The atomic structure of shear bands in Pd 40 Ni 40 P 20 bulk metallic glass has been compared to an undeformed matrix phase using pair distribution functions (PDFs) derived from energy filtered nanobeam electron diffraction. Shear bands do not show any characteristic contrast in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images when specimens are prepared with uniform thickness. PDFs from a shear band exhibit a slight decrease in the first peak, indicating a slight difference in packing density and short range order compared to the undeformed matrix.

FY-3 series is the new generation meteorological satellites under launching. Three microwave radiometers, including imaging sounder and temperature sounder together with humidity sounder, will fly on FY-3 and be hoped to meet the operational weather prediction requirements of china and the global change research. Two types of blackbodies are designed to calibration the three microwave radiometers. Emissivity measurements for above ultra wideband microwave blackbodies in free space are presented in this paper. Owing to the limitations of presently available calibration standards and techniques, pyramid microwave blackbody usually has to be carried on without full space calibration. The paper describes the space method with moving device under test that does not need space calibration. Measurement data finished by BIRMM (Beijing Radio Institute of Metrology and Measurement) and VNIIFTRI (All Russia scientific research institute for physical technical and radio technical measurement) respectively are presented. Those data came from same blackbody sample and were obtained with different measurement procedure. The paper also discusses the influences arising from no ideal waveguide port.

This study aims to employ the technology of rapid prototyping for the development of a process that is to assist a prosthetist for easily designing and manufacturing a prosthetic socket for specific transtibial amputee. Currently, the production of prosthetic socket still depends on prosthetists' skills and expertise. To improve its tedious process, quality uncertainty, and lack of experienced prosthetists. the benefits of using rapid prototyping (RP) technology together with computer-aided systems will be expecting goals. This article demonstrated the feasibility of producing RP sockets using a fused deposition modeling (FDM) machine, and a prototype system that allows a prosthetist to easily design prosthetic sockets has been developed. This proposed computer-aided engineering process, which is plaster-free method, is expected to replace the manual process of conventional approach of fabricating prosthetic sockets. Furthermore, since thin-layer RP socket is easily broken, coating a resin layer on RP socket to enforce its strength is underway.

In solving the Unit Commitment (UC) problem, two types of decision variables need to be determined: the start/shut down status and the output of power generation. Efficiently calculating the optimal commitment (on/off) and Economic Dispatch (ED) generations of the units at a sequence of times in the scheduling period is known as a challenge issue. In this paper, the proposed integrated PSO/GA approach of UC using Genetic Algorithm (GA) consists of repeating the process of ED employing modified Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) and minimising the total objective function for combinatorial units over all scheduled periods. The performance of the integrated PSO/GA approach is compared with results of other algorithms in the literature used to solve the UC problem. The comparison shows that the integrated PSO/GA approach is efficient in terms of computational time while providing good solutions.

In the process of reducing the production cost and satisfying the customer and to sustain in the current volatile market, the manufacturing companies are looking for alternate processes and methods of designing and manufacturing. The conventional CAD/CAM tools are developed to meet the general needs of the market, but not the rapid or specific requirements of the market or customer. Consequently, the companies are looking to customize or tailor the CAD/CAM tools to improve their effectiveness. For this reason, the scope of research in the field of customization of designing tools has improved rapidly in the recent time. This paper discusses an introductory approach for developing an knowledge based system for CAD modelling using customization process of an CAD/CAM tool. The intension behind the development of the system is to reduce the production time and cost. The effectiveness of the proposed system has been examined using an industrial case study.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to establish an experimental formula for sintered dendritic nickel powder. For this reason, wick structures with different porosity ranging from 65 to 80% were fabricated by cold pressing sintering process at fixed porosity and their parameters that included porosity, pore radius, and permeability were also measured. According to both the capillary limitation and the present experimental formula of the sintered dendritic nickel powder, the wick structure parameters that would affect the heat transfer capacity of the loop heat pipe (LHP) were analyzed theoretically and then investigated experimentally. The results showed that there exists an optimal combination of wick structure parameters by which the performance of the LHP would achieve optimization. The maximum heat transfer capacity was up to 500 W and the thermal resistance was 0.12°C/W at the allowable working temperature 80°C. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 33(8): 515–526, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/htj.20034

