Environmentally assisted fatigue crack nucleation in Ti-6Al-2Sn-4Zr-6Mo

An unexplained feature was observed at the fatigue crack origin of a number of alpha/beta titanium specimens tested at 450 °C in the low cycle fatigue regime. The origin was discoloured blue but this was not a result of temper colouration; this feature sometimes resulted in large reductions in fatigue lives. A number of specimens were examined to determine the cause and formation mechanism of these “blue spots.” This feature was associated with elevated oxygen and chloride levels and the presence of sodium. A mechanism based on hot-salt stress-corrosion cracking is proposed and the implications for service components are discussed

Fatigue cracking in gamma titanium aluminide

Fatigue crack initiation and growth were examined in cast and HIP'ed \textgamma-TiAl 4522XD. It was found that fatigue crack growth rates were higher at 750\celsius than 400\celsius, but that $\Delta K_\mathrm{th}$ was also higher. Temperature excursions between $400$ and 750\celsius during fatigue crack growth resulted in retardation of the crack growth rate, both on heating and cooling; however heating from 400 to 750\celsius at a $\Delta K$ that would then be below threshold did not result in complete crack arrest. It was also found that for notches $0.6$~mm in length and smaller, initiation from the microstructure could instead be observed at stresses similar to the material failure stress; a microstructural initiation site exists. Secondary cracking around borides could also be observed. A change from trans- to mixed trans-, inter- and intra-lamellar cracking could be observed where the estimated size of the crack tip plastic zone exceeded the colony size. Changes in fracture surface morphology could not be related to the temperature of fatigue crack growth, although this could be observed from the oxide scale colouration. Compressive pre-loading of a crack results in retardation of the crack, which could also be observed from the oxide

Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Fatigue Damage in Metals

Acoustic emission (AE) consists of high frequency stress waves generated by the rapid release of energy due to fracture, plastic deformation, wear or interfacial friction [1]. Acoustic emission monitoring is a very sensitive method with a wide dynamic range and can be used as a diagnostic means of continuous assessment of damage in materials and components. Acoustic emission methods can be applied to metallic components and specimens subjected to monotonic or fatigue loading. In general, acoustic emission can be used to monitor crack initiation and propagation and to locate the source of the emission

AgCl-induced hot salt stress corrosion cracking in a titanium alloy

The mechanism of AgCl-induced stress corrosion cracking of Ti-6246 was examined at 500 MPa and 380 °C for 24 h exposures. SEM and STEM-EDX examination of a FIB-sectioned blister and crack showed that metallic Ag was formed and migrated along the crack. TEM analysis also revealed the presence of SnO2 and Al2O3 corrosion products mixed into TiO2. The fracture surface has a transgranular nature with a brittle appearance in the primary α phase. Long, straight and non-interacting dislocations were observed in a brittle appearance fractured primary α grain, with basal and pyramidal traces. This is consistent with a dislocation emission view of the cracking mechanism

Inhibition of Autoimmune Diabetes in NOD Mice by miRNA Therapy.

Autoimmune destruction of the pancreatic islets in Type 1 diabetes is mediated by both increased proinflammatory (Teff) and decreased regulatory (Treg) T lymphocytes resulting in a significant decrease in the Treg:Teff ratio. The non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse is an excellent in vivo model for testing potential therapeutics for attenuating the decrease in the Treg:Teff ratio and inhibiting disease pathogenesis. Here we show for the first time that a bioreactor manufactured therapeutic consisting of a complex of miRNA species (denoted as TA1) can effectively reset the NOD immune system from a proinflammatory to a tolerogenic state thus preventing or delaying autoimmune diabetes. Treatment of NOD mice with TA1 resulted in a systemic broad-spectrum upregulation of tolerogenic T cell subsets with a parallel downregulation of Teff subsets yielding a dramatic increase in the Treg:Teff ratio. Moreover, the murine-derived TA1 was highly effective in the inhibition of allorecognition of HLA-disparate human PBMC. TA1 demonstrated dose-responsiveness and exhibited equivalent or better inhibition of allorecognition driven proliferation than etanercept (a soluble TNF receptor). These findings demonstrate that miRNA-based therapeutics can effectively attenuate or arrest autoimmune disease processes and may be of significant utility in a broad range of autoimmune diseases including Type 1 diabetes

