The hardness profile as a tool to detect spurious stationary points in the potential energy surface

The energy and hardness profile for a series of inter and intramolecular conformational changes at several levels of calculation were computed. The hardness profiles were found to be calculated as the difference between the vertical ionization potential and electron affinity. The hardness profile shows the correct number of stationary points independently of the basis set and methodology used. It was found that the hardness profiles can be used to check the reliability of the energy profiles for those chemical system

Are the maximum hardness and minimum polarizability principles always obeyed in nontotally symmetric vibrations?

An overview is given on a study which showed that not only in chemical reactions but also in the favorable case of nontotally symmetric vibrations where the chemical and external potentials keep approximately constant, the generalized maximum hardness principle (GMHP) and generalized minimum polarizability principle (GMPP) may not be obeyed. A method that allows an accurate determination of the nontotally symmetric molecular distortions with more marked GMPP or anti-GMPP character through diagonalization of the polarizability Hessian matrix is introduced

Using a water-soluble melamine-formaldehyde resin to improve the hardness of Norway spruce wood

Samples of Norway spruce wood were impregnated with a water-soluble melamine formaldehyde resin by using short-term vacuum treatment and long-term immersion, respectively. By means of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and UV microspectrophotometry, it was shown that only diffusion during long-term immersion leads to sufficient penetration of melamine resin into the wood structure, the flow of liquids in Norway spruce wood during vacuum treatment being greatly hindered by aspirated pits. After an immersion in aqueous melamine resin solution for 3 days, the resin had penetrated to a depth > 4 mm, which, after polymerization of the resin, resulted in an improvement of hardness comparable to the hardwood beech. A finite element model describing the effect of increasing depth of modification on hardness demonstrated that under the test conditions chosen for this study, a minimum impregnation depth of 2 mm is necessary to achieve an optimum increase in hardness. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Influence of pre-heat treatment and different light-curing units on Vickers hardness of a microhybrid composite resin

The aim of this study was to evaluate the hardness of a dental composite resin submitted to temperature changes before photo-activation with two light-curing unite (LCUs). Five samples (4 mm in diameter and 2 mm in thickness) for each group were made with pre-cure temperatures of 37, 54, and 60A degrees C. The samples were photo-activated with a conventional quartz-tungsten-halogen (QTH) and blue LED LCUs during 40 s. The hardness Vickers test (VHN) was performed on the top and bottom surfaces of the samples. According to the interaction between light-curing unit and different pre-heating temperatures of composite resin, only the light-curing unit provided influences on the mean values of initial Vickers hardness. The light-curing unit based on blue LED showed hardness mean values more homogeneous between the top and bottom surfaces. The hardness mean values were not statistically significant difference for the pre-cure temperature used. According to these results, the pre-heating of the composite resin provide no influence on Vickers hardness mean values, however the blue LED showed a cure more homogeneous than QTH LCU.

Influence of light guide tip used in the photo-activation on degree of conversion and hardness of one nanofilled dental composite

The aim of this study was to evaluate the degree of conversion and hardness of a dental composite resin Filtek (TM) Z-350 (3M ESPE, Dental Products St. Paul, MN) photo-activated for 20 s of irradiation time with two different light guide tips, metal and polymer, coupled on blue LED Ultraled LCU (Dabi Atlante, SP, Brazil). With the metal light tip, power density was of 352 and with the polymer was of 456 mW/cm(2), respectively. Five samples (4 mm in diameter and 2mm in thickness-ISO 4049), were made for each Group evaluated. The measurements for DC (%) were made in a Nexus-470 FT-IR, Thermo Nicolet, E.U.A. Spectroscopy (FTIR). Spectra for both uncured and cured samples were analyzed using an accessory of reflectance diffuse. The measurements were recorded in absorbance operating under the following conditions: 32 scans, 4 cm(-1) resolution, 300-4000 cm(-1) wavelength. The percentage of unreacted carbon double bonds (% C=C) was determined from the ratio of absorbance intensities of aliphatic C=C (peak at 1637 cm(-1)) against internal standard before and after curing of the sample: aromatic C-C (peak at 1610 cm(-1)). The Vickers hardness measurements (top and bottom surfaces) were performed in a universal testing machine (Buehler MMT-3 digital microhardness tester Lake Bluff, Illinois USA). A 50 gf load was used and the indenter with a dwell time of 30 s. The data were submitted to the test t Student at significance level of 5%. The mean values of degree of conversion for the polymer and metal light guide tip no were statistically different (p = 0.8389). The hardness mean values were no statistically significant different among the light guide tips (p = 0.6244), however, there was difference between top and bottom surfaces (p < 0.001). The results show that so much the polymer light tip as the metal light tip can be used for the photo-activation, probably for the low quality of the light guide tip metal.

