Thermomechanical behavior of plasma-sprayed ZrO2-Y2O3 coatings influenced by plasticity, creep and oxidation

Thermocycling of ceramic-coated turbomachine components produces high thermomechanical stresses that are mitigated by plasticity and creep but aggravated by oxidation, with residual stresses exacerbated by all three. These residual stresses, coupled with the thermocyclic loading, lead to high compressive stresses that cause the coating to spall. A ceramic-coated gas path seal is modeled with consideration given to creep, plasticity, and oxidation. The resulting stresses and possible failure modes are discussed

1/t pressure and fermion behaviour of water in two dimensions

A variety of metal vacuum systems display the celebrated 1/t pressure, namely power-law dependence on time t, with the exponent close to unity, the origin of which has been a long-standing controversy. Here we propose a chemisorption model for water adsorbates, based on the argument for fermion behaviour of water vapour adsorbed on a stainless-steel surface, and obtain analytically the power-law behaviour of pressure, with an exponent of unity. Further, the model predicts that the pressure should depend on the temperature T according to T^(3/2), which is indeed confirmed by our experiment. Our results should help elucidate the unique characteristics of the adsorbed water.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Identifying influential spreaders and efficiently estimating infection numbers in epidemic models: a walk counting approach

We introduce a new method to efficiently approximate the number of infections resulting from a given initially-infected node in a network of susceptible individuals. Our approach is based on counting the number of possible infection walks of various lengths to each other node in the network. We analytically study the properties of our method, in particular demonstrating different forms for SIS and SIR disease spreading (e.g. under the SIR model our method counts self-avoiding walks). In comparison to existing methods to infer the spreading efficiency of different nodes in the network (based on degree, k-shell decomposition analysis and different centrality measures), our method directly considers the spreading process and, as such, is unique in providing estimation of actual numbers of infections. Crucially, in simulating infections on various real-world networks with the SIR model, we show that our walks-based method improves the inference of effectiveness of nodes over a wide range of infection rates compared to existing methods. We also analyse the trade-off between estimate accuracy and computational cost, showing that the better accuracy here can still be obtained at a comparable computational cost to other methods.Comment: 6 page

Strain-stress study of AlxGa1-xN/AlN heterostructures on c-plane sapphire and related optical properties

This work presents a systematic study of stress and strain of AlxGa1-xN/AlN with composition ranging from GaN to AlN, grown on a c-plane sapphire by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, using synchrotron radiation high-resolution X-ray diffraction and reciprocal space mapping. The c-plane of the AlxGa1-xN epitaxial layers exhibits compressive strain, while the a-plane exhibits tensile strain. The biaxial stress and strain are found to increase with increasing Al composition, although the lattice mismatch between the AlxGa1-xN and the buffer layer AlN gets smaller. A reduction in the lateral coherence lengths and an increase in the edge and screw dislocations are seen as the AlxGa1-xN composition is varied from GaN to AlN, exhibiting a clear dependence of the crystal properties of AlxGa1-xN on the Al content. The bandgap of the epitaxial layers is slightly lower than predicted value due to a larger tensile strain effect on the a-axis compared to the compressive strain on the c-axis. Raman characteristics of the AlxGa1-xN samples exhibit a shift in the phonon peaks with the Al composition. The effect of strain is also discussed on the optical phonon energies of the epitaxial layers. The techniques discussed here can be used to study other similar materials.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Calculation of a Class of Three-Loop Vacuum Diagrams with Two Different Mass Values

We calculate analytically a class of three-loop vacuum diagrams with two different mass values, one of which is one-third as large as the other, using the method of Chetyrkin, Misiak, and M\"{u}nz in the dimensional regularization scheme. All pole terms in \epsilon=4-D (D being the space-time dimensions in a dimensional regularization scheme) plus finite terms containing the logarithm of mass are kept in our calculation of each diagram. It is shown that three-loop effective potential calculated using three-loop integrals obtained in this paper agrees, in the large-N limit, with the overlap part of leading-order (in the large-N limit) calculation of Coleman, Jackiw, and Politzer [Phys. Rev. D {\bf 10}, 2491 (1974)].Comment: RevTex, 15 pages, 4 postscript figures, minor corrections in K(c), Appendix B removed, typos corrected, acknowledgements change

Uncertainty Estimates for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Data

Sources of uncertainty are reviewed for calculated atomic and molecular data that are important for plasma modeling: atomic and molecular structure and cross sections for electron-atom, electron-molecule, and heavy particle collisions. We concentrate on model uncertainties due to approximations to the fundamental many-body quantum mechanical equations and we aim to provide guidelines to estimate uncertainties as a routine part of computations of data for structure and scattering.Comment: 65 pages, 18 Figures, 3 Tables. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. Final accepted versio

Percolation in invariant Poisson graphs with i.i.d. degrees

Let each point of a homogeneous Poisson process in R^d independently be equipped with a random number of stubs (half-edges) according to a given probability distribution mu on the positive integers. We consider translation-invariant schemes for perfectly matching the stubs to obtain a simple graph with degree distribution mu. Leaving aside degenerate cases, we prove that for any mu there exist schemes that give only finite components as well as schemes that give infinite components. For a particular matching scheme that is a natural extension of Gale-Shapley stable marriage, we give sufficient conditions on mu for the absence and presence of infinite components

Comparison of chemical profiles and effectiveness between Erxian decoction and mixtures of decoctions of its individual herbs : a novel approach for identification of the standard chemicals

Acknowledgements This study was partially supported by grants from the Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research (Project Number 201211159146 and 201411159213), the University of Hong Kong. We thank Mr Keith Wong and Ms Cindy Lee for their technical assistances.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Analytical Results For The Steady State Of Traffic Flow Models With Stochastic Delay

Exact mean field equations are derived analytically to give the fundamental diagrams, i.e., the average speed - car density relations, for the Fukui-Ishibashi one-dimensional traffic flow cellular automaton model of high speed vehicles $(v_{max}=M>1)$ with stochastic delay. Starting with the basic equation describing the time evolution of the number of empty sites in front of each car, the concepts of inter-car spacings longer and shorter than $M$ are introduced. The probabilities of having long and short spacings on the road are calculated. For high car densities $(\rho \geq 1/M)$, it is shown that inter-car spacings longer than $M$ will be shortened as the traffic flow evolves in time, and any initial configurations approach a steady state in which all the inter-car spacings are of the short type. Similarly for low car densities $(\rho \leq 1/M)$, it can be shown that traffic flow approaches an asymptotic steady state in which all the inter-car spacings are longer than $M-2$. The average traffic speed is then obtained analytically as a function of car density in the asymptotic steady state. The fundamental diagram so obtained is in excellent agreement with simulation data.Comment: 12 pages, latex, 2 figure