The Effect of 45{\deg} Grain Boundaries and associated Fe particles on Jc and resistivity in Ba(Fe0.9Co0.1)2As2 Thin Films

The anisotropy of the critical current density Jc depends in general on both the properties of the flux lines (such as line tension, coherence length and penetration depth) and the properties of the defects (such as density, shape, orientation etc.). Whereas the Jc anisotropy in microstructurally clean films can be scaled to an effective magnetic field containing the Ginzburg-Landau anisotropy term, it is in general not possible (or only in a limited field range) for samples containing extended defects. Here, the Jc anisotropy of a Co-doped BaFe2As2 sample with 45{\deg} [001] tilt grain boundaries (GBs), i.e. grain boundaries created by 45{\deg} in-plane rotated grains, as well as extended Fe particles is investigated. This microstructure leads to c-axis correlated pinning, both due to the GBs and the Fe particles and manifests in a c-axis peak in the Jc anisotropy at low magnetic fields and a deviation from the anisotropic Ginzburg-Landau scaling at higher fields. Strong pinning at ellipsoidal extended defects, i.e. the Fe particles, is discussed, and the full Jc anisotropy is fitted successfully with the vortex path model. The results are compared to a sample without GBs and Fe particles. 45{\deg} GBs seem to be good pinning centers rather than detrimental to current flow.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, CEC-ICMC 2013 proceeding, accepted for publication in Advances in Cryogenic Engineering (Materials

Validation of a VR cycling simulation in terms of perceived criticality and experience of presence

Cycling offers many benefits, such as reducing traffic congestion, Iower emissions and health benefits. To further promote cycling, the cyclists' perceived safety needs to be addressed. In this context, automated vehicles offer high potential for designing safe and comfortable interactions with cyclists in the future. A key parameter in these interactions constitutes the proximity of vehicles passing cyclists to avoid causing discomfort. To evaluate specific scenarios with varying proximity, cycling simulators provide a safe and standardized environment for traffic safety research. Therefore, there are numerous efforts to implement cycling simulators for use in research. However, it is important to verify the simulator validity to ensure the generalizability of results. In this work, an implementation of a virtual reality (VR) cycling simulation is presented and it is aimed to investigate the simulator validity in terms of perceived criticality in traffic conflict scenarios as well as the participants' experience of presence within the VR cycling simulation. [from Introduction

Investigation of the strain-sensitive superconducting transition of BaFe1.8Co0.2As2 thin films utilizing piezoelectric substrates

The preparation of biaxially textured BaFe1.8Co0.2As2 thin films has been optimized on MgO single crystals and transfered to piezoelectric (001) Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.72Ti0.28O3 substrates. By utilizing the inverse piezoelectric effect the lattice parameter of these substrates can be controlled applying an electric field, leading to a induction of biaxial strain into the superconducting layer. High electric fields were used to achieve a total strain of up to 0.05% at low temperatures. A sharpening of the resistive transition and a shift of about 0.6 K to higher temperatures was found at a compressive strain of 0.035%

Applications of Radio-Frequency Heating in Environmental Technology

AbstractDirect dielectric heating with radio-frequency (RF) electromagnetic fields is used to optimize a variety of processes in environmental technology, namely soil remediation by soil vapor extraction or biodegradation, adsorptive-catalytic off-gas treatment, thