Monte Carlo simulation of electron swarms parameters in c-C4F8/CF4 gas mixtures

The swarm parametes for c-C₄F₈/CF₄ mixtures, including the density-normalized effective ionization coefficient, drift velocity and mean energy were calculated using Monte-Carlo method with the null collision technique. The overall density-reduced electric field strength could be varied between 150 and 500 Td, while the c-C₄F₈ content in gas mixtures is varied in the range of 0–100%. The value of the density-normalized effective ionization coefficient shows a strong dependence on the c-C₄F₈ content, becoming more electronegative as the content of c-C₄F₈ is increased. The drift velocity of c-C₄F₈/CF₄ mixtures is more affected by CF₄. The calculated limiting field strength for c-C₄F₈/CF₄ mixtures is higher than that of SF₆/CF₄. Foundation item: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 50777041)     

Measurement of Swarm Parameters of c-C4F8/CO2 and Its Insulation Characteristics Analysis

In c-C4F8 and c-C4F8/CO2 mixtures, the swarm parameters including ionization coefficient, attachment coefficient and effective ionization coefficient were obtained at the ratio of the electric field strength to the gas density between 150-550 Td by the steady-state Townsend (SST) method. Static breakdown voltages at each ratio were also measured at the SST condition. The limiting field strengths were obtained by two methods:computing the density-normalized effective ionization coefficient as a function of the overall density-reduced electric field strength; and measuring static breakdown voltages as a function of the product of gas density and electrode separation. Good agreement was obtained by these two methods, which ensures the correctness of the former method. The limiting field strengths of c-C4F8 and c-C4F8/CO2 mixtures were compared with those ofpure SF6, SF6/CO2 mixtures and pure c-C4Fs. It is found that buffer gas CO2 does not reduce the limiting field strengths of c-C4F8 greatly, the limiting field strengths of c-C4F8/CO2 mixtures are higher than those of SF6/CO2 mixtures or even pure SF6, and so c-C4F8/CO2 mixtures are suggested to be possible substitutes for SF6.     

Predicting the Dielectric Strength of c-C4F8 and SF6 Gas Mixtures by Monte Carlo Method

An improved Monte Carlo method was used to simulate the motion of electrons in c-C_4F_8 and SF_6 gas mixtures for pulsed townsend discharge. The electron swarm parameters such as effective ionization coefficient, [AKα-] and drift velocity over the E/N range from 280～700 Td(1Td=10-21 V·m2) were calculated by employing a set of cross sections available in literature. From the variation cure of [AKα-] with SF_6 partial pressure p, the limiting field (E/N)_lim of gas mixture at different gas content was determined. It is found that the limiting field of c-C_4F_8 and SF_6 gas mixture is higher than that of pure SF_6 at any SF_6 mixture ratio. Simulation results show excellent agreement with experiment data available in previous literature.     

Monte Carlo Simulation of Electron Swarms Parameters in c-C4F8/CF4 Gas Mixtures

The swarm parametes for c-C4F8/CF4 mixtures, including the density-normalized effective ionization coefficient, drift velocity and mean energy were calculated using Monte-Carlo method with the null collision technique. The overall density-reduced electric field strength could be varied between 150 and 500 Td,while the c-C4F8 content in gas mixtures is varied in the range of 0-100%. The value of the density-normalize deffective ionization coefficient shows a strong dependence on the c-C4F8 content, becoming more electronegative as the content of c-C4F8 is increased. The drift velocity of c-C4F4/CF4 mixtures is more affected by CF4. The calculated limiting field strength for c-C4F8/CF4 mixtures is higher than that of SF6/CF4.     

Impacts of CaO Solid Particles in Carbon Dioxide Absorption Process from Ship Emission with NaOH Solution

CO₂ emitted from ship exhaust is one of the major sources of atmospheric pollution. In order to reduce ship CO₂ emissions, this paper comes up with the idea of recovering CO₂ from ship exhaust by NaOH solution and improves the absorption rate by adding CaO solid particles. The effect mechanism of CaO solid particles on CO₂ absorption efficiency is analyzed in detail, and the mathematical model is deduced and the CaO enhancement factor is calculated through experiments. Experiment result demonstrates that the effect of CaO solid particles on the absorption of CO₂ in alkali solution is significant. The absorption rate of pure CO₂ gas, the simulated ship exhaust gas and 6135AZG marine diesel engine emission can be increased by 10%, 15.85% and 10.30%, respectively. So it can be seen that CaO solid particles play an important role in improving the absorption efficiency of ship CO₂ emission.     

