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Ejection Forces and Friction Coefficients from Injection Molding Experiments Using Rapid Tooling Inserts
Experiments have been performed with injection mold inserts made using solid freeform
fabrication processes in an effort to further study such applications for economic production of
small quantities of parts. Static friction coefficients were determined for HDPE and HIPS against
P-20 steel, sintered LaserForm ST-100, and stereolithography SL 5170 using the ASTM D 1894
standard. Injection mold inserts were constructed of the same three materials and were used to
inject cylindrical parts using HDPE and HIPS. Ejection forces were measured, and a model was
used to calculate ejection forces and apparent coefficients of static friction. Statistical analyses
were used to determine the effects of packing time, cooling time and packing pressure on
ejection force for the three insert types. This paper compares experimental and calculated
ejection forces, compares standard friction test results to calculated apparent coefficients of
friction, summarizes the statistical results, and comments on the feasibility of using rapid tooled
inserts for injection molding.Mechanical Engineerin
Statistical Properties of Avalanches in Networks
We characterize the distributions of size and duration of avalanches
propagating in complex networks. By an avalanche we mean the sequence of events
initiated by the externally stimulated `excitation' of a network node, which
may, with some probability, then stimulate subsequent firings of the nodes to
which it is connected, resulting in a cascade of firings. This type of process
is relevant to a wide variety of situations, including neuroscience, cascading
failures on electrical power grids, and epidemology. We find that the
statistics of avalanches can be characterized in terms of the largest
eigenvalue and corresponding eigenvector of an appropriate adjacency matrix
which encodes the structure of the network. By using mean-field analyses,
previous studies of avalanches in networks have not considered the effect of
network structure on the distribution of size and duration of avalanches. Our
results apply to individual networks (rather than network ensembles) and
provide expressions for the distributions of size and duration of avalanches
starting at particular nodes in the network. These findings might find
application in the analysis of branching processes in networks, such as
cascading power grid failures and critical brain dynamics. In particular, our
results show that some experimental signatures of critical brain dynamics
(i.e., power-law distributions of size and duration of neuronal avalanches),
are robust to complex underlying network topologies.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure
Tungsten resonance integrals and Doppler coefficients Third quarterly report, Jan. - Mar. 1966
Reactivities, Doppler coefficients, and resonance integrals for tungsten isotope
Advanced Navigation Strategies For Asteroid Sample Return Missions
Flyby and rendezvous missions to asteroids have been accomplished using navigation techniques derived from experience gained in planetary exploration. This paper presents analysis of advanced navigation techniques required to meet unique challenges for precision navigation to acquire a sample from an asteroid and return it to Earth. These techniques rely on tracking data types such as spacecraft-based laser ranging and optical landmark tracking in addition to the traditional Earth-based Deep Space Network radio metric tracking. A systematic study of navigation strategy, including the navigation event timeline and reduction in spacecraft-asteroid relative errors, has been performed using simulation and covariance analysis on a representative mission
New, efficient, and accurate high order derivative and dissipation operators satisfying summation by parts, and applications in three-dimensional multi-block evolutions
We construct new, efficient, and accurate high-order finite differencing
operators which satisfy summation by parts. Since these operators are not
uniquely defined, we consider several optimization criteria: minimizing the
bandwidth, the truncation error on the boundary points, the spectral radius, or
a combination of these. We examine in detail a set of operators that are up to
tenth order accurate in the interior, and we surprisingly find that a
combination of these optimizations can improve the operators' spectral radius
and accuracy by orders of magnitude in certain cases. We also construct
high-order dissipation operators that are compatible with these new finite
difference operators and which are semi-definite with respect to the
appropriate summation by parts scalar product. We test the stability and
accuracy of these new difference and dissipation operators by evolving a
three-dimensional scalar wave equation on a spherical domain consisting of
seven blocks, each discretized with a structured grid, and connected through
penalty boundary conditions.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures. The files with the coefficients for the
derivative and dissipation operators can be accessed by downloading the
source code for the document. The files are located in the "coeffs"
subdirector
Extinction Risk and Bottlenecks in the Conservation of Charismatic Marine Species
The oceans face a biodiversity crisis, but the degree and scale of extinction risk remains poorly characterized. Charismatic species are most likely to gar- ner greatest support for conservation and thus provide a best-case scenario of the status of marine biodiversity. We summarize extinction risk and diagnose impediments to successful conservation for 1,568 species in 16 families of marine animals in the movie Finding Nemo. Sixteen percent (12–34%) of those that have been evaluated are threatened, ranging from 9% (7–28%) of bony fishes to 100% (83–100%) of marine turtles. A lack of scientific knowledge impedes analysis of threat status for invertebrates, which have 1,000 times fewer conservation papers than do turtles. Legal protection is severely deficient for sharks and rays; only 8% of threatened species in our analysis are protected. Extinction risk among wide-ranging taxa is higher thanmost terrestrial groups, suggesting a different conservation focus is required in the sea
