Graphics processing unit cooling solutions: Acoustic characteristics

The change in acoustic characteristics in personal computers to console gaming and home entertainment systems with the change in the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), is presented. The tests are carried out using identical configurations of the software and system hardware. The prime components of the hardware used in the project are central processing unit, motherboard, hard disc drive, memory, power supply, optical drive, and additional cooling system. The results from the measurements taken for each GPU tested are analyzed and compared. The test results are obtained using a photo tachometer and reflective tape adhered to one particular fan blade. The test shows that loudness is a psychoacoustic metric developed by Zwicker and Fastal that aims to quantify how loud a sound is perceived as compared to a standard sound. The acoustic experiment reveals that the inherent noise generation mechanism increases with the increase of the complexity of the cooling solution.

Feedback control of impact dynamics: The bouncing ball revisited

We study the the design of a tracking controller for the popular bouncing ball model: the continuous-time actuation of a table is used to control the impacts of the table with a bouncing ball. The proposed control law uses the impact times as the sole feedback information. We show that the acceleration of the table at impact plays no role in the stability analysis but is an important parameter for the robustness of the feedback system to model uncertainty, in particular to the uncertainty on the coefficient of restitution. © 2006 IEEE.

Implementation of trailer steering control on a multi-unit vehicle at high speeds

A high-speed path-following controller for long combination vehicles (LCVs) was designed and implemented on a test vehicle consisting of a rigid truck towing a dolly and a semitrailer. The vehicle was driven through a 3.5 m wide lane change maneuver at 80 km/h. The axles of the dolly and trailer were steered actively by electrically-controlled hydraulic actuators. Substantial performance benefits were recorded compared with the unsteered vehicle. For the best controller weightings, performance improvements relative to unsteered case were: lateral tracking error 75% reduction, rearward amplification (RA) of lateral acceleration 18% reduction, and RA of yaw rate 37% reduction. This represents a substantial improvement in stability margins. The system was found to work well in conjunction with the braking-based stability control system of the towing vehicle with no negative interaction effects being observed. In all cases, the stability control system and the steering system improved the yaw stability of the combination. © 2014 by ASME.

Monitoring bioaccumulation and toxic effects of hexachlorobenzene using the polyurethane foam unit method in the microbial communities of the Fuhe River, Wuhan

Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) is a chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbon that was widely used for seed dressing in prevention of fungal growth on crops, and also as a component of fireworks, ammunition, and synthetic rubbers. Because of its resistance to degradation and mobility, HCB is widely distributed throughout the environment and is accumulated through food chains in different ecosystems. In this study, a preliminary investigation was carried out on the bioaccumulation and the toxic effects of HCB in the microbial (protozoan in particular) communities in the Fuhe River, Wuhan, a water body receiving industrial wastewaters containing HCB and other pollutants, using the standardized polyurethane foam units (PFU) method. Field samples were taken from eight stations established along the Fuhe River in January and August 2006. The concentration ratios of HCB in microbial communities and in water were 9.66-18.64, and the microbial communities accumulated 13.29-56.88 mu g/L of HCB in January and 0.82-10.25 mu g/L HCB in August. Correlation analysis showed a negative correlation between the HCB contents in the microbial assemblage, and the number of species and the diversity index of the protozoan communities. This study demonstrated the applicability of the PFU method in monitoring the effects of HCB on the level of microbial communities.

An overview of the ILSP unit selection text-to-speech synthesis system

This paper presents an overview of the Text-to-Speech synthesis system developed at the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP). It focuses on the key issues regarding the design of the system components. The system currently fully supports three languages (Greek, English, Bulgarian) and is designed in such a way to be as language and speaker independent as possible. Also, experimental results are presented which show that the system produces high quality synthetic speech in terms of naturalness and intelligibility. The system was recently ranked among the first three systems worldwide in terms of achieved quality for the English language, at the international Blizzard Challenge 2013 workshop. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.