Purification effects of C2Cl6 on A00 aluminum

The effects of several fluxes on purification, microstructures and properties of A00 aluminum have been studied. The experimental results and analyses indicate that many cracks and large porosities exist in the surface film above the melt purified by C₂Cl₆ and that the film is floc and mostly composed of Al₂O₃ and pure aluminum, which carries many carbon particles and AlCl₃ not fully volatilized. And then over 50% (mass fraction) of the all-melting residue is pure aluminum, which is one of the major reasons for high melting loss. Moreover, because of a mass of gas bubbles and a state of seethe, there are many inclusions which size is under 10 ??m in the microstructure of A00 aluminum purified with C₂Cl₆ or fluxes containing C₂Cl₆. With this purifying method, the aluminum crystal grains are extended along the radius that was observed firstly and the average crystal size of A00 aluminum are about 100?C150 ??m. In addition, small size inclusions have little affected on tensile strength and micro inclusions under 10 ??m have little affected on elongation.     

Electronic structures and magneto-transport properties of co-based Heusler alloy based magneto-resistance junctions

A direct link between band structure and the ballistic transport property of full-Heusler alloys based Co₂ YZ/Al/Co₂ YZ trilayers (Y = Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn and Fe; Z = Al, Si and Ge) has been studied by firstprinciples calculations. It is found that the transport efficiency is determined primarily by three factors related to band structure: the shape of the band crossing Fermi energy E _F, the distance d of the two intersection points of Co₂ YZ and Al at E _F, and the absolute maximum of the energy lying in the E _F-crossing band, |E_max|. The transmission coefficient distribution patterns imply that the affected factor of magneto-resistance (MR) ratio is attributed to the band features around E _F. In general, an intuitively illustrated diagram is proposed to clarify the relationship between the probability of electron transition and the current magnitude.     

CO2 emissions from typical cement plants in China

The objective is to know how the CO₂ emits and how much the CO₂ emits due to the cement manufacture in both direct and indirect ways with the increasing concerns about the global warming and the cement plants emitting huge CO₂. A precise method to calculate CO₂ emissions including three processes was established in this paper and a case study was provided. From the case of 23 typical plants in China, we can see the amount of CO₂ emissions at the right level. The summary of CO₂ emissions consists of emissions from raw materials, fuels and electricity. The average result of the 23 typical plants is 0.74 t CO₂ per ton clinker in this study. Therefore, CO₂ emissions from these typical cement plants were pictured and then measured. The creative point is that an approach provides a basic framework to identify various situations in different cement plants in China and other in the rest of the world. The framework would be useful in quantitatively evaluating CO₂ emissions for government to know precisely CO₂ emissions in the cement plants.     

Dry milling of the ultra-high-strength steel 30CrMnSiNi2A with coated carbide inserts

The ultra-high-strength steel (UHSS) plays an important role in the mechanical industry because of their special performances. The machinability of 30CrMnSiNi2A steel was studied in dry milling with two different coated tools in the present work. This paper introduced that 30CrMnSiNi2A steel was a kind of difficult-to-machine materials. The results showed that the cutting force components of feed direction and cutting width direction, i.e. F x and F y , increased slightly with increasing the cutting speed and feed rate. The values of axial force component F z were much larger than F x and F y , and increased obviously with increasing the milling speed. The workpiece surface had the minimum roughness at the cutting speed of 150 m/min. The physical vapor deposition (PVD) coated ((Ti, Al)N-TiN) insert was more suitable for machining 30CrMnSiNi2A steel than the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coated (Ti(C, N)-Al 2 O 3 ) insert. Moreover, the main failure modes of PVD-coated insert were micro-chipping and coating spalling. The wear modes of CVD-coated insert were ploughing, coating spalling, and cratering. The serious adhesive wear and the abrasion with some adhesion were the main wear mechanism of PVD- and CVD-coated inserts, respectively.     

A high-performance low cost inverse integer transform architecture for AVS video standard

A high-performance, low cost inverse integer transform architecture for advanced video standard (AVS) video coding standard was presented. An 8×8 inverse integer transform is required in AVS video system which is compute-intensive. A hardware transform is inevitable to compute the transform for the real-time ap-plication. Compared with the 4×4 transform for H.264/AVC, the 8×8 integer transform is much more complex and the coefficient in the inverse transform matrix Ts is not inerratic as that in H.264/AVC. Dividing the Ts into matrix S8 and R8, the proposed architecture is implemented with the adders and the specific CSA-trees instead of multipliers, which are area and time consuming. The architecture obtains the data processing rate up to 8 pixels per-cycle at a low cost of area. Synthesized to TSMC 0.18 μm COMS process, the architecture attains the operating frequency of 300 MHz at cost of 34 252 gates with a 2-stage pipeline scheme. A reusable scheme is also introduced for the area optimization, which results in the operating frequency of 143 MHz at cost of only 19 758 gates.     

