Effects of high frequency current in welding aluminum alloy 6061

Uncontrolled high frequency current causes cracking in the heat-affected zone of aluminum alloy 6061 weldments during tungsten inert gas ac welding. Cracking developed when an improperly adjusted superimposed high frequency current was agitating the semimolten metal in the areas of grain boundary

Fiber-modified polyurethane foam for ballistic protection

Closed-cell, semirigid, fiber-loaded, self-extinguishing polyurethane foam material fills voids around fuel cells in aircraft. Material prevents leakage of fuel and spreading of fire in case of ballistic incendiary impact. It also protects fuel cell in case of exterior fire

Auditory display for the blind

A system for providing an auditory display of two-dimensional patterns as an aid to the blind is described. It includes a scanning device for producing first and second voltages respectively indicative of the vertical and horizontal positions of the scan and a further voltage indicative of the intensity at each point of the scan and hence of the presence or absence of the pattern at that point. The voltage related to scan intensity controls transmission of the sounds to the subject so that the subject knows that a portion of the pattern is being encountered by the scan when a tone is heard, the subject determining the position of this portion of the pattern in space by the frequency and interaural difference information contained in the tone

The isotropic-to-nematic transition in confined liquid crystals : an essentially non-universal phenomenon

Computer simulations are presented of the isotropic-to-nematic transition in a liquid crystal confined between two parallel plates a distance H apart. The plates are neutral and do not impose any anchoring on the particles. Depending on the shape of the pair potential acting between the particles, we find that the transition either changes from first-order to continuous at a critical film thickness H=Hx, or that the transition remains first-order irrespective of H. This demonstrates that the isotropic-to-nematic transition in confined geometry is not characterized by any universality class, but rather that its fate is determined by microscopic details. The resulting capillary phase diagrams can thus assume two topologies: one where the isotropic and nematic branches of the binodal meet at H=Hx, and one where they remain separated. For values of H where the transition is strongly first-order the shift DT of the transition temperature is in excellent agreement with the Kelvin equation. Not only is the relation DT~1/H recovered but also the prefactor of the shift is in quantitative agreement with the independently measured bulk latent heat and interfacial tension.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.

Environmental effects of strip mining

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

A small-scale test for fiber release from carbon composites

A test method was developed to determine relative fiber loss from pyrolyzed composites with different resins and fiber construction. Eleven composites consisting of woven and unwoven carbon fiber reinforcement and different resins were subjected to the burn and impact test device. The composites made with undirectional tape had higher fiber loss than those with woven fabric. Also, the fiber loss was inversely proportional to the char yield of the resin

Lithium abundances in nearby FGK dwarf and subgiant stars: internal destruction, Galactic chemical evolution, and exoplanets

We derive atmospheric parameters and lithium abundances for 671 stars and include our measurements in a literature compilation of 1381 dwarf and subgiant stars. First, a "lithium desert" in the effective temperature (Teff) versus lithium abundance (A_Li) plane is observed such that no stars with Teff~6075 K and A_Li~1.8 are found. We speculate that most of the stars on the low A_Li side of the desert have experienced a short-lived period of severe surface lithium destruction as main-sequence or subgiant stars. Next, we search for differences in the lithium content of thin-disk and thick-disk stars, but we find that internal processes have erased from the stellar photospheres their possibly different histories of lithium enrichment. Nevertheless, we note that the maximum lithium abundance of thick-disk stars is nearly constant from [Fe/H]=-1.0 to -0.1, at a value that is similar to that measured in very metal-poor halo stars (A_Li~2.2). Finally, differences in the lithium abundance distribution of known planet-host stars relative to otherwise ordinary stars appear when restricting the samples to narrow ranges of Teff or mass, but they are fully explained by age and metallicity biases. We confirm the lack of a connection between low lithium abundance and planets. However, we find that no low A_Li planet-hosts are found in the desert Teff window. Provided that subtle sample biases are not responsible for this observation, this suggests that the presence of gas giant planets inhibit the mechanism responsible for the lithium desert.Comment: ApJ, in press. Complete Tables 1 and 3 are available upon reques

Finite-size effects at first-order isotropic-to-nematic transitions

We present simulation data of first-order isotropic-to-nematic transitions in lattice models of liquid crystals and locate the thermodynamic limit inverse transition temperature $\epsilon_\infty$ via finite-size scaling. We observe that the inverse temperature of the specific heat maximum can be consistently extrapolated to $\epsilon_\infty$ assuming the usual $\alpha / L^d$ dependence, with $L$ the system size, $d$ the lattice dimension and proportionality constant $\alpha$. We also investigate the quantity $\epsilon_{L,k}$, the finite-size inverse temperature where $k$ is the ratio of weights of the isotropic to nematic phase. For an optimal value $k = k_{\rm opt}$, $\epsilon_{L,k}$ versus $L$ converges to $\epsilon_\infty$ much faster than $\alpha/L^d$, providing an economic alternative to locate the transition. Moreover, we find that $\alpha \sim \ln k_{\rm opt} / {\cal L}_\infty$, with ${\cal L}_\infty$ the latent heat density. This suggests that liquid crystals at first-order IN transitions scale approximately as $q$-state Potts models with $q \sim k_{\rm opt}$.Comment: To appear in Physical Review