Certified reference materials for the quality control of analysis in the environment

Summary The Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) has undertaken the production of a wide range of certified reference materials (CRMs) for the improvement of accuracy and measurement harmony in various areas of concern at European Community level. This paper provides an overview of the sectors of the BCR-programme in the field of environment i.e. for water systems (water, sediment, biota), soil analysis (soil, fertiliser, waste), plant analysis (aquatic and terrestrial plants), analysis related to animals (e.g. muscle or liver) or man (e.g. industry and food).     

Finite temperature QCD coupling constant —imaginary versus real time framework

The correspondence between the imaginary time and real time thermal running coupling constant is discussed. The temperature dependence is derived in pure QCD at one-loop order in a generalized momentum subtraction (MOM) renormalization scheme.     

Mössbauer study of spin-glass Fe x Zn1−x F2 system

⁵⁷Fe Mössbauer effect measurements in the diluted Ising antiferromagnet Fe _x Zn_1?x F₂ withx=0.25 andx=0.57 at temperatures between 4.2 and 55 K, are reported. DC suceptibility measurements show a spin-glass (SG) phase at low temperatures forx≤0.31. Our Mössbauer spectra show a phase transition to a SG state with antiferromagnetic order (AFSG) forx=0.25 and only antiferromagnetic order forx=0.57.     

On Nodal Sets for Dirac and Laplace Operators

We prove that the nodal set (zero set) of a solution of a generalized Dirac equation on a Riemannian manifold has codimension 2 at least. If the underlying manifold is a surface, then the nodal set is discrete. We obtain a quick proof of the fact that the nodal set of an eigenfunction for the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a Riemannian manifold consists of a smooth hypersurface and a singular set of lower dimension. We also see that the nodal set of a Δ-harmonic differential form on a closed manifold has codimension 2 at least; a fact which is not true if the manifold is not closed. Examples show that all bounds are optimal. Received: 28 October 1996 / Accepted: 3 March 1997     

Laser pulse heating of steel surface and flexural wave analysis

Laser gas-assisted material processing finds wide application in industry. The modelling of heating, elastic response of the substrate material, and the wave analysis gives insight into the laser workpiece interaction. In the present study, laser gas-assisted heating of steel is considered. The normal component of the thermal stress is taken as the source of load for the flexural wave generation in the material. The flexural wave generated is simulated and the wave characteristics are analyzed at four locations at the workpiece surface. The numerical scheme employing a control volume approach is introduced when solving the governing equations of flow and heat transfer while finite element and spectran element methods are used when solving the stress and wave equations. It is found that the normal component of the stress is tensile. The dispersion effect of the workpiece material, interference of the reflected beam, and partial overlapping of second mode of the travelling wave enable to identify a unique pattern in the travelling wave in the substrate.     

On a generalized $L_2$ projection and some related stability estimates in Sobolev spaces

Summary. In this paper we investigate a stability estimate needed in hybrid finite and boundary element methods, especially in hybrid coupled domain decomposition methods including mortar finite elements. This stability estimate is equivalent to the stability of a generalized projection in certain Sobolev spaces. Using piecewise linear trial spaces and appropriate piecewise constant test spaces, the stability of the generalized projection is proved assuming some mesh conditions locally. Received April 11, 2000 / Revised version received February 15, 2001 / Published online July 25, 2001