The absorption spectrum Of CO2 in the wavelength region 104-170 nm was measured by using VUV synchrotron radiation as the light source. The absorption spectrum consists of the following features: two weak continua corresponding to the (1)Delta(u) and (1)Pi(g) states located in the wavelength region between 120 nm and 170 nm, two diffusive but intense bands corresponding to the (1)Sigma(u)(+)(II) and (1)Sigma(u)(+)(I) states near the 110 nm wavelength region, and a very sharp band of the state with vibrational progressions in the 105 nm region. The results for the photoabsorption cross sections are compared with previous measurements by both optical and electron methods, and the discrepancies are discussed.

AbstractWe propose a novel design of the single cell gap transflective LCD. By using the photo‐alignment technique, we fabricated a transflective LCD with the hybrid and homogeneous alignments in reflective and transmitting regions respectively. The higher aperture ratio and simpler process are the features of our design while compared to the design of dual cell gap. The experimental results showed good performances regarding to VHR, RDC and anchoring effects.

Recently, the requirements for cellular phones, portable computers, and digital cameras have increased dramatically. A portable electric power supply with long duration and high performance is needed for these products. A proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) can meet these requirements and becomes one of the best candidates for a portable power source. It is impossible to install an extra humidifier into small-scale portable electric products for PEMFC water management. This article presents a series of experiments to investigate the performance of a single PEMFC. The effects of different operating conditions on cell performance, including the temperature, pressure, and inlet fuel/oxidant flow rate, are discussed. The test results confirm the positive effect of these parameters on cell performance and power output. The interaction effect of temperature--flow rate is related to the cell humidity, and is important for cell performance. The dry-out problem for a PEMFC is also significantly revealed in the experiments for higher cell temperature and flow rate. Current experimental results can provide useful information for investigating the cell performance and its operating effects under dry fuel/oxidant flow conditions and as a benchmark for simulation work in future studies.

Pinhole enlargement caused by substrate metal corrosion is a problem during electrochemical porosity measurement that leads to the overestimation of coating porosity. By means of calculation and experiment, this study shows that decreasing the corrosivity of the test process can avoid the problem of pinhole enlargement during electrochemical porosity testing and therefore achieve accurate porosity measurement.

In this paper, we propose a novel way to build a "DC_image" circuit for the don't cares. The DC_image circuits are concatenated with the inputs of the two circuits under verification. By adding the image circuits, no matter how don't cares are in on-/off-sets, we can directly verify the two circuits with DC_image circuits and claim whether there exists an inconsistency between the original and optimized circuits. Our experimental results show that by the DC_image circuits, the verification process can be sped up tremendously.

Porosity is virtually unavoidable in thin coatings deposited on metal surfaces. This work compares various electrochemical porosity test techniques for TiN-coated stainless steels. The corrosivity of test process, which represents the degree of corrosion of stainless steel after a particular electrochemical test process, is used as the basis for comparison. Three electrochemical techniques are examined for porosity measurement in H2SO4 solutions containing KSCN: the anodic current ratio, a coulometric method and a porosity calculation from Ecorr and Rp measurement. The common characteristic of test results is that porosity indexes obtained by various methods decrease with decreasing corrosivity of the test process, and approach constant values. These constant values of porosity indexes, which are obtained at test conditions that cause little damage to TiN coatings, are close to each other and should represent the accurate porosity value of this TiN-coated sample. This work reveals that different electrochemical porosity test techniques can achieve a similar result for porosity measurements on TiN-coated stainless steels.

The preferred orientations of TiN films deposited by various PVD processes have been extensively studied. However, deriving a general trend to illustrate the effect of a single process parameter is difficult since other process parameters also affect the evolution of the preferred orientation during the deposition. This study presents a combined index, SE/Temp(°K), to characterize the effects on the TiN preferred orientation of HCD ion-plating process parameters, such as bias voltage, deposition power, and temperature. The SE/Temp(°K) index is the ratio of the energy delivered to a unit volume of growing film (SE) to the deposition temperature. Experimental results show that the TiN preferred orientation changes from (200) to (111) and then to (220) as SE/Temp(°K) increases. Using this SE/Temp(°K) index, a single trend can completely describe the variation of the texture coefficient, obtained by variously adjusting deposition parameters. The SE/Temp(°K) index can singly characterize the effect of multi process parameters.