Medium-Induced Modification of Z-Tagged Charged Particle Yields in Pb+Pb Collisions at 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

The yield of charged particles opposite to a Z boson with large transverse momentum ( p T ) is measured in 260     pb − 1 of p p and 1.7     nb − 1 of Pb + Pb collision data at 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The Z boson tag is used to select hard-scattered partons with specific kinematics, and to observe how their showers are modified as they propagate through the quark-gluon plasma created in Pb + Pb collisions. Compared with p p collisions, charged-particle yields in Pb + Pb collisions show significant modifications as a function of charged-particle p T in a way that depends on event centrality and Z boson p T . The data are compared with a variety of theoretical calculations and provide new information about the medium-induced energy loss of partons in a p T regime difficult to measure through other channels

Measurement of the associated production of a Higgs boson decaying into b-quarks with a vector boson at high transverse momentum in pp collisions at s=13\sqrt{s}=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The associated production of a Higgs boson with a W or Z boson decaying into leptons and where the Higgs boson decays to a pair is measured in the high vector-boson transverse momentum regime, above 250 GeV, with the ATLAS detector. The analysed data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of , were collected in proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider between 2015 and 2018 at a centre-of-mass energy of . The measured signal strength, defined as the ratio of the measured signal yield to that predicted by the Standard Model, is corresponding to an observed (expected) significance of 2.1 (2.7) standard deviations. Cross-sections of associated production of a Higgs boson decaying into b quark pairs with a W or Z gauge boson, decaying into leptons, are measured in two exclusive vector boson transverse momentum regions, 250–400 GeV and above 400 GeV, and interpreted as constraints on anomalous couplings in the framework of a Standard Model effective field theory

Improving topological cluster reconstruction using calorimeter cell timing in ATLAS

Clusters of topologically connected calorimeter cells around cells with large absolute signal-to-noise ratio (topo-clusters) are the basis for calorimeter signal reconstruction in the ATLAS experiment. Topological cell clustering has proven performant in LHC Runs 1 and 2. It is, however, susceptible to out-of-time pile-up of signals from soft collisions outside the 25 ns proton-bunch-crossing window associated with the event’s hard collision. To reduce this effect, a calorimeter-cell timing criterion was added to the signal-to-noise ratio requirement in the clustering algorithm. Multiple versions of this criterion were tested by reconstructing hadronic signals in simulated events and Run 2 ATLAS data. The preferred version is found to reduce the out-of-time pile-up jet multiplicity by ∼50% for jet pT ∼ 20 GeV and by ∼80% for jet pT 50 GeV, while not disrupting the reconstruction of hadronic signals of interest, and improving the jet energy resolution by up to 5% for 20 < pT < 30 GeV. Pile-up is also suppressed for other physics objects based on topo-clusters (electrons, photons, τ -leptons), reducing the overall event size on disk by about 6% in early Run 3 pileup conditions. Offline reconstruction for Run 3 includes the timing requirement

Software Performance of the ATLAS Track Reconstruction for LHC Run 3

Charged particle reconstruction in the presence of many simultaneous proton–proton (pp) collisions in the LHC is a challenging task for the ATLAS experiment’s reconstruction software due to the combinatorial complexity. This paper describes the major changes made to adapt the software to reconstruct high-activity collisions with an average of 50 or more simultaneous pp interactions per bunch crossing (pileup) promptly using the available computing resources. The performance of the key components of the track reconstruction chain and its dependence on pile-up are evaluated, and the improvement achieved compared to the previous software version is quantified. For events with an average of 60 pp collisions per bunch crossing, the updated track reconstruction is twice as fast as the previous version, without significant reduction in reconstruction efficiency and while reducing the rate of combinatorial fake tracks by more than a factor two