The influence of pulse duration on the stress levels in ablation of ceramics: A finite element study

We present a finite element model to investigate the dynamic thermal and mechanical response of ceramic materials to pulsed infrared radiation. The model was applied to the specific problem of determining the influence of the pulse duration on the stress levels reached in human dental enamel irradiated by a CO₂ laser at 10.6 μm with pulse durations between 0.1 and 100 μs and sub-ablative fluence. Our results indicate that short pulses with durations much larger than the characteristic acoustic relaxation time of the material can still cause high stress transients at the irradiated site, and indicate that pulse durations of the order of 10 μs may be more adequate both for enamel surface modification and for ablation than pulse durations up to 1 μs. The model presented here can easily be modified to investigate the dynamic response of ceramic materials to mid-infrared radiation and help determine optimal pulse durations for specific procedures.     

Approche non paramétrique du filtrage de système non linéaire à temps discret et à paramètres inconnus

Particle filters are presently among the most powerful tools for filtering discrete time non linear systems. However the presence of unknown parameters in the system equations makes their use more complex and can even impair their convergence properties. This Note shows how an on-line consistent estimation of these parameters can be obtained simultaneously to that of the state variables to be filtered. This approach relies upon a kernel-based non parametric estimation of conditional probability densities from successive Monte Carlo generations of system particles. To cite this article: V. Rossi, J.-P. Vila, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 340 (2005).     

Estimation of the size of liposomes by modified HDC

Internal calibration in modified hydrodynamic chromatography has been realized by the approach of Prieve and Hoysan, i.e. the use of polystyrene monodisperse latexes to evaluate the equivalent capillary radius, R. The value obtained has been used to estimate the average sizes of a variety of liposome samples from egg yolk lecithin.