Theoretical investigation of intrinsic point defects and the oxygen migration behavior in rare earth hafnates

In this work, the composition-dependent point defect types and formation energies of RE₂Hf₂O₇ (RE = La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Eu and Gd) as well as the oxygen diffusion behavior are systematically investigated by first-principles calculations. The possible defect reactions and dominant defect complexes under stoichiometric and non-stoichiometric conditions are revealed. It is found that O Frenkel pairs are the predominant defect in stoichiometric pyrochlore hafnates. Hf-RE cation anti-site defects, accompanied by RE vacancies and/or oxygen interstitials, are stable in the non-stoichiometric case of HfO₂ excess. On the other hand, RE-Hf anti-site defects together with oxygen vacancies and/or RE interstitials are preferable in the case of RE₂O₃ excess. The energy barriers for the migration along the V_O48f - V_O48f pathway of pyrochlore hafnates were calculated to be between 0.81 eV and 0.89 eV. Based on these results, a defect engineering strategy is proposed and the pyrochlore hafnates investigated here are predicted to exhibit potential oxygen ionic conductivity.     

Photophysical investigation of the formation of defect levels in P doped ZnO thin films

Zinc oxide (ZnO) offers a major disadvantage of asymmetry doping in terms of reliability, stability, and reproducibility of p-type doping, which is the main hindrance in realization of optoelectronic devices. The problem is even more complicated due to formation of various native defects in unintentionally doped n-type ZnO. The realization of p-type conductivity in doped ZnO requires an in-depth understanding of the formation of an effective shallow acceptor, as well as donor-acceptor compensation. Photophysical properties such as photoconductivity along with photoluminescence (PL) studies have unprecedentedly and effectively been utilized in this work to monitor the evolution of various in-gap defects. Phosphorus (P) doped ZnO thin films have been grown by RF magnetron sputtering under various Ar to O₂ gas ratios to investigate the effect of O₂ on the donor-acceptor compensation by comprehensive photoconductivity measurements supported by the PL studies. Initial elemental analyses indicate presence of abundant zinc vacancies (V_Zn) in O-rich ambience. The results predict that P sits in the zinc (Zn) site rather than the oxygen (O) site causing the formation of P_Zn–2V_Zn acceptor-like defects, which compensates the donor defects in P doped ZnO films. Photocurrent spectra uniquely reveal presence of more oxygen vacancies (V_O) defects states in lower O₂ flow, which gets compensated with an increase in the O₂ flow. Successive photocurrent transients indicate probable presence of more V_O in the films grown with lower O₂ flow and more V_Zn in higher O₂ flow. Overall the photosensitivity measurements clearly present that O-rich ambience expedites the formation of acceptor defects which are compensated, thereby lowering the dark current and enhancing the ultraviolet photosensitivity.     

Warm-white light performance of Dy3+, Eu3+: NaLa(WO4)2 phosphors excited with a 450-nm LED

Dy³⁺, Eu³⁺: NaLa(WO₄)₂ phosphors are successfully synthesized through the solid-state reaction technique. The phase-structure and morphology are measured via X-ray diffraction and energy dispersive spectrometry. The concentrations of Dy³⁺, Eu³⁺, La³⁺, and W⁶⁺ are measured via ICP. The absorption and excited spectra are presented, which indicate that a blue band ranging from 430 to 480 nm is suitable for excitation. Using a commercial blue LED with a wavelength of 450 nm as the excitation light source, emission spectra for samples with varying dopant concentration ratios of Dy³⁺ to Eu³⁺ are obtained, which show good tunable yellow and red emission. For the purpose of investigating white LED performance, CIE spectra and a white light photo are also presented. The results reveal that varying the dopant concentration ratio of Dy³⁺ to Eu³⁺ plays a key role in the warm-white performance. With increasing concentration of Eu³⁺, the correlated color temperature decreases from 4069 to 3172 K, which indicates good warm-white performance.     

Application of higher order spectral features and support vector machines for bearing faults classification

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of rolling element bearings timely and accurately are very important to ensure the reliability of rotating machinery. This paper presents a novel pattern classification approach for bearings diagnostics, which combines the higher order spectra analysis features and support vector machine classifier. The use of non-linear features motivated by the higher order spectra has been reported to be a promising approach to analyze the non-linear and non-Gaussian characteristics of the mechanical vibration signals. The vibration bi-spectrum (third order spectrum) patterns are extracted as the feature vectors presenting different bearing faults. The extracted bi-spectrum features are subjected to principal component analysis for dimensionality reduction. These principal components were fed to support vector machine to distinguish four kinds of bearing faults covering different levels of severity for each fault type, which were measured in the experimental test bench running under different working conditions. In order to find the optimal parameters for the multi-class support vector machine model, a grid-search method in combination with 10-fold cross-validation has been used. Based on the correct classification of bearing patterns in the test set, in each fold the performance measures are computed. The average of these performance measures is computed to report the overall performance of the support vector machine classifier. In addition, in fault detection problems, the performance of a detection algorithm usually depends on the trade-off between robustness and sensitivity. The sensitivity and robustness of the proposed method are explored by running a series of experiments. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve made the results more convincing. The results indicated that the proposed method can reliably identify different fault patterns of rolling element bearings based on vibration signals.     