Catalytic Combustion of Lean Methane Assisted by Electric Field over Pd/Co<Subscript>3</Subscript>O<Subscript>4</Subscript> Catalysts at Low Temperature

A series of Pd/Co₃O₄ catalysts were prepared by Self-Propagating High-Temperature Synthesis (SHS) method in this study, and electric field was applied for catalytic combustion of lean methane over Pd/Co₃O₄ catalysts at low temperature. When electric field was applied, the catalytic combustion performance of Pd/Co₃O₄ catalysts was greatly improved, and the application of electric field could reduce the load of active element Pd to some extent while maintaining the same efficiency. Based on experimental tests and the analysis results of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), H₂-temperature-programmed reduction (H₂-TPR) and in-situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (in-situ DRIFTS), the mechanism of catalytic oxidation of CH₄ over Pd/Co₃O₄ catalysts in electric field was proposed. The catalytic combustion of CH₄ occurs only when the temperature is higher than 250 °C normally, but when electric field was applied, the whole process of CH₄ oxidation was promoted significantly and the reaction temperature was reduced. Electric field could promote the reduction of the support Co₃O₄ to release the lattice oxygen, resulting in the increase of PdO_x and the surface chemisorbed oxygen, which could provide more active sites for the low-temperature oxidation of CH₄. Furthermore, electric field could accelerate the dehydroxylation of CoOOH to further enhance the activity of the catalysts.     

Safety Evaluation for Freeway Exit Ramp Based on Speed Consistency

Speed differential has direct relationship with road safety. Conventional speed consistency measures draw sample data from independent population that follows a normal distribution. These methods may fall into ecological fallacy and overestimate the safety level of road elements. After deducing the relationship between the difference in operating speed ΔV₈₅ and85(ΔV), the 85^th percentile value of individual speed reduction, this paper recommends 85(ΔV) and speed reduction rate 85(ΔV)R is used to evaluate ramp safety. Point speeds of individual vehicle at freeway diverge area, upper ramp, and lower ramp are collected by radar guns. Safety performance of 37 exit ramps are appraised using three different measures, namely, ΔV₈₅, 85(ΔV), and 85(ΔV)R. The results show that 85(ΔV) is 1.42 to 2.02 times of ΔV₈₅, and that the evaluation result of 85(ΔV)R is between the other two. The measure 85(ΔV)R considers not only individual speed but also the base speed on upstream element, which avoid the pitfalls of ecological fallacy and overestimation possessed by conventional measures. It is a safer and reasonable measure that should be adopted in practice.     

Life cycle assessment of biodegradable plastics

Many industrial products made from fossil fuels cause the problems of global warming, depletion of fossil fuel resources and decrease of the land by landfill. In this report, the amounts of CO₂ emissions as the environmental load and the specific energy consumptions as the depletion of fossil fuel resources of biodegradable plastics and conventional plastic as food trays are compared using life cycle assessment methodology. The amount of CO₂ emission of PHB (poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-4-hydroxybutyrate)) tray was the smallest among those of trays of other plastics. The specific energy consumption of SPCL (starch/polycaprolactone) was the smallest among those of trays of other plastics. It clearly reveals that the utilization of the biodegradable plastics is an effective way of alternatives of the conventional plastics.     

First-principle investigation of the structural stability and electronic property of precipitates on the Cu-rich side of Cu-Ni-Si alloys

The energetic and electronic structures of precipitates on the Cu-rich side of Cu-Ni-Si alloys were investigated by using the first-principle calculations based on plane-wave pseudopotential method. The negative formation heats and the cohesive energies of these precipitates were estimated with electronic structure calculations, and their structural stability was also analyzed. The results show that δ-Ni₂Si, γ-Ni₅Si₂ and β-Ni₃Si precipitates all have great alloying ability and structural stability, which, after comparing their density of states (DOS), is found attributed to the pseudogap effect near the Fermi level (E _F) and strong hybridization between the Ni-3d and Si-3p states. Compared with the other two precipitates, the δ-Ni₂Si precipitate has the greatest structural stability, which is resulted from its lower DOS at E _F and the main bonding peaks slightly moving to the low energy region.     