Porosity is virtually unavoidable in coatings such as TiN films deposited by physical vapor deposition (PVD) or chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on metal surfaces. This investigation examines the porosity of TiN films deposited by a hollow cathode discharge (HCD) ion plating system. The porosity of TiN coatings is affected by the combined effects of deposition time, deposition temperature and the process parameters related to the ion bombardment during deposition, such as bias voltage and deposition power. TiN films deposited with prolonged time have lower porosity. High temperature, high degree of ion bombardment can reduce the porosity of TiN films due to the enhanced effective mobility of atoms. Temperature and ion bombardment also affect the development of the texture and grain size of TiN coatings. Within the investigated ranges, the denser TiN coatings either have large grains or a highly (111)-preferred texture with smaller grain.

TiN coatings deposited by various physical vapor deposition (PVD) processes often exhibit certain preferred orientations, which are heavily affected by process parameters. This investigation thoroughly examines the preferred orientation of TiN film deposited by a hollow cathode discharge (HCD) ion plating system. The roles of process parameters in determining the preferred orientation of TiN films were studied. Process parameters such as bias voltage, deposition power and nitrogen pressure all affect the degree of ion bombardment during deposition. The strain accumulation or lattice damage in TiN film caused by ion bombardment determines the preferred TiN texture to be (111) or (220). These two phenomena, strain accumulation and lattice damage under ion bombardment, are more obvious at a low deposition temperature. Without ion bombardment, high temperatures mainly increase the energy of adatoms, enabling the thermodynamically favorable orientation (200) to be achieved.

In this paper, one of the geographic information management system(GIS) is applied to perform the automated mapping and facility management (AM/FM) of power distribution systems for contingency load transfer. Three phase load flow analysis is used to calculate the current flows of line switches by retrieving the network topology and facility attributes which have been stored in the AM/FM database. The current flows solved are then stored in the database as the attributes of line switches for load transfer analysis. When a system contingency such as fault or overload occurs, the load transfer is then executed to find the switches to be operated by the heuristic search method while subjected to the system operation rules. By the proposed method, the network topology can be easily updated and displayed in the computers by connectivity trace routine according to the switching operations. Since all the system facilities are stored in the AM/FM database according to the actual spatial coordinates, it provides practical information for the system operators and crews to allocate and operate the switches easily. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the integrated AM/FM system with application programs for distribution operation, a distribution system of Taiwan Power Company(Taipower) in Kaohsiung downtown area is selected for case study. It is found that contingency load transfer for distribution system operation can be enhanced 'significantly with the application of AM/FM systems to determine the switches to be operated and the corresponding spatial locations of the switches. The impact of load transfer to the system voltage profile and the feeder loading can also be analyzed to provide valuable information for the system operators.

We demonstrate that schlieren images of sound fields do not spread by diffraction when propagating; they form generalized, diffraction-free beams. Our experimental results are shown to be in good agreement with theory and computer simulation.

The problem of determining the shapes, sizes and material compositions of large inclusions embedded in elastic media from scattered elastic waves leads to the inverse scattering problems of the anisotropic linear elastic wave equations. Generalized Pulse-Spectrum Technique (GPST), a class of versatile and efficient Newton-like iterative algorithms with Tikhonov regularization, is used to solve this extremely difficult multi-parameter inverse problem. The summary of past and present applications of GPST to elastic inverse scattering problems are presented; in particular, the determination of shapes and sizes of large rigid near-spherical inclusions in an elastic medium from the scattered time-harmonic waves is described in detail. The future development of GPST and its tremendous potential for applications are discussed.

The GPST, an efficient and versatile interative inversion algorithm, is used with a body-fitted irregular cylindrical grid system to solve electromagnetic inverse scattering problems of cylindrical obstacles with anisotropic permittivity. Numerical simulations of nontrivial examples are carried out to test the feasibility and to study the general characteristics of GPST inversion algorithm without the real measurement data. It is found that GPST does produce reasonably good results.