Dislocation driven chromium precipitation in Fe-9Cr binary alloy: a positron lifetime study

The influence of initial heat treatment on anomalous Cr precipitation within high temperature solubility region of the Fe–9Cr alloy has been investigated using positron lifetime studies. Air-quenched samples with pre-existing dislocations exhibited a distinct annealing stage in positron lifetime between 800 and 1100?K corresponding to Cr-precipitation. During this stage, Transmission Electron Microscopy showed fine precipitates of average size 4 nm, dispersed throughout the sample and from Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analysis they are found to be Cr-enriched. The presence of dislocations is found to be responsible for Cr precipitation.     

Anomalous elastic behaviour of Bi-Pb-Ag composites

Bi-Pb and Bi-Pb-Ag superconducting composites have been prepared by the solid state reaction method. After the usual characterization, ultrasonic longitudinal velocity and attenuation studies have been undertaken over a temperature range 80–300 K by the pulse transmission technique. In contrast to normal solids, the ultrasonic velocities of both the samples in the temperature range 200-100 K are found to decrease with decreasing temperature (softening), followed by a velocity maximum. The samples are also found to exhibit longitudinal attenuation peaks at TEMPERATURES = 260, 160 and 120 K. An attempt has also been made to verify whether the Wachtman's equations can theoretically explain the low-temperature behaviour of the Young's modulus of these materials. A qualitative explanation for both the phenomena of softening of velocity as well as the occurrence of attenuation peaks is given.     

Electrical conductivity and dielectric loss in doped Pb(NO3)2 single crystals

dc ionic conductivity measurements were made on single crystals of Pb(NO₃)₂ doped with monovalent Na⁺ and K⁺ in the temperature range of 100–400°C. In the extrinsic region the conductivity was found to decrease with Na⁺ having a smaller ionic size, and to increase with K⁺ with larger ionic size compared to the host Pb ion. Conductivity is attributed to the mobility of anti-Frenkel defects as in the case of PbF₂. Dielectric loss measurements were made on the Pb(NO₃)₂: K⁺ system in the frequency range of 300 Hz to 20 kHz at different temperatures. Impurity vacancy pairs of the type K⁺-(NO^-₃)_V are found to be responsible for the observed dielectric loss peaks. The maximum peak frequency is found to increase with temperature.     

Effects of uncertainties in the domain on the solution of Dirichlet boundary value problems

Summary. A domain with possibly non-Lipschitz boundary is defined as a limit of monotonically expanding or shrinking domains with Lipschitz boundary. A uniquely solvable Dirichlet boundary value problem (DBVP) is defined on each of the Lipschitz domains and the limit of these solutions is investigated. The limit function also solves a DBVP on the limit domain but the problem can depend on the sequences of domains if the limit domain is unstable with respect to the DBVP. The core of the paper consists in estimates of the difference between the respective solutions of the DBVP on two close domains, one of which is Lipschitz and the other can be unstable. Estimates for starshaped as well as rather general domains are derived. Their numerical evaluation is possible and can be done in different ways. Received October 16, 2001 / Revised version received January 16, 2002 / Published online: April 17, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The research was funded partially by the National Science Foundation under the grants NSF–Czech Rep. INT-9724783 and NSF DMS-9802367 RID="**" ID="**" Support for Jan Chleboun coming from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic through grant 201/98/0528 is appreciated     

Locking effects in the finite element approximation of elasticity problems

Summary We consider the finite element approximation of the 2D elasticity problem when the Poisson ratiov is close to 0.5. It is well-known that the performance of certain commonly used finite elements deteriorates asv0, a phenomenon calledlocking. We analyze this phenomenon and characterize the strength of the locking androbustness of varioush-version schemes using triangular and rectangular elements. We prove that thep-andh-p versions are free of locking with respect to the error in the energy norm. A generalization of our theory to the 3D problem is also discussed.The work of this author was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research under Naval Research Grant N00014-90-J-1030The work of this author was supported in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Systems Command, U.S. Air Force, under grant AFOSR 89-0252     

Quantum mechanics: cleaning up metaphysical baggage

The dynamic electronic structure of atoms and molecules can be directly observed by means of the (e, 2e) reaction, which measures the distribution of energies and momenta of two electrons in coincidence after a knockout reaction initiated by an electron beam of known momentum incident on a molecular gas target. The molecular state for each event is identified by the electron separation energy. The recoil momentum for each event is known from the difference of measured initial and final momenta. It has been verified that values of this momentum are equal under suitable conditions to the momentum of the electron in the target immediately before knockout. Thus the spherically-averaged electron momentum distribution for each molecular orbital is measured. This is directly related to molecular orbitals calculated by the methods of quantum chemistry. Properties obtained by this method for different types of molecules are discussed.