Control of transient thermal response during sequential open-die forging: A trajectory optimization approach

A trajectory optimization approach is applied to the design of a sequence of open-die forging operations in order to control the transient thermal response of a large titanium alloy billet. The amount of time tire billet is soaked in furnace prior to each successive forging operation is optimized to minimize the total process time while simultaneously satisfying constraints on the maximum and minimum values of the billet's temperature distribution to avoid microstructural defects during forging. The results indicate that a "differential" heating profile is the most effective at meeting these design goals.

Mechanisms controlling the undrained strength behavior of remolded Ariake marine clays

The soft clay of Ariake Bay, in western Kyushu, Japan covers several hundred square kilometers. Ariake clay consists of the principal clay minerals namely, smectite, illite, kaolinite and vermiculite, and other minerals in lesser quantity. The percentage of the principal clay, mineral can vary significantly. The percent clay, size fraction and the salt concentration can also vary significantly. In view of the importance of undrained shear strength in geotechnical engineering practice, its behavior has been studied with respect to variation in salt concentration. Basically, two mechanisms control the undrained strength in clays, namely (a) cohesion or undrained strength is due to the net interparticle attractive forces, or (b) cohesion is due to the viscous nature of the double layer water. Concept (a) operates primarily for kaolinitic soil, and concept (b) dominates primarily for montmorillonitic soils. In Ariake clay, different clay minerals with different exchangeable cations and varying ion concentration in the pore water and varying nonclay size fraction are present. In view of this while both concepts (a) and (b) can coexist and operate simultaneously, one of the mechanisms dominates. For Isahaya clay, concept (a), factors responsible for an increase in level of flocculation and attractive forces result in higher undrained strength. Increase in salt concentration increases the remolded undrained strength at any moisture content. For Kubota and Kawazoe clays, concept (b) factors responsible for an expansion of diffuse double layer thickness, resulting in higher viscous resistance, increase the undrained shear strength, that is, as concentration decreases, the undrained strength increases at any moisture content.The liquid limit of Isahaya,a clay increases with increase in ion concentration and a marginal decrease is seen for both Kubota and Kawazoe clays, and their behavior has been explained satisfactorily,.

The design and synthesis of redox core-alpha amino acid composites based on thiol-disulfide exchange mechanism and a comparative study of their zinc abstraction potential from [CCXX] boxes in proteins

The design and synthesis of agents that can abstract zinc from their [CCXX] (C=cysteine; X=cysteine/histidine) boxes by thioldisulfide exchange-having as control, the redox parities of the core sulfur ligands of the reagent and the enzyme, has been illustrated, and their efficiency demonstrated by monitoring the inhibition of the transcription of calf thymus DNA by E. coli RNA polymerase, which harbors two zinc atoms in their [CCXX] boxes of which one is exchangeable. Maximum inhibition possible with removal of the exchangeable zinc was seen with redox-sulfanilamide-glutamate composite. In sharp contrast, normal chelating agents (EDTA, phenanthroline) even in a thousand fold excess showed only marginal inhibition, thus supporting an exchange mechanism for the metal removal. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

A method of tracking the peak power points for a variable speed wind energy conversion system

In this paper, a method of tracking the peak power in a wind energy conversion system (WECS) is proposed, which is independent of the turbine parameters and air density. The algorithm searches for the peak power by varying the speed in the desired direction. The generator is operated in the speed control mode with the speed reference being dynamically modified in accordance with the magnitude and direction of change of active power. The peak power points in the P-omega curve correspond to dP/domega = 0. This fact is made use of in the optimum point search algorithm. The generator considered is a wound rotor induction machine whose stator is connected directly to the grid and the rotor is fed through back-to-back pulse-width-modulation (PWM) converters. Stator flux-oriented vector control is applied to control the active and reactive current loops independently. The turbine characteristics are generated by a dc motor fed from a commercial dc drive. All of the control loops are executed by a single-chip digital signal processor (DSP) controller TMS320F240. Experimental results show that the performance of the control algorithm compares well with the conventional torque control method.