Codes From Strongly Regular （α,β）-reguli

Strongly regular (α, β)-reguli are a class of incidence structures with given conditions which were introduced by Hamilton and Mathon. We introduce two classes of codes constructed from strongly regular (α, β)-reguli within PG(k − 1, q). The codes are related with two-weight codes intimately. Foundation item: the Scientific Research Start-up Foundation of Qingdao University of Science and Technology in China (No. 0022327)     

Effect of LaNiO3 interlayer on the dielectric properties of Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 thin film on Si substrate

In this study, (100)-oriented growth of Ba_0.5Sr_0.5TiO₃ (BST) /LaNiO₃ (LNO) stacks was obtained on Pt(111)/SiO₂/Si substrates by r.f. magnetron sputtering. The orientation of the subsequently deposited Ba_0.5Sr_0.5TiO₃ thin film was strongly affected by the LNO under layer, and the BST thin film deposited on the (100)LNO-coated Si substrate was also found to have a significant (100)-oriented texture. Effects of LNO interlayer on the dielectric properties of BST thin films were investigated. As a result, the tunability of BST thin film was greatly improved with the insertion of (100)-oriented LNO under layer with proper thickness. Foundation item: the National Key Lab of Nano/Micro Fabrication Technology (No. 9140C 790310060C79) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 60701012)     

A novel approach to design robust fault detection filter for networked control systems

In this paper, an approach for designing robust fault detection filter (RFDF) of networked control systems (NCSs) with unknown inputs is studied. The design aims at implementing the optimal trade-off between robustness of unknown inputs (including the item produced by networked-induced delay) and sensitivity of fault. The key design issue is to introduce an optimal fault detection filter based on NCSs with the control law compensation as the reference residual model of NCSs and to formulate the RFDF design as a model-matching problem. By applying H _∞ optimization technique, linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach is given to solve the model-matching problem. The validity of the proposed approach is shown by a numerical example.      

On codes with <Emphasis Type="Italic">w</Emphasis>-identifiable parent property

A code is said to be a w-identifiable parent property code (or w-IPP code for short) if whenever d is a descendant of w (or fewer) codewords, and one can always identify at least one of the parents of d. Let C be an (N, w + 1, q)-code and C* an (w + 1)-color graph for C. If a graph G is a subgraph of C* and consists of w + 1 edges with different colors, then G is called a (w + 1)-pattern of C*. In this paper, we proved that C is a w-IPP code if and only if there exists at most one vertex with color degree more than 1 in any (w + 1)-pattern of C*. Foundation item: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 10471093)     

Friction and wear performances of hot filament chemical vapor deposition multilayer diamond films coated on silicon carbide under water lubrication

Tribological properties of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond films greatly affect its application in the mechanical field. In this paper, a novel multilayer structure is proposed, with which multilayer diamond films are deposited on silicon carbide by hot filament CVD (HFCVD) method. The different micrometric diamond grains are produced by adjusting deposition parameters. The as-deposited multilayer diamond films are characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and white-light interferometry. The friction tests performed on a reciprocating ball-on-plate tribometer suggest that silicon carbide presents the friction coefficient of 0.400 for dry sliding against silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) ceramic counterface. With the water lubrication, the corresponding friction coefficients of silicon carbide and as-deposited multilayer diamond films further reduce to 0.193 and 0.051, respectively. The worn surfaces indicate that multilayer diamond films exhibit considerably high wear resistance.     

Direct electrochemical extraction of Ti5Si3 from Ti/Si-containing metal oxide compounds in molten CaCl2

Direct electrochemical extraction of Ti₅Si₃ from pressed cathode pellets comprising of powdered Ti/Sicontaining metal oxide compounds was investigated by using molten salt electro-deoxidation technology.Three groups of mixtures including TiO₂ mixed with SiO₂,Ti-bearing blast furnace slag（TBFS） mixed with TiO₂, and TBFS mixed with high-titanium slag（HTS） were prepared at the same stoichiometric ratio（Ti:Si=5:3） corresponding to the target composition of Ti₅Si₃,and used as the starting materials in this experiment,respectively. The pressed porous cylindrical pellet of the Ti/Si-containing compounds served as a cathode,and two different anode systems,i.e.,the inert solid oxide oxygen-ion-conducting membrane（SOM） based anode system and graphite-based anode system were used contrastively.The electrochemical experiment was carried out at 900-1050℃and 3.0-4.0 V in molten CaCl₂ electrolyte.The results show that the oxide components were electro-deoxidized effectively and Ti₅Si₃ could be directly extracted from these complex Ti/Si-containing metal oxide compounds.