Analytical techniques: A compilation

A compilation, containing articles on a number of analytical techniques for quality control engineers and laboratory workers, is presented. Data cover techniques for testing electronic, mechanical, and optical systems, nondestructive testing techniques, and gas analysis techniques

A prototype liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber for the study of UV laser multi-photonic ionization

This paper describes the design, realization and operation of a prototype liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LAr TPC) detector dedicated to the development of a novel online monitoring and calibration system exploiting UV laser beams. In particular, the system is intended to measure the lifetime of the primary ionization in LAr, in turn related to the LAr purity level. This technique could be exploited by present and next generation large mass LAr TPCs for which monitoring of the performance and calibration plays an important role. Results from the first measurements are presented together with some considerations and outlook.Comment: 26 pages, 27 figure

Emerging technologies for the non-invasive characterization of physical-mechanical properties of tablets

The density, porosity, breaking force, viscoelastic properties, and the presence or absence of any structural defects or irregularities are important physical-mechanical quality attributes of popular solid dosage forms like tablets. The irregularities associated with these attributes may influence the drug product functionality. Thus, an accurate and efficient characterization of these properties is critical for successful development and manufacturing of a robust tablets. These properties are mainly analyzed and monitored with traditional pharmacopeial and non-pharmacopeial methods. Such methods are associated with several challenges such as lack of spatial resolution, efficiency, or sample-sparing attributes. Recent advances in technology, design, instrumentation, and software have led to the emergence of newer techniques for non-invasive characterization of physical-mechanical properties of tablets. These techniques include near infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray microtomography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging, terahertz pulsed imaging, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, and various acoustic- and thermal-based techniques. Such state-of-the-art techniques are currently applied at various stages of development and manufacturing of tablets at industrial scale. Each technique has specific advantages or challenges with respect to operational efficiency and cost, compared to traditional analytical methods. Currently, most of these techniques are used as secondary analytical tools to support the traditional methods in characterizing or monitoring tablet quality attributes. Therefore, further development in the instrumentation and software, and studies on the applications are necessary for their adoption in routine analysis and monitoring of tablet physical-mechanical properties

Project OASIS: The Design of a Signal Detector for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

An 8 million channel spectrum analyzer (MCSA) was designed the meet to meet the needs of a SETI program. The MCSA puts out a very large data base at very high rates. The development of a device which follows the MCSA, is presented

Time domain analysis of switching transient fields in high voltage substations

Switching operations of circuit breakers and disconnect switches generate transient currents propagating along the substation busbars. At the moment of switching, the busbars temporarily acts as antennae radiating transient electromagnetic fields within the substations. The radiated fields may interfere and disrupt normal operations of electronic equipment used within the substation for measurement, control and communication purposes. Hence there is the need to fully characterise the substation electromagnetic environment as early as the design stage of substation planning and operation to ensure safe operations of the electronic equipment. This paper deals with the computation of transient electromagnetic fields due to switching within a high voltage air-insulated substation (AIS) using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) metho

Development of Variable Slope Piecewise-Based Brown Symbols for Application to Nonlinear Ambiguity Suppression

In 1962, Palermo used two conjugate Linear Frequency Modulated (LFM) pulses to demonstrate a Non-linear Ambiguity Suppression (NLAS) technique to reduce ambiguous energy in radar returns. Using conjugate LFM pulse coding does not readily extend to larger symbol families and thus is severely limited for M-channel (M\u3e 2) NLAS applications. Larger families of optimal mutually dispersible codes with bigger time bandwidth products are needed to achieve the desired M-fold range ambiguity reduction. Using correlation function the time duration as an optimization metric, the recently proposed Brown\u27s theorem formulates a deterministic process for designing optimal mutually dispersible symbol sets of arbitrary size. The rms time duration performance of digitized Brown symbols is invariant to choice of basis (phase-rate) functions used in the design process, yet improvement in cross-correlation side lobe performance is directly linked to basis function design. This insight provided the impetus for designing and synthesizing a new set of mutually dispersible symbols based on Variable Slope (VS) piecewise basis functions. The resultant VS piecewise-based Brown symbols are used with NLAS processing to demonstrate M-fold ambiguity suppression capability. Despite the presence of two undesired ambiguous signal responses having +24.0 dB more signal power relative to the weaker desired unambiguous signal, the NLAS processor effectively suppressed the ambiguous responses. The desired signal peak NLAS output response was approximately 11.0 dB above the noise floor and undesired ambiguous responses were suppressed an average of 10.0 to 12.0 dB - a net improvement of approximately 21.01 to 22.0 dB