Estimating Community Stability and Ecological Interactions from Time-Series Data
Natural ecological communities are continuously buffeted by a varying environment, often making it difficult to measure the stability of communities using concepts requiring the existence of an equilibrium point. Instead of an equilibrium point, the equilibrial state of communities subject to environmental stochasticity is a stationary distribution, which is characterized by means, variances, and other statistical moments. Here, we derive three properties of stochastic multispecies communities that measure different characteristics associated with community stability. These properties can be estimated from multispecies time-series data using first-order multivariate autoregressive (MAR(1)) models. We demonstrate how to estimate the parameters of MAR(1) models and obtain confidence intervals for both parameters and the measures of stability. We also address the problem of estimation when there is observation (measurement) error. To illustrate these methods, we compare the stability of the planktonic communities in three lakes in which nutrient loading and planktivorous fish abundance were experimentally manipulated. MAR(1) models and the statistical methods we present can be used to identify dynamically important interactions between species and to test hypotheses about stability and other dynamical properties of naturally varying ecological communities. Thus, they can be used to integrate theoretical and empirical studies of community dynamics
Tin telluride: a weakly co-elastic metal
We report resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS),
dilatometry/magnetostriction, magnetotransport, magnetization, specific heat,
and Sn M\"ossbauer spectroscopy measurements on SnTe and
SnCrTe. Hall measurements at K indicate that our
Bridgman-grown single crystals have a -type carrier concentration of cm and that our Cr-doped crystals have an -type
concentration of cm. Although our SnTe crystals are
diamagnetic over the temperature range , the Cr-doped crystals are room temperature ferromagnets with a Curie
temperature of 294 K. For each sample type, three-terminal capacitive
dilatometry measurements detect a subtle 0.5 micron distortion at K. Whereas our RUS measurements on SnTe show elastic hardening near the
structural transition, pointing to co-elastic behavior, similar measurements on
SnCrTe show a pronounced softening, pointing to
ferroelastic behavior. Effective Debye temperature, , values of SnTe
obtained from Sn M\"ossbauer studies show a hardening of phonons in the
range 60--115K ( = 162K) as compared with the 100--300K range
( = 150K). In addition, a precursor softening extending over
approximately 100 K anticipates this collapse at the critical temperature, and
quantitative analysis over three decades of its reduced modulus finds with , a value
indicating a three-dimensional softening of phonon branches at a temperature
K, considerably below . We suggest that the differences in
these two types of elastic behaviors lie in the absence of elastic domain wall
motion in the one case and their nucleation in the other
A redshifted Fe K line from the unusual gamma-ray source PMN J1603-4904
Multiwavelength observations have revealed the highly unusual properties of
the gamma-ray source PMN J1603-4904, which are difficult to reconcile with any
other well established gamma-ray source class. The object is either a very
atypical blazar or compact jet source seen at a larger angle to the line of
sight. In order to determine the physical origin of the high-energy emission
processes in PMN J1603-4904, we study the X-ray spectrum in detail. We
performed quasi-simultaneous X-ray observations with XMM-Newton and Suzaku in
2013 September, resulting in the first high signal-to-noise X-ray spectrum of
this source. The 2-10 keV X-ray spectrum can be well described by an absorbed
power law with an emission line at 5.440.05 keV (observed frame).
Interpreting this feature as a K{\alpha} line from neutral iron, we determine
the redshift of PMN J1603-4904 to be z=0.180.01, corresponding to a
luminosity distance of 87254 Mpc. The detection of a redshifted X-ray
emission line further challenges the original BL Lac classification of PMN
J1603-4904. This result suggests that the source is observed at a larger angle
to the line of sight than expected for blazars, and thus the source would add
to the elusive class of gamma-ray loud misaligned-jet objects, possibly a
{\gamma}-ray bright young radio galaxy.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, A&A accepte
The Unfulfilled Potential of Data-Driven Decision Making in Agile Software Development
With the general trend towards data-driven decision making (DDDM),
organizations are looking for ways to use DDDM to improve their decisions.
However, few studies have looked into the practitioners view of DDDM, in
particular for agile organizations. In this paper we investigated the
experiences of using DDDM, and how data can improve decision making. An emailed
questionnaire was sent out to 124 industry practitioners in agile software
developing companies, of which 84 answered. The results show that few
practitioners indicated a widespread use of DDDM in their current decision
making practices. The practitioners were more positive to its future use for
higher-level and more general decision making, fairly positive to its use for
requirements elicitation and prioritization decisions, while being less
positive to its future use at the team level. The practitioners do see a lot of
potential for DDDM in an agile context; however, currently unfulfilled
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