The influence of corrosion on the erosion of aluminium by aqueous silica slurries

The slurry erosion-corrosion behaviour of aluminium in aqueous silica slurries containing 0.5 M NaCl, acetic acid and 0.1 M Na2CO3 at open circuit has been investigated using a modified slurry erosion rig. The erosion rates of aluminium in the NaCl and acetic acid slurries were much higher than those in an aqueous slurry without electrolyte additives even though the pure corrosion component was very small. Eroded specimens were examined by scanning electron and optical microscopy. In pure aqueous slurry erosion, the basic mechanism leading to mass loss was the ductile fracture of flakes formed on the eroded surface. In corrosive slurries, however, the mass loss was enhanced by cracking of the flakes induced by stress and corrosion. © 1995.

High rate deposition of ta-C:H using an electron cyclotron wave resonance plasma source

A compact electron cyclotron wave resonance (ECWR) source has been developed for the high rate deposition of hydrogenated tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C:H). The ECWR provides growth rates of up to 1.5 nm/s over a 4-inch diameter and an independent control of the deposition rate and ion energy. The ta-C:H was deposited using acetylene as the source gas and was characterized as having an sp3 content of up to 77%, plasmon energy of 27 eV, refractive index of 2.45, hydrogen content of about 30%, optical gap of up to 2.1 eV and RMS surface roughness of 0.04 nm. © 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

High rate deposition of Ta-C:H using an electron cyclotron wave resonance plasma source

A compact electron cyclotron wave resonance (ECWR) source has been developed for the high rate deposition of hydrogenated tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C:H). The ECWR provides growth rates of up to 900 angstrom/min and an independent control of the deposition rate and ion energy. The ta-C:H was deposited using acetylene as the source gas and was characterized in terms of its bonding, stress and friction coefficient. The results indicated that the ta-C:H produced using this source fulfills the necessary requirements for applications requiring enhanced tribological performance.

169 GHz repetition rate passively harmonically mode-locked VECSEL emitting 265 fs pulses

High repetition rate passively mode-locked sources are of significant interest due to their potential for applications including optical clocking, optical sampling, communications and others. Due to their short excited state lifetimes mode-locked VECSELs are ideally suited to high repetition rate operation, however fundamentally mode-locked quantum well-based VECSELs have not achieved repetition rates above 10 GHz due to the limitations placed on the cavity geometry by the requirement that the saturable absorber saturates more quickly than the gain. This issue has been overcome by the use of quantum dot-based saturable absorbers with lower saturation fluences leading to repetition rates up to 50 GHz, but sub-picosecond pulses have not been achieved at these repetition rates. We present a passively harmonically mode-locked VECSEL emitting pulses of 265 fs duration at a repetition rate of 169 GHz with an output power of 20 mW. The laser is based around an antiresonant 6 quantum well gain sample and is mode-locked using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror. Harmonic modelocking is achieved by using an intracavity sapphire etalon. The sapphire then acts as a coupled cavity, setting the repetition rate of the laser while still allowing a tight focus on the saturable absorber. RF spectra of the laser output show no peaks at harmonics of the fundamental repetition rate up to 26 GHz, indicating stable harmonic modelocking. Autocorrelations reveal groups of pulses circulating in the cavity as a result of an increased tendency towards Q-switched modelocking due to the low pulse energies.

Symmetrical 2-D Hermite-Gaussian square launch for high bit rate transmission in multimode fiber links

A 2-D Hermite-Gaussian square launch is demonstrated to show improved systems capacity over multimode fiber links. It shows a bandwidth improvement over both center and offset launches and exhibits ±5 μm misalignment tolerance. © 2011 Optical Society of America.

Elastodynamic erosion of thermal barrier coatings

The finite element method is used to analyze the elastodynamic response of a columnar thermal barrier coating due to normal impact and oblique impact by an erosive particle. An assessment is made of the erosion by crack growth from preexisting flaws at the edge of each column: it is demonstrated that particle impacts can be sufficiently severe to give rise to columnar cracking. First, the transient stress state induced by the normal impact of a circular cylinder or a sphere is calculated in order to assess whether a 2D calculation adequately captures the more realistic 3D behavior. It is found that the transient stress states for the plane strain and axisymmetric models are similar. The sensitivity of response to particle diameter and to impact velocity is determined for both the cylinder and the sphere. Second, the transient stress state is explored for 2D oblique impact by a circular cylindrical particle and by an angular cylindrical particle. The sensitivity of transient tensile stress within the columns to particle shape (circular and angular), impact angle, impact location, orientation of the angular particle, and to the level of friction is explored in turn. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the effect of inclining the thermal barrier coating columns upon their erosion resistance. © 2011 The American Ceramic Society.