Corrosion behavior of low energy,high temperature nitrogen ion-implanted AISI 304 stainless steel

This work presents the results of a low-energy nitrogen ion implantation of AISI 304 type stainless steel (SS) at a moderate temperature of about 500°C. The nitrogen ions are extracted from a Kauffman-type ion source at an energy of 30 keV, and ion current density of 100 μA cm⁻². Nitrogen ion concentration of 6 × 10¹⁷, 8 × 10¹⁷ and 10¹⁸ ions cm⁻², were selected for our study. The X-ray diffraction results show the formation of CrN polycrystalline phase after nitrogen bombardment and a change of crystallinity due to the change in nitrogen ion concentration. The secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) results show the formation of CrN phases too. Corrosion test has shown that corrosion resistance is enhanced by increasing nitrogen ion concentration.      

Index for vehicle acoustical comfort inside a passenger car

Sound quality is among the main factors that influence customers’ preference for choosing good automobile products. It all started more than 10 years ago and grows up so fast due to high competition in the automotive industries. A-weighted noise levels and sound power are usually utilised to measure the noise but they are not adequate to characterise the impact sound inside a car. The most popular approach to determine sound quality of a product is to define an annoyance or specific index, which involves both subjective and objective evaluations. Subjective and objective tests should be studied concurrently in order to determine the sound quality inside a passenger car. This approach is used in this paper to evaluate vehicle comfort index according to most frequently used sound quality metrics, namely; Zwicker loudness, sharpness, roughness and fluctuation strength. As a result researchers of different fields of automotive acoustics investigations can use this index according to the type of road (international road roughness) without any need to perform time-consuming jury tests. The metrics are correlated with jury test results that show which of them and how much has affected the acoustical comfort of the vehicle. The relation between road roughness and vehicle acoustical comfort index is another point of interest in this research.     

Measurement of filament length generated by an intense femtosecond laser pulse using electromagnetic radiation detection

We present a new method to measure the length of a filament induced by the propagation of intense femtosecond laser pulses in air. We used an antenna to detect electromagnetic pulses radiated from multipole moments inside the filament oscillating at the plasma frequency. The results are compared with the values detected from the backscattered fluorescence induced by multiphoton ionization of nitrogen molecules excited inside the filament. The values are found to be in good agreement. Received: 6 November 2002 / Revised version: 27 January 2003 / Published online: 24 April 2003 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +1-418/656-2623, E-mail: shosseini@phy.ulaval.ca     

Analysis of coir fiber acoustical characteristics

Coir fiber from coconut husk is an important agricultural waste in Malaysia. Acoustic absorption coefficient of the fiber as a porous material is studied in this paper. Two types of fiber are investigated, fresh from wet market and industrial prepared mixed with binder. Moreover two analytical models, namely; Delany–Bazley and Biot–Allard are used for analysis. Experimental measurements in impedance tube are conducted to validate the analytical outcomes. Results show that fresh coir fiber has an average absorption coefficient of 0.8 at f > 1360 Hz and 20 mm thickness. Increasing the thickness is improved the sound absorption in lower frequencies, having the same average at f > 578 Hz and 45 mm thickness. Delany–Bazley technique can be used for both types of fiber while Biot–Allard method is compensated for the industrial prepared fiber considering the binder additive. This form generally shows poor acoustical absorption in low frequencies. Inevitably, fiber has to be mixed with additives in commercial use to enhance its characteristics such as stiffness, unti-fungus and flammability. Hence other approaches such as adding air gap or perforated plate should be used to improve the acoustical properties of industrial treated coir fiber.     

Synthesis of wide band gap nanocrystalline NiO powder via a sonochemical method

A sonochemistry-based synthesis method was used to produce nanocrystalline nickel oxide powder with ∼20 nm average crystallite diameter from Ni(OH)₂ precursor. Ultrasound waves were applied to the primary solution to intensify the Ni(OH)₂ precipitation. Dried precipitates were calcined at 320 °C to form nanocrystalline NiO particles. The morphology of the produced powder was characterized by transmission electron microscopy. Using sonochemical waves resulted in lowering of the size of the nickel oxide crystallites. FT-IR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction revealed high purity well-crystallized structure of the synthesized powder. Photoluminescence spectroscopy confirmed production of a wide band-gap structure.     