QtUCP-A program for determining unit-cell parameters in electron diffraction experiments using double-tilt and rotation-tilt holders

A computer program, QtUCP, has been developed based on several well-established algorithms using GCC 4.0 and Qt (R) 4.0 (Open Source Edition) under Debian GNU/Linux 4.0r0. it can determine the unit-cell parameters from an electron diffraction tilt series obtained from both double-tilt and rotation-tilt holders. In this approach, two or more primitive cells of the reciprocal lattice are determined from experimental data, in the meantime, the measurement errors of the tilt angles are checked and minimized. Subsequently, the derived primitive cells are converted into the reduced form and then transformed into the reduced direct primitive cell. Finally all the patterns are indexed and the least-squares refinement is employed to obtain the optimized results of the lattice parameters. Finally, two examples are given to show the application of the program, one is based on the experiment, the other is from the simulation. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Crystallographic and magnetic properties of R3Fe29-xVxN4 (R = Y, Ce, Nd, Sm, Gd, Tb, and Dy)

A systematic investigation of crystallographic and magnetic properties of nitride R3Fe29-xVxN4 (R = Y, Ce, Nd, Sm, Gd, Tb, and Dy) has been performed. Nitrogenation leads to a relative volume expansion of about 6%. The lattice constants and unit cell volume decrease with increasing rare-earth atomic number from Nd to Dy, reflecting the lanthanide contraction. On average, the Curie temperature increases due to the nitrogenation to about 200 K compared with its parent compound. Generally speaking, nitrogenation also results in a remarkable improvement of the saturation magnetization and anisotropy fields at 4.2 K and room temperature for R3Fe29-xVxN4 compared with their parent compounds. The transition temperature indicates the spin reorientations of R3Fe29-xVxN4 for R = Nd and Sm are at around 375 and 370 K which are higher than that of R3Fe29-xVx, for R = Nd and Sm 145 and 140 K, respectively. The magnetohistory effects of R3Fe29-xVxN4 (R = Ce, Nd, and Sm) are observed in low fields of 0.04 T. After nitrogenation the easy magnetization direction of Sm3Fe26.7V2.3 is changed from an easy-cone structure to the b-axis. As a preliminary result, a maximum remanence B-r of 0.94 T, an intrinsic coercivity mu(0)H(C) of 0.75 T, and a maximum energy product (B H)(max) of 108.5 kJ m(-3) for the nitride magnet Sm3Fe26.7V2.3N4 are achieved by ball-milling at 293 K.

Influence of processing medium on frictional wear properties of ball bearing steel prepared by laser surface melting coupled with bionic principles

Coupling with bionic principles, an attempt to improve the wear resistance of ball bearing steel (GCr15) with biomimetic units on the surface was made using a pulsed Nd: YAG laser. Air and water film was employed as processing medium, respectively. The microstructures of biomimeitc units were examined by scanning electron microscope and X-ray diffraction was used to describe the microstructure and identify the phases as functions of different mediums as well as water film with different thicknesses. The results indicated that the microstructure zones in the biomimetic specimens processed with water film were more refined and had better wear resistance increased by 55.8% in comparison with that processed in air; a significant improvement in microhardness was achieved by laser surface melting. The application of water film provided considerable microstructural changes and much more regular grain shape in biomimetic units, which played a key role in improving the wear resistance of ball bearing steel. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Wide-band underwater acoustic absorption based on locally resonant unit and interpenetrating network structure

The interpenetrating network structure provides an interesting avenue to novel materials. Locally resonant phononic crystal (LRPC) exhibits excellent sound attenuation performance based on the periodical arrangement of sound wave scatters. Combining the LRPC concept and interpenetrating network glassy structure, this paper has developed a new material which can achieve a wide band underwater strong acoustic absorption. Underwater absorption coefficients of different samples were measured by the pulse tube. Measurement results show that the new material possesses excellent underwater acoustic effects in a wide frequency range. Moreover, in order to investigate impacts of locally resonant units, some defects are introduced into the sample. The experimental result and the theoretical calculation both show that locally resonant units being connected to a network structure play an important role in achieving a wide band strong acoustic absorption.

An organic sensitizer with a fused dithienothiophene unit for efficient and stable dye-sensitized solar cells

We report a high molar extinction coefficient organic sensitizer for high efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells. In combination with a solvent-free ionic liquid electrolyte, we have demonstrated a similar to 7% cell showing an excellent stability measured under the thermal and light soaking dual stress. This is expected to have an important practical consequence on the production of flexible, low-cost, and lightweight DSC based on plastic matrix.