A History of Materials and Technologies Development

The purpose of the book is to provide the students with the text that presents an introductory knowledge about the development of materials and technologies and includes the most commonly available information on human development. The idea of the publication has been generated referring to the materials taken from the organic and non-organic evolution of nature. The suggested texts might be found a purposeful tool for the University students proceeding with studying engineering due to the fact that all subjects in this particular field more or less have to cover the history and development of the studied object. It is expected that studying different materials and technologies will help the students with a better understanding of driving forces, positive and negative consequences of technological development, etc

The effect of thermal cycling on the critical temperature of High Temperature Superconductors

Electric power is essential to modern civilization: it provides the energy required for lighting, heating, cooling, healthcare, transport, telecommunication networks, process industries, manufacturing, powering motors and the list goes on and on. In short, electric power is vital to humanity. With the current increase in power demand coupled with the ageing and insufficient grid, there is an immediate and urgent need to provide a lasting solution to the problem of imminent and catastrophic grid collapse. Of the several possible solutions including high investment costs to expand the grid, integration of renewable power sources and so on, the use of high temperature superconductors (HTS) for power devices is the best option. This is because power devices that are based on high temperature superconductivity are energy efficient & power dense technologies that can increase grid flexibility, reliability, resilience and capacity of handling the increased energy demand/input while making it suitable for future expansion. Superconductivity is the phenomenon where superconductors exhibit zero resistance to the flow of current as well as magnetic flux exclusion (diamagnetism) below a certain temperature known as their critical temperature. Since being discovered in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, a Dutch physicist, superconductivity has been researched extensively and some great progress made. The greatest to date was the discovery of high temperature superconductivity in 1987 where superconductivity was observed at temperatures higher than that of liquid nitrogen (77K). This was significant because at temperatures above that of liquid nitrogen, superconductors require low refrigeration power which in turn reduces operating costs and increases refrigeration efficiency. Superconductors must be operated below their critical temperature as well as their critical current and magnetic field. If they are, however, operated above these critical parameters, a quench will occur meaning they lose their superconductivity and transition back to the normal (resistive) state. During this transition process the normal state region will quickly heat up due to the high current through it and will propagate along the length of the superconductor until all of the energy stored is dissipated and the entire superconductor becomes resistive. This is highly undesirable and can greatly alter the operation and properties of the superconductor, as well as cause the superconductor to degrade. Therefore, during application, it would be best to avoid a reduction of the critical parameters. There are some conditions or circumstances that can lead to a decrease in critical temperature of HTS, such as higher pressure and larger magnetic fields. In this research work, commercially available HTS sample tapes were obtained and subjected to 10, 25, 50 and 100 thermal cycles between liquid nitrogen temperature and room temperature. The samples at different thermal cycles were then tested using resistance method of measuring critical temperature of HTS. XRD experiments were also done on the samples to support the results of the thermal cycling experiments. The results obtained showed that up to 100 thermal cycles, there is no degradation of the ꜀ of the HTS tapes measured due to thermal cycling. The results of the XRD experiments indicated that the cell parameters and volume measured show no significant changes, demonstrating that the oxygen content remains unchanged, supporting the fact that thermal cycling up to 100 thermal cycles does not degrade the critical temperature. This work provides relevant information on whether the critical temperature of the tested HTS tapes are changed due to thermal cycling up to 100 thermal cycles. This information is not available at present and could be useful to engineers when designing superconducting systems that can be subjected to thermal cycling conditions

Urban Deformation Monitoring using Persistent Scatterer Interferometry and SAR tomography

This book focuses on remote sensing for urban deformation monitoring. In particular, it highlights how deformation monitoring in urban areas can be carried out using Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Tomography (TomoSAR). Several contributions show the capabilities of Interferometric SAR (InSAR) and PSI techniques for urban deformation monitoring. Some of them show the advantages of TomoSAR in un-mixing multiple scatterers for urban mapping and monitoring. This book is dedicated to the technical and scientific community interested in urban applications. It is useful for choosing the appropriate technique and gaining an assessment of the expected performance. The book will also be useful to researchers, as it provides information on the state-of-the-art and new trends in this fiel

Superconductor

This book contains a collection of works intended to study theoretical and experimental aspects of superconductivity. Here you will find interesting reports on low-Tc superconductors (materials with Tc 30 K). Certainly this book will be useful to encourage further experimental and theoretical researches in superconducting materials

ECOS 2012

The 8-volume set contains the Proceedings of the 25th ECOS 2012 International Conference, Perugia, Italy, June 26th to June 29th, 2012. ECOS is an acronym for Efficiency, Cost, Optimization and Simulation (of energy conversion systems and processes), summarizing the topics covered in ECOS: Thermodynamics, Heat and Mass Transfer, Exergy and Second Law Analysis, Process Integration and Heat Exchanger Networks, Fluid Dynamics and Power Plant Components, Fuel Cells, Simulation of Energy Conversion Systems, Renewable Energies, Thermo-Economic Analysis and Optimisation, Combustion, Chemical Reactors, Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Building/Urban/Complex Energy Systems, Water Desalination and Use of Water Resources, Energy Systems- Environmental and Sustainability Issues, System Operation/ Control/Diagnosis and Prognosis, Industrial Ecology