of an amorphous phase, the prevailing crystalline phase is still β-SiC. In the presence of MgO, SiO₂ also appears in the crystalline form as cristobalite.     

Condition Evolution in Bridge Management Systems and Corrosion-Induced Deterioration

Condition assessment in the Swiss bridge management system (KUBA-MS) is performed on the element level. Five condition states are defined based on visual appearance. In order to forecast the condition states of any given element at any given time a relationship must be established between the element age and its condition state. This relationship, which describes the condition evolution, can be obtained empirically from statistical analysis of pairs of consecutive condition assessments (inspections). Markov chains are used in KUBA-MS to represent condition evolution and the transition probabilities are determined using regression analysis of pairs of inspections. Unfortunately there are almost no inspection data for the worst and second worst condition states. The forecasts made using Markov chains are therefore not always reliable. In this paper an alternative approach is suggested, which takes into consideration the physical phenomena underlying element deterioration. This alternative approach is applied to chloride-induced corrosion of steel reinforcement, by far the most common deterioration mechanism in Switzerland. The chloride-induced corrosion is modeled mathematically and numerical simulations of the condition evolution for different values of model parameters are performed. The simulation results have been mapped to condition states as defined in KUBA-MS and Markov transition matrices have been calibrated to fit simulation results.     

Evaluating fault tolerance approaches in multi-agent systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a distributed system that consists of multiple agents working together to solve mutual problems. Even though MASs are well suited for the development of complex distributed systems, the number of real-world usages is still small. One of the main reasons for this is that MASs are very fragile. In a typical, large-scale MAS, the rate of failure grows with the number of hosts, the number of deployed agents, and the duration of the agent’s task execution. For this reason, numerous approaches have been introduced to deal with aspects of failure handling. However, the absence of centralized control and a large number of individual intelligent components makes it difficult to detect and treat errors. The risk of uncontrollable fault propagation is high and can seriously impact on system performance. There are two important factors that limit the usage of MASs: (1) existing fault tolerance (FT) approaches are not generic, as they focus on and improve specific issues of FT; and (2) despite the plethora of available FT approaches and theories, there is a remarkable lack of general metrics, tools, benchmarks, and experimental methods for formal validation and comparison of existing or newly developed FT approaches. As FT approaches in MASs become a well-established field, the need for generalized, standardized evaluation of FT approaches emerges as imperative. In this paper, we first present a detailed overview of existing FT solutions, approaches, and techniques in agent platform hosted MASs. From that overview, we derive the commonalities in existing research. Next, we present the main contribution of our paper: an evaluation methodology, with a set of metrics, for comparing FT approaches in MASs. We adopt an engineering perspective on the problem, defining a methodology and metrics that are both implementation- and domain-independent. The metrics are formalized with an acyclic directed graph. By using our methodology, evaluators can select an appropriate FT approach for targeted MAS application, thus improving MAS usability, stability, and development speed. In order to show the viability of our approach, a case study that compares two FT approaches for a targeted MAS is presented. The case study results show that our methodology can be used for selecting an appropriate FT approach for the targeted MAS.     

Multi-core implementation of the differential ant-stigmergy algorithm for numerical optimization

Numerical optimization techniques are applied to a variety of engineering problems. The cost-function evaluation is an important part of any numerical optimization and is usually realized as a black-box simulator. For the efficient solving of the numerical optimization problem on multi-core systems, new shared-memory and distributed-memory approaches are proposed. The algorithms are based on an ant-stigmergy meta-heuristics, where indirect coordination between the ants drives the search procedure toward the optimal solution. Indirect coordination offers a high degree of parallelism and therefore relatively straightforward shared-memory and distributed-memory implementations. The Intel-OpenMP 3.0 and MPICH2 libraries are used for the inter-thread and inter-process communications, respectively. It is shown that speed-up strongly depends on the simulation time. This is especially evident in a distributed-memory implementation. Therefore, the algorithms’ performances, according to the simulator’s time complexity, are experimentally evaluated and discussed.     

Fabrication of CNT-SiC/SiC composites by electrophoretic deposition

Due to the outstanding mechanical and thermal properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), they are considered suitable reinforcement for structural materials. In this study, for the first time, electrophoretic deposition (EPD) was used to deposit (multi-walled) CNTs onto SiC fibres (SiC_f) to form an effective CNT interphase layer for SiC_f/SiC composites. This deposition was followed by electrophoretic infiltration of the CNT-coated SiC fibre mats with SiC powder to fabricate a new CNT-SiC-fibre-reinforced SiC-matrix (SiC_f/SiC) composite for fusion applications. In these EPD experiments, a commercial aqueous suspension of negatively charged CNTs and an optimized aqueous suspension of negatively charged SiC particles were used. The CNT-coatings on the SiC fibres were firm and homogenous, and uniformly distributed nanotubes were observed on the fibre surfaces. In a following step of EPD, a thick SiC layer was formed on the fibre mat when the CNT-coated SiC fibres were in contact with the positive electrode of the EPD cell; however, spaces between the fibres were not fully filled with SiC. Conversely, when CNT-coated SiC fibres were isolated from the electrode, the SiC particles were able to gradually fill the fibre mat resulting in relatively high infiltration, which leads to dense composites.     

Wavelet analysis of experimental results for coupled structural–hydraulic behavior of the EURISOL target mock-up

During test runs of the The European Isotope Separation On-Line (EURISOL) target mock-up performed in December 2008, data were recorded for strain gages and for acceleration sensors. In this paper, the applicability of wavelet analysis for detecting the onset and the status of flow-induced cavitation is investigated for the first time. Even under noisy conditions, the detection of incipient cavitation was possible when combining measurements with data from structural and fluid dynamic simulations. The distribution of coefficients of suitably selected wavelets yields a quantitative measure for the extent of cavitation in the EURISOL target mock-up under representative flow conditions. Without cavitation, the distribution of the wavelet coefficients was Gaussian with a small standard deviation, whereas for developed cavitation the standard deviation was large and the probability density function (PDF) approached a uniform distribution.