Detecção e caracterização de defeitos internos por termografia infravermelha pulsada

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Mecânica, Florianópolis, 2014.A termografia pulsada (TP) é uma técnica promissora para a avaliação não-destrutiva de materiais. O protocolo de inspeção consiste na aplicação de um pulso térmico no espécime e monitorar a resposta térmica da superfície via radiação infravermelha (IV). Descontinuidades internas aparecem na sequência térmica como "hot spots" ou padrões térmicos irregulares, os quais são prodruzidos por alterações na taxa interna de difusão de calor. Apesar de ser uma das técnicas mais usadas e atrativas para a avaliação não-destrutiva, sua aplicação apresenta grandes desafios especialmente durante a inspeção de materiais anisotrópicos. 'Blurring', a perda de visibilidade devido aos efeitos da condução lateral de calor e a não-uniformidade produzida durante a excitação térmica representam as maiores limitações da TP. Esta tese é focada na otimização da inspeção por TP em laminados compósitos. Para tal propósito, foi desenvolvido um modelo termo-numérico para a análise da resposta térmica da material devido a presença de defeitos internos. Um estudo paramétrico foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de estudar o impacto do aquecimento não-uniforme, da intensidade da radiação e da geometria dos defeitos em vários parâmetros informativos da inspeção por TP. Uma análise das três técnicas mais usadas para o tratamento de sinais termográficos foi realizada e os seus desempenhos foram avaliados em função da relação sinal-ruído no ponto de maior contraste entre região com defeito e região sem defeito. Neste trabalho foi desenvolvida uma nova técnica de processamento e análise de imagens térmicas. A nova técnica - baseada no método de regressão dos mínimos quadrados parciais (PLSR) - decompõe a sequência térmica em variáveis latentes, permitindo assim a separação das diversas fontes de ruído que afetam a qualidade das imagens. A partir deste método de correlação foi desenvolvido um modelo empírico para a quantificação da profundidade e tamanho lateral dos defeitos empregando dados experimentais. Ambos os métodos - de tratamento de sinais e quantificação de defeitos - foram analisados e comparados com técnicas tradicionais, apresentando uma melhoria substancial na relação sinal-ruído e na precisão no processo de inversão de profundidade e forma dos defeitos.Abstract: Pulsed thermography (PT) is a novel and promissory technique for the nondestructive and evaluation (NDT&E) of materials. The inspection protocol consists in pulse heating the specimen while monitoring the resulting thermal response via infrared (IR) radiation. Subsurface discontinuities appear as transient hot spots or irregular thermal patterns in the thermogram sequence, which are produced by the alterations in the internal heat diffusion fluxes. In spite of being one of the most used and attractive methods for the NDT&E, its application still presents challenges specially when inspecting anisotropic materials. 'Blurring', the lost of defect visibility due to the effects of lateral heat conduction and the non-uniform heating produced during the application of the thermal excitation, represent the major drawbacks of PT. This thesis is focused on the optimization of the PT inspection of laminated composites. A thermal-numerical model is developed in order to analysis the thermal response of the material due to the presence of subsurface defects. A parametric study was performed aiming to study the impact of the effects of non-uniform heating, irradiation density and defects geometry on several informative variables of the PT inspection. An in-depth analysis of three of the most used PT sinal processing techniques was carried out and their performance was evaluated in terms of the signal-to-noise (SNR) at maximum signal contrast. In this work was also developed a new promissory technique for the processing and analysis of thermographic data. The new method - based on partial least squares regression (PLSR) - decomposes the thermal sequence into latent variables, allowing to separate several sources of noise affecting the quality of the images. From the statistical correlation method an empirical model was developed for the quantification of the depth and lateral size of defects using experimental data. Both methods - for the signal processing and for the inversion of depth and lateral size - were analyzed and compared with traditional techniques, achieving a substantial improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio and in the accuracy in the prediction results of depth and lateral size of the defects