Defining the ‘modified Griffin plot’ in vortex-induced vibration: revealing the effect of Reynolds number using controlled damping

In the present work, we study the transverse vortex-induced vibrations of an elastically mounted rigid cylinder in a fluid flow. We employ a technique to accurately control the structural damping, enabling the system to take on both negative and positive damping. This permits a systematic study of the effects of system mass and damping on the peak vibration response. Previous experiments over the last 30 years indicate a large scatter in peak-amplitude data ($A^*$) versus the product of mass–damping ($\alpha$), in the so-called ‘Griffin plot’. A principal result in the present work is the discovery that the data collapse very well if one takes into account the effect of Reynolds number ($\mbox{\textit{Re}}$), as an extra parameter in a modified Griffin plot. Peak amplitudes corresponding to zero damping ($A^*_{{\alpha}{=}0}$), for a compilation of experiments over a wide range of $\mbox{\textit{Re}}\,{=}\,500-33000$, are very well represented by the functional form $A^*_{\alpha{=}0} \,{=}\, f(\mbox{\textit{Re}}) \,{=}\, \log(0.41\,\mbox{\textit{Re}}^{0.36}$). For a given $\mbox{\textit{Re}}$, the amplitude $A^*$ appears to be proportional to a function of mass–damping, $A^*\propto g(\alpha)$, which is a similar function over all $\mbox{\textit{Re}}$. A good best-fit for a wide range of mass–damping and Reynolds number is thus given by the following simple expression, where $A^*\,{=}\, g(\alpha)\,f(\mbox{\textit{Re}})$: \[ A^* \,{=}\,(1 - 1.12\,\alpha + 0.30\,\alpha^2)\,\log (0.41\,\mbox{\textit{Re}}^{0.36}). \] In essence, by using a renormalized parameter, which we define as the ‘modified amplitude’, $A^*_M\,{=}\,A^*/A^*_{\alpha{=}0}$, the previously scattered data collapse very well onto a single curve, $g(\alpha)$, on what we refer to as the ‘modified Griffin plot’. There has also been much debate over the last three decades concerning the validity of using the product of mass and damping (such as $\alpha$) in these problems. Our results indicate that the combined mass–damping parameter ($\alpha$) does indeed collapse peak-amplitude data well, at a given $\mbox{\textit{Re}}$, independent of the precise mass and damping values, for mass ratios down to $m^*\,{=}\,1$.

Jointly Optimal Power Control and Hop Length for a Single Cell, Dense, Ad hoc Wireless Network

We consider a dense, ad hoc wireless network confined to a small region, such that direct communication is possible between any pair of nodes. The physical communication model is that a receiver decodes the signal from a single transmitter, while treating all other signals as interference. Data packets are sent between source-destination pairs by multihop relaying. We assume that nodes self-organise into a multihop network such that all hops are of length d meters, where d is a design parameter. There is a contention based multiaccess scheme, and it is assumed that every node always has data to send, either originated from it or a transit packet (saturation assumption). In this scenario, we seek to maximize a measure of the transport capacity of the network (measured in bit-meters per second) over power controls (in a fading environment) and over the hop distance d, subject to an average power constraint. We first argue that for a dense collection of nodes confined to a small region, single cell operation is efficient for single user decoding transceivers. Then, operating the dense ad hoc network (described above) as a single cell, we study the optimal hop length and power control that maximizes the transport capacity for a given network power constraint. More specifically, for a fading channel and for a fixed transmission time strategy (akin to the IEEE 802.11 TXOP), we find that there exists an intrinsic aggregate bit rate (Thetaopt bits per second, depending on the contention mechanism and the channel fading characteristics) carried by the network, when operating at the optimal hop length and power control. The optimal transport capacity is of the form dopt(Pmacrt) x Thetaopt with dopt scaling as Pmacrt 1 /eta, where Pmacrt is the available time average transmit power and eta is the path loss exponent. Under certain conditions on the fading distribution, we then pro- - vide a simple characterisation of the optimal operating point.

Growth and consumption rates of the phase layers during interdiffusion in a diffusion couple with finite end member

The relations for the growth and consumption rates of a layer with finite thickness as an end member and the product phases in the interdiffusion zone are developed. We have used two different methodologies, the diffusion based and the physico-chemical approach to develop the same relations. We have shown that the diffusion based approach is rather straightforward; however, the physico-chemical approach is much more versatile than the other method. It was found that the position of the marker plane becomes vague in the second stage of the interdiffusion process in pure A thin layer/B couple, where two phases grow simultaneously.