Filamentation “remote” sensing of chemical and biological agents/pollutants using only one femtosecond laser source

All matters in the path of filaments induced by an intense femtosecond laser pulse propagating in air could be fragmented and result in the emission of characteristic fluorescence spectra from the excited fragments. The fluorescence spectra exhibit specific signatures (fingerprints) that can be used for the identification of various substances including chemical and biological species. In this paper, we present an overview of the recent progress in our laboratory concerning the “remote” sensing of chemical and biological agents/pollutants in air using filamentation-induced nonlinear fluorescence techniques.     

New exact solutions of nonlinear conformable time-fractional Boussinesq equations using the modified Kudryashov method

In this paper, the nonlinear Boussinesq equations with the conformable time-fractional derivative are solved analytically using the well-established modified Kudryashov method. As a consequence, a number of new exact solutions for this type of equations are formally derived. It is believed that the method is one of the most effective techniques for extracting new exact solutions of nonlinear fractional differential equations.     

Study on the Interaction of the CpG Alternating DNA with CdTe Quantum Dots

A novel sensitive method for detection of DNA methylation was developed with thioglycollic acid (TGA)-capped CdTe quantum dots (QDs) as fluorescence probes. Recognition of methylated DNA sites would be useful strategy due to the important roles of methylation in disease occurrence and developmental processes. DNA methylation occurs most often at cytosine-guanine sites (CpG dinucleotides) of gene promoters. The QDs significantly interacted with hybridized unmethylated and methylated DNA. The interaction of CpG rich methylated and unmethylated DNA hybrid with quantum dots as an optical probe has been investigated by fluorescence spectroscopy and electrophoresis assay. The fluorescence intensity of QDs was highly dependent to unmethylated and methylated DNA. Specific site of CpG islands of Adenomatous polyposis coli (APC), a well-studied tumor suppressor gene, was used as the detection target. Under optimum conditions, upon the addition of unmethylated dsDNA, the fluorescence intensity increased in linear range from 1.0?×?10^??10 to 1.0?×?10^??6M with detection limit of 6.2?×?10^??11 M and on the other hand, the intensity of QDs showed no changes with addition of methylated dsDNA. We also demonstrated that the unmethylated and methylated DNA and QDs complexes showed different mobility in electrophoresis assay. This easy and reliable method could distinguish between methylated and unmethylated DNA sequences.     

Remote sensing of pollutants using femtosecond laser pulse fluorescence spectroscopy

The fluorescence spectrum of ethanol molecules induced by femtosecond laser pulses has been recorded as the fingerprint of the molecules. It was demonstrated that, if this is combined with a LIDAR technique, the fluorescence from pollutants in the atmosphere could be detected over a long distance. PACS 42.68.Wt; 42.62.Fi; 42.65.Re     

Performance assessment of new perturbed hard-sphere equation of state for molten metals and ionic liquids: Application to pure and binary mixtures

This work addresses modeling the pressure–volume–temperature (PVT) properties of molten metals and ionic liquids (ILs) using a new perturbed hard-sphere equation of state (PHS EOS). Two temperature-dependent parameters appeared in the EOS, are correlated with two scaling constants σ and ε. Knowing these parameters, the proposed EOS is applied to these classes of liquids. The reliability of the proposed model is checked by comparing with 3177 experimental density data points. The average absolute deviations (AAD) of predicted densities of molten metals and ILs from literature data are found to be 1.35% and 0.56%, respectively. The extension of PHS EOS to binary metal alloys and IL + IL is also discussed. Generally, 609 data points for binary mixtures have been examined. The AAD of the predicted results are found to be 1.03%.