Approximation algorithms and hardness results for the clique packing problem

For a fixed family F of graphs, an F-packing in a graph G is a set of pairwise vertex-disjoint subgraphs of G, each isomorphic to an element of F. Finding an F-packing that maximizes the number of covered edges is a natural generalization of the maximum matching problem, which is just F = {K(2)}. In this paper we provide new approximation algorithms and hardness results for the K(r)-packing problem where K(r) = {K(2), K(3,) . . . , K(r)}. We show that already for r = 3 the K(r)-packing problem is APX-complete, and, in fact, we show that it remains so even for graphs with maximum degree 4. On the positive side, we give an approximation algorithm with approximation ratio at most 2 for every fixed r. For r = 3, 4, 5 we obtain better approximations. For r = 3 we obtain a simple 3/2-approximation, achieving a known ratio that follows from a more involved algorithm of Halldorsson. For r = 4, we obtain a (3/2 + epsilon)-approximation, and for r = 5 we obtain a (25/14 + epsilon)-approximation. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Elastic modulus and hardness of cortical and trabecular bovine bone measured by nanoindentation

The elastic modulus and hardness of several microstructure components of dry bovine vertebrae and tibia have been investigated in the longitude and transverse directions using nanoindentation. The elastic modulus for the osteons and the interstitial lamellae in the longitude direction were found to be (24.7±2.5) GPa and (30.1±2.4) GPa. As it's difficult to distinguish osteons from interstitial lamellae in the transverse direction, the average elastic modulus for cortical bovine bone in the transverse direction was (19.8±1.6) GPa. The elastic modulus for trabecular bone in the longitude and transverse direction were (20±2) GPa and (14.7±1.9) GPa respectively. The hardness also varied among the microstructure components in the range of 0.41–0.89 GPa. Analyses of variance show that the values are significantly different.

Spherical indentation hardness of shape memory alloys

Using dimensional analysis and the finite element method, the spherical indentation hardness of shape memory alloys (SMAs) is investigated. The scaling relationship between the hardness and the mechanical properties of a SMA, such as the forward transformation stress, the maximum transformation strain magnitude, has been derived. Numerical results demonstrated that the hardness increases with the indentation depth but there is no three-fold relationship between the hardness and the forward transformation stress. Increasing the maximum transformation strain magnitude would reduce the hardness of the material. These research results enhance our understanding of the hardness from the spherical indentation of SMAs.

Eccentricity and hardness control in cold rolling mills with a dynamically constructed neural controller

The main objective of a steel strip rolling process is to produce high quality steel at a desired thickness.  Thickness reduction is the result of the speed difference between the incoming and the outgoing steel strip and the application of the large normal forces via the backup and the work rolls.  Gauge control of a cold rolled steel strip is achieved using the gaugemeter principle that works adequately for the input gauge changes and the strip hardness changes.  However, the compensation of some factors is problematic, for example, eccentricity of the backup rolls.  This cyclic eccentricity effect causes a gauge deviation, but more importantly, a signal is passed to the gap position control so to increase the eccentricity deviation.  Consequently, the required high product tolerances are severely limited by the presence of the roll eccentricity effects.
In this paper a direct model reference adaptive control (MRAC) scheme with dynamically constructed neural controller was used.  The aim here is to find the simplest controller structure capable of achieving an optimal performance.  The stability of the adaptive neural control scheme (i.e. the requirement of persistency of excitation and bounded learning rates) is addressed by using as the inputs to the reference model the plant's state variables.  In such a case, excitation is due to actual plant signals (states) affected by plant disturbances and noise.  In addition, a reference model in the form of a filter with a desired transfer function using Modulus Optimum design was used to ensure variance in the desired dynamic characteristics of the system.  The gradually decreasing learning rate employed by the neural controller in this paper is aimed at eliminating controller instability resulting from over-aggressive control.  The moving target problem (i.e. the difficulty of global neural networks to perfrom several separate computational tasks in closed -loop control) is addressed by the localized architecture of the controller.  The above control scheme and learning algorithm offers a method for automatic discovery of an efficient controller.
The resulting neural controller produces an excellent disturbance rejection in both cases of eccentricity and hardness disturbances, reducing the gauge deviation due to eccentricity disturbance from 33.36% to 4.57% on average, and the gauge deviation due to hardness disturbance from 12.59% to 2.08%.