Evaluation of the role of disordered organic fluorine in crystal packing: insights from halogen substituted benzanilides

The determination of the crystal and molecular structures of a large number of compounds containing the C(sp(2))-F bond has been investigated in detail in halogenated benzanilides and also in liquids, namely the fluorinated amines. It has been observed that when the fluorine atom is present in the ortho or meta position with respect to the amide functionality in benzanilides or the amino group in fluorinated amines which are liquids at room temperature, the fluorine atom exhibits positional disorder. This is associated with changes in patterns of intermolecular interactions which affect crystal packing. Furthermore, the presence of a fluorine atom on the benzanilide framework, in the presence of a heavier halogen (chloro, bromo and iodo), meta or ortho to the amide group does not eliminate the disorder associated with these molecules. In this article, we highlight the salient features present in halogenated compounds exhibiting disorder in the position of organic fluorine with concomitant changes in crystal packing. This feature is also compared with related compounds exhibiting similarity in electronic features, namely positional disorder.

Interdiffusion and Growth of the Phases in CoNi/Mo and CoNi/W Systems

Deleterious topological-closed-packed (tcp) phases grow in the interdiffusion zone in turbine blades mainly because of the addition of refractory elements such as Mo and W in the Ni- and Co-based superalloys. CoNi/Mo and CoNi/W diffusion couples are prepared to understand the growth mechanism of the phases in the interdiffusion zone. Instead of determining the main and cross-interdiffusion coefficients following the conventional method, we preferred to determine the average effective interdiffusion coefficients of two elements after fixing the composition of one element more or less the same in the interdiffusion zone. These parameters can be directly related to the growth kinetics of the phases and shed light on the atomic mechanism of diffusion. In both systems, the diffusion rate of elements and the phase layer thickness increased because of the addition of Ni in the solid solution phase, probably because of an increase in driving force. On the other hand, the growth rate of the mu phase and the diffusion coefficient of the species decreased because of the addition of Ni. This indicates the change in defect concentration, which assists diffusion. Further, we revisited the previously published Co-Ni-Mo and Co-Ni-W ternary phase diagrams and compared them with the composition range of the phases developed in the interdiffusion zone. Different composition ranges of the tcp phases are found, and corrected phase diagrams are shown. The outcome of this study will help to optimize the concentration of elements in superalloys to control the growth of the tcp phases.

Relative effect of slope and equilibrium line altitude on the retreat of Himalayan glaciers

It has been observed that a majority of glaciers in the Himalayas have been retreating. In this paper, we show that there are two major factors which control the advance/retreat of the Himalayan glaciers. They are the slope of the glacier and changes in the equilibrium line altitude. While it is well known, that these factors are important, we propose a new way of combining them and use it to predict retreat. The functional form of this model has been derived from numerical simulations using an ice-flow code. The model has been successfully applied to the movement of eight Himalayan glaciers during the past 25 years. It explains why the Gangotri glacier is retreating while Zemu of nearly the same length is stationary, even if they are subject to similar environmental changes. The model has also been applied to a larger set of glaciers in the Parbati basin, for which retreat based on satellite data is available, though over a shorter time period.

Effect of carrier concentration of InN on the transport behavior of InN/GaN heterostructure based Schottky junctions

We present the study involving the dependence of carrier concentration of InN films, grown on GaN templates using the plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy system, on growth temperature. The influence of InN carrier concentration on the electrical transport behavior of InN/GaN heterostructure based Schottky junctions is also discussed. The optical absorption edge of InN film was found to be strongly dependent on carrier concentration, and was described by Kane's k.p model, with non-parabolic dispersion relation for carrier in the conduction band. The position of the Fermi-level in InN films was modulated by the carrier concentration in the InN films. The barrier height of the heterojunctions as estimated from I-V characteristic was also found to be dependent on the carrier concentration of InN. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Optimal Hop Distance and Power Control for a Single Cell, Dense, Ad Hoc Wireless Network