Physicochemical and thermophysical properties of CaO–TiO2–SiO2–Na3AlF6 system based electrode coating for AUSC power plant

The aim of this study is to investigate the physicochemical and thermophysical properties of CaO–TiO₂–SiO₂–Na₃AlF₆ based electrode coating developed for the welding of advanced ultra-supercritical (AUSC) thermal power plant components. The extreme vertices approach has been used to create twenty-six electrode coating compositions. Various physicochemical and thermophysical properties were characterized using experiments. The coating properties are essential in ensuring sound weld with desirable in-service performance. The developed coating's structural behavior was analyzed using Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). In addition, regression analysis was carried out to evaluate the influence of coating constituents. Individual constituents and their interaction were found to have a prominent role in influencing the physicochemical and thermophysical properties.     

“Size effect” in the fatigue behavior of Friction Stir Welded plates

Comparative fatigue tests were carried out on Friction Stir Welded specimens of a 2195-T8 aluminum–lithium alloy that differed significantly in width. The width of the larger specimens was over thirteen times greater than that of the small specimens. Fatigue results showed a clear “size effect”, i.e. fatigue life of large specimens was about 40% of the corresponding value of small specimens. The Equivalent Initial Flaw Size methodology was adopted to correlate the two sets of results. Fatigue crack initiation life was disregarded with respect to crack propagation life, and fatigue life was evaluated only as propagation of a small pre-existing defect. Following this methodology, test results of small specimens were used to evaluate the initial equivalent flaw contained in each specimen. It was assumed that this data followed a normal distribution. The equivalent initial flaw in larger specimens was evaluated by simple geometrical considerations. A very good assessment of mean fatigue life and scatter in the fatigue results of large specimens was obtained by simulating the propagation of these defects. Calculations were carried out by taking also welding residual stresses into account, but the results demonstrated that this effect was not significant.     

Fatigue performance of Friction Stir Welded titanium structural joints

The Friction Stir Welding process for producing corner and T-joints out of 6 mm Ti–6Al–4V was developed in this effort using previous work on butt weld joints as a starting point. A limited number of corner joints were also subjected to a bending fatigue test to preliminarily assess the applicability of the process in producing fatigue critical structures. These results were also compared to predictions made by applying stress concentration factors to previously generated uniaxial butt joint test data. While additional testing is still required to obtain a higher degree of confidence in the conclusions of this study, it was found that the performance of these corner joints in fatigue could be compared to butt joint data when a geometrically based stress concentration factor is applied. Furthermore, these welded joints possessed equivalent fatigue performance relative to identical test specimens machined from wrought product forms, both bar and extrusion. Thus, from the perspective of fatigue design, this study has shown that Friction Stir Welding is able to produce structures with the same performance as currently made from wrought materials.     

干腌火腿的质量缺陷及防止措施

由于猪腿原材料或者加工技术的问题,而造成干腌火腿产品质量的多种缺陷。综述了干腌火腿中常见的各种质量缺陷以及防止这些质量缺陷的措施。     

基于可靠性评价的含缺陷核压力管道疲劳寿命预测方法

含缺陷压力管道经缺陷评定合乎使用后,其疲劳寿命的估计具有重要的工程意义。将整个含缺陷压力管道作为一个整体,分析了含缺陷压力管道的疲劳裂纹扩展特点,提出了相应的含缺陷压力管道疲劳寿命的计算过程,并在基于可靠性评价的基础上,给出了核压力管道的可接受失效概率,最终得到了含缺陷核压力管道疲劳寿命预测方法。     

The influence of the fabrication process on the buckling of thin-walled steel box sections

Steel box sections are usually fabricated from flat plates which are welded at the corners. The welding process can introduce residual stresses and geometric imperfections into the sections which can influence their strength. For some thin-walled sections, large periodic geometric imperfections have been observed in manufactured sections. Subsequent investigations have indicated that the imperfections are in fact buckling deformations i.e. the box section has buckled due to welding residual stresses prior to any application of external load. The welding procedure and the behaviour of the box sections under load has been modelled using a finite element analysis that accounts for both geometric and material non-linearities. Tests have been carried out on box sections with a range of width to thickness ratios for the plate elements. Modelling has been shown to give good correlation with the test results. The conditions for buckling to take place as a result of the welding process have been established. A design method has been proposed.