Evaluation of the influence of testing parameters on the melt flow index of thermoplastics

The main goals of the present work are the evaluation of the influence of several variables and test parameters on the melt flow index (MFI) of thermoplastics, and the determination of the uncertainty associated with the measurements. To evaluate the influence of test parameters on the measurement of MFI the design of experiments (DOE) approach has been used. The uncertainty has been calculated using a "bottom-up" approach given in the "Guide to the Expression of the Uncertainty of Measurement" (GUM). Since an analytical expression relating the output response (MFI) with input parameters does not exist, it has been necessary to build mathematical models by adjusting the experimental observations of the response variable in accordance with each input parameter. Subsequently, the determination of the uncertainty associated with the measurement of MFI has been performed by applying the law of propagation of uncertainty to the values of uncertainty of the input parameters. Finally, the activation energy (Ea) of the melt flow at around 200 degrees C and the respective uncertainty have also been determined.

Pulsed electric field pre-treatment for apple juice extraction: Evaluation of monopolar and bipolar pulses effects

Additional apple juice extraction with pulsed electric field pretreated apple cubes towards control samples is evaluated. Monopolar and bipolar shaped pulses are compared and their effect is studied with variation of electric field, pulse width and number of pulses. Variation of electric field strength is ranged from 100 V/cm to 1300 V/cm, pulse width from 20 mu s to 300 mu s and number of pulses from 10 to 200, at frequency of 200Hz. Two pulse trains separated by 1 second are applied to all samples. Bipolar pulses showed higher apple juice yields with all studied parameters. Calculation of specific energies consumed was assessed and a threshold where higher energy inputs do not increase juice yield is found for a number of used parameters. Qualitative parameters of total soluble matter (Brix) and absorbance at 390 nm wavelength were determined for each sample and results show that no substantial differences are found for PEF pre-treated and control samples.

Autonomic Activities in the Execution of Scientific Workflows: Evaluation of the AWARD Framework

Workflows have been successfully applied to express the decomposition of complex scientific applications. However the existing tools still lack adequate support to important aspects namely, decoupling the enactment engine from tasks specification, decentralizing the control of workflow activities allowing their tasks to run in distributed infrastructures, and supporting dynamic workflow reconfigurations. We present the AWARD (Autonomic Workflow Activities Reconfigurable and Dynamic) model of computation, based on Process Networks, where the workflow activities (AWA) are autonomic processes with independent control that can run in parallel on distributed infrastructures. Each AWA executes a task developed as a Java class with a generic interface allowing end-users to code their applications without low-level details. The data-driven coordination of AWA interactions is based on a shared tuple space that also enables dynamic workflow reconfiguration. For evaluation we describe experimental results of AWARD workflow executions in several application scenarios, mapped to the Amazon (Elastic Computing EC2) Cloud.