High‐performance Cu/Al laminated composites fabricated by horizontal twin‐roll casting

Horizontal twin‐roll casting technology was successfully introduced to produce high‐performance copper/aluminum (Cu/Al) laminated composites. The interface morphology, electrical properties and peeling strength after different annealing and cold rolling processes were investigated and contrasted with Cu/Al clad plates fabricated by conventional methods. The results show that sound metallurgical bonding between the copper and aluminum matrix can be attained after the horizontal twin‐roll casting processes and Al₂Cu is the only intermetallics at the interfacial region, the thickness of interfacial interlayer is about 0.7 μm. The peeling strength is 31.4 N/mm and can be further increased to 37.1 N/mm after annealing at 250 °C. However, higher temperature like 400 °C will cause the excessive growth of intermetallics so that peeling strength sharply decreases to 9.2 N/mm. Electrical conductivity of the clad plate is 51 MS/m. At the same electrical current intensity, the temperature‐rise of the composite plate is between the pure copper plate and the aluminum plate, and closer to the copper plate. All of the properties are outstanding than that of Cu/Al clad plate fabricated by conventional methods.     

Evolution of cost estimating system in China: intelligent estimator for Shandong Province (IES) to general intelligent estimator (GIE)

IES was the first knowledge-based cost estimating system with distinctive Chinese features and has been developed over the past four years, increasing the speed of estimating twelvefold in Shandong Province. GIE, the system for the whole of China is being tested in Jiangsu Province and the authors anticipate that other provinces will adopt the method, thus raising estimating standards in China as a whole. L'IES, developpe au cours des quatre dernieres annees, constitue le premier systeme intelligent d'estimation des couts dote de caracteristiques propres a l'environnement chinois. Son utilisation, dans la province de Shandong, a permis d'accelerer de douze fois la rapidite d'estimation des couts de projets de construction. Les premiers essais du systeme GIE, destine a l'ensemble de la Chine, sont en cours dans la province de Jiangsu. Les auteurs sont convaincus que d'autres provinces adopteront ce systeme, ce qui contribuera a rehausser considerablement l'efficacite des estimations en Chine.