Magnetic resonance studies of dissolving particulate solids

Magnetic resonance methods have been used to elucidate the internal pore structure of particulate solids, in particular detergent tablets. Such information is essential to a comprehensive understanding of the dissolution characteristics of these materials and how this property is related to processing conditions during tablet formation. In particular 3-D images of porosity are produced and 2-D self-diffusion maps are acquired as a function of observation time, which enables pore size to be quantified as a function of position via the extracted surface-to-volume ratio of the pore space. These properties are determined as a function of processing parameters, in particular the compression force used in tablet formation.     

Probing Ganglia Dissolution and Mobilization in a Water-Saturated Porous Medium using MRI

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used to probe the evolution of geometric characteristics such as the volume, shape, surface area, and cluster size of octanol ganglia trapped in a model porous medium, in this case a packing of spheres, as they dissolve into a mobile aqueous phase. The resulting pore-scale information is used to assess various assumptions used in existing models of the dissolution process. Dissolution of the ganglia was characterized by a reduction in the overall number of ganglia with little effect on the shape and mean of the volume distribution of the ganglia. This apparently anomalous result is explained by dissolution of the ganglia until they reach a critical size, which is dependent on the structure of the pore space, at which point they are mobilized and subsequently removed from the porous medium. The shape of the entrapped ganglia is characterized by a fractal dimension in the range 2.2-2.3, suggesting that models which assume a Euclidean geometry for the entrapped ganglia are appropriate. No significant change in the shape of entrapped ganglia is observed during dissolution. In agreement with the results of earlier workers, most hydrocarbon ganglia exist as singlets within the pore structure. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.     

Vibration of submerged hemi-ellipsoidal domes

Ten thin-walled hemi-ellipsoidal domes were vibrated in air and also underwater. The domes varied in shape from oblate hemi-ellipsoids to prolate ones, and the fundamental eigenmodes were either axisymmetric as asymmetric, depending on the profiles of the domes. A varying meridional curvature annular element was developed for the shell and a similar one for the fluid, except that the latter was of quadrilateral cross-section. For submerged vibration, the two finite elements were coupled together and solution carried out through simultaneous iteration. Theoretical analyses with these structural and fluid finite elements gave satisfactory results compared to the experiments.     

Spins and mixing ratios in 138Ba

The spin assignments to the 1899 (4⁺), 2308 (3⁺ or 4⁺) and 2446 (3⁺) keV levels in ¹³⁸Ba have been confirmed by γ-γ directional correlation measurements. In addition, the multipolarity and $\text{E2}\text{M1}$ mixing parameters for a number of transitions have been established as follows: 409 keV (M1+E2, ?0.75 < δ < ?0.45 or ?0.85 < δ < ?0.05 depending on the choice of J^π = 3⁺ or 4⁺ for the initial state), 463 keV (E2, 0 < δ < 0.15 for $\text{M3}\text{E2}$ admixture), 547 keV (M1+E2, ?0.06 < δ < ?0.015), 872 keV (M1+E2, δ undefined) and 1010 keV (M1+E2, ?0.015 < δ < +0.020).     

Nuclear spin-lattice and nuclear spin-spin relaxation time measurements in EuB6 at low temperatures using the spin-echo technique

Experimental results on the nuclear spin-lattice and nuclear spin-spin relaxation times in the ferromagnetic EuB₆ at temperatures below 4·2 K are presented using the external magnetic field,H _ext, in the range of 0 ⩽H _ext ⩽ 10 kG. Nuclear spin-spin relaxation time computed on the basis of the Suhl-Nakamura process turns out to be 3·2μs, which compares well with the experimental value 11·1μs obtained with the 10 kG magnetic field at 1·7 K. It is found that in the ferromagnetic EuB₆,T ₁ is approximately 5 × 10³ times larger thanT ₂ at 1·7 K with the 10 kG magnetic field. Thus the effect ofT ₁ onT ₂ can be neglected. From the experimental value ofT ₂, the value of the homogeneous line broadening is found to be 14 kHz. The corresponding value obtained from the cw method is 175 kHz. This evidently shows the presence of the inhomogeneous line broadening in the cw NMR.     

An integrated approach to shift-starting time selection and tour-schedule construction

A common practice in personnel tour scheduling is to limit the number of permissible daily shift starting times. Accordingly, an important subproblem that arises in tour-scheduling problems is the selection of those starting times that are conducive to efficient satisfaction of labour requirements. A previously published heuristic for this problem is sequential in nature, whereby a subset of starting times is selected in the first stage and tours are constructed using the chosen starting times in the second stage. We propose an integrative procedure that overcomes many of the limitations inherent in the sequential approach. Our procedure, which uses tabu search for starting time selection and a cutting plane method for tour construction, was compared to integer programming and the previously published heuristic in two experiments using test conditions from the airport staffing literature. Although all methods performed well when the labour requirement patterns were consistent across days of the week, the new procedure yielded the best performance when such patterns were inconsistent.