Comparison between Abel test stability and thermal decomposition behavior of nitrocellulose

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - Nitrocellulose (NC) is prone to spontaneous decomposition with exothermic heat release and thus is generally evaluated for stability during the storage...     

Experimental studies of microwave amplification in the ion-focusedregime

Studies of microwave amplification with an in-focused electron beam drawn from an induction injector are reported. A free-electron laser (FEL) operating at 9.4 GHz and employing ion-focusing within the interaction region has achieved power in excess of 30 MW at 9.4 GHz, with a beam energy of 0.8 MeV and current of 0.7 kA. Peak gain is 20 dB/m, with no saturation after 15 wiggler periods. Also reported are the first evolution and detuning data for an ion-channel laser/maser (ICL). Two shortcomings of the prematurely halted ICL studies are poor frequency discrimination and a large axial plasma gradient. Prospects for operation with an upgraded 1.6 MeV accelerator are discussed     

Attractors for a Three-Dimensional Thermo-Mechanical Model of Shape Memory Alloys

Abstract In this note, we consider a Frémond model of shape memory alloys. Let us imagine a piece of a shape memory alloy which is fixed on one part of its boundary, and assume that forcing terms, e.g., heat sources and external stress on the remaining part of its boundary, converge to some time-independent functions, in appropriate senses, as time goes to infinity. Under the above assumption, we shall discuss the asymptotic stability for the dynamical system from the viewpoint of the global attractor. More precisely, we generalize the paper [12] dealing with the one-dimensional case. First, we show the existence of the global attractor for the limiting autonomous dynamical system; then we characterize the asymptotic stability for the non-autonomous case by the limiting global attractor. * Project supported by the MIUR-COFIN 2004 research program on “Mathematical Modelling and Analysis of Free Boundary Problems”.     

X-Ray Mapping and Interpretation of Scatter Diagrams

Electron beam induced quantitative X-ray mapping has become a very useful characterisation tool for determining the elemental distribution in materials, whether using energy dispersive spectroscopy or wavelength dispersive spectroscopy. The X-ray intensity distributions of the elements from an X-ray map allow us to generate two dimensional and ternary scatter diagrams thus converting spatial information into concentration dimensions, which is an important tool for displaying the spatial relationships of elements or correlated elements (phases) in materials. To best understand how to use this tool, we need to understand the production and features of the scatter diagram. The type of clustering observed in the scatter diagram, whether oval, linear or spherical, can give the major and trace element distributions within phases as well as qualitative and quantitative phase information. This paper demonstrates the generation of scatter diagrams, properties of scatter diagrams, interpretation of scatter diagrams and the advantages of scatter diagrams through the use of examples.     

Improved detectability with a polymer-based trapping device in rapid HPLC analysis for ultra-low levels of bisphenol A (BPA) in environmental samples.

A new high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method has been developed to detect ultra-low concentrations of bisphenol-A (BPA) (below 1 ng/L (ppt)) using column switching electrochemical detection (ECD). The results were superior to those obtained from manual pretreatment procedure with membrane stationary phase. BPA is inherently ubiquitous in the environment, including tools and solvents used for its analysis; to obtain meaningful results, therefore, the concentration of the overall BPA contamination must be below the detection limit for BPA using the analytical system. Therefore, purified water for preparing the standard BPA solution must be filtered with a hydrophobic membrane to suppress BPA background levels of contamination. In addition, we investigated methods for effectively preserving environmental water containing BPA. The addition of a small amount of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) provided good recovery even after overnight storage. By employing these precautionary measures and procedures to reduce BPA contamination from the analytical procedure, we could accurately determine l(-10) ppt of BPA in environmental water samples using a column switching HPLC system.     

2‐connected 7‐coverings of 3‐connected graphs on surfaces

An m‐covering of a graph G is a spanning subgraph of G with maximum degree at most m. In this paper, we shall show that every 3‐connected graph on a surface with Euler genus k ≥ 2 with sufficiently large representativity has a 2‐connected 7‐covering with at most 6k ? 12 vertices of degree 7. We also construct, for every surface F² with Euler genus k ≥ 2, a 3‐connected graph G on F² with arbitrarily large representativity each of whose 2‐connected 7‐coverings contains at least 6k ? 12 vertices of degree 7. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 43: 26–36, 2003     

Shock wave diffraction over a 90 degree sharp corner — Posters presented at 18th ISSW

A special poster session was run during the 18th International Symposium on Shock Waves, held on July 21 – 26, 1991, in Sendai, Japan. The purpose of this session was to compare various CFD schemes which are useful for simulating shock wave phenomena. A 2-D planar shock wave diffraction over a 90 degree sharp corner was selected as a bench mark problem. The problem specification and the output format are described below. Experimental outputs for the close flow conditions to the computational ones were also called for. Twenty six poster presentations were made at this session and the majority of the posters reflected a standard of excellence that warrants publication in the Shock Waves journal. Therefore these results are reproduced here. However, since there is a limit on the available page numbers, it was not possible to publish all the posters that were presented at the special poster session. We express our sincere thanks to all the participants in this session.