We consider a dense, ad hoc wireless network, confined to a small region. The wireless network is operated as a single cell, i.e., only one successful transmission is supported at a time. Data packets are sent between source-destination pairs by multihop relaying. We assume that nodes self-organize into a multihop network such that all hops are of length d meters, where d is a design parameter. There is a contention-based multiaccess scheme, and it is assumed that every node always has data to send, either originated from it or a transit packet (saturation assumption). In this scenario, we seek to maximize a measure of the transport capacity of the network (measured in bit-meters per second) over power controls (in a fading environment) and over the hop distance d, subject to an average power constraint. We first motivate that for a dense collection of nodes confined to a small region, single cell operation is efficient for single user decoding transceivers. Then, operating the dense ad hoc wireless network (described above) as a single cell, we study the hop length and power control that maximizes the transport capacity for a given network power constraint. More specifically, for a fading channel and for a fixed transmission time strategy (akin to the IEEE 802.11 TXOP), we find that there exists an intrinsic aggregate bit rate (Theta(opt) bits per second, depending on the contention mechanism and the channel fading characteristics) carried by the network, when operating at the optimal hop length and power control. The optimal transport capacity is of the form d(opt)((P) over bar (t)) x Theta(opt) with d(opt) scaling as (P) over bar (t) (1/eta), where (P) over bar (t) is the available time average transmit power and eta is the path loss exponent. Under certain conditions on the fading distribution, we then provide a simple characterization of the optimal operating point. Simulation results are provided comparing the performance of the optimal strategy derived here with some simple strategies for operating the network.

Path-integral formulation for Levy flights: Evaluation of the propagator for free, linear, and harmonic potentials in the over- and underdamped limits

Levy flights can be described using a Fokker-Planck equation, which involves a fractional derivative operator in the position coordinate. Such an operator has its natural expression in the Fourier domain. Starting with this, we show that the solution of the equation can be written as a Hamiltonian path integral. Though this has been realized in the literature, the method has not found applications as the path integral appears difficult to evaluate. We show that a method in which one integrates over the position coordinates first, after which integration is performed over the momentum coordinates, can be used to evaluate several path integrals that are of interest. Using this, we evaluate the propagators for (a) free particle, (b) particle subjected to a linear potential, and (c) harmonic potential. In all the three cases, we have obtained results for both overdamped and underdamped cases. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.86.061105

Multi-Port Network Approach for the Analysis of Dual Band Fractal Microstrip Antennas

The multiport network approach is extended to analyze the behavior of microstrip fractal antennas. The capacitively fedmicrostrip square ring antenna has the side opposite to the feed arm replaced with a fractal Minkowski geometry. Dual frequency operation is achieved by suitably choosing the indentation of this fractal geometry. The width of the two sides adjacent to this is increased to further control the resonant characteristics and the ratio of the two resonance frequencies of this antenna. The impedance matrix for the multiport network model of this antenna is simplified exploiting self-similarity of the geometry with greater accuracy and reduced analysis time. Experimentally validated results confirm utility of the approach in analyzing the input characteristics of similar multi-frequency fractal microstrip antennas with other fractal geometries.

Tertiary amine-based glutathione peroxidase mimics: some insights into the role of steric and electronic effects on antioxidant activity

In this work, several tertiary amine-based diaryl diselenides were synthesized and evaluated for their glutathione peroxidase (GPx)-like antioxidant activities using hydrogen peroxide, tert-butyl hydroperoxide and cumene hydroperoxide as substrates and thiophenol (PhSH) and glutathione (GSH) as co-substrates. A comparison of the GPx-like activity of 4-methoxy-substituted N,N-dialkylbenzylamine-based diselenides with that of the corresponding 6-methoxy-substituted compounds indicates that the activity highly depends on the position of the methoxy substituent. Although the methoxy group at 4- and 6-position alters the electronic properties of selenium, the substitution at the 6-position provides the required steric protection for some of the key intermediates in the catalytic cycle. A detailed experimental and theoretical investigation reveals that the 6-methoxy substituent prevents the undesired thiol exchange reactions at the selenium centers in the selenenyl sulfide intermediates. The 6-methoxy substituent also prevents the formation of seleninic and selenonic acids. When PhSH is used as the thiol co-substrate, the 4-methoxy-substituted diselenides exhibit GPx-like activity similar to that of the parent compounds as the 4-methoxy substituent does not block the selenium center in the selenenyl sulfide intermediates from thiol exchange reactions. In contrast, the 4-methoxy substituent significantly enhances the GPx-like activity of the diselenides when glutathione (GSH) is used as the co-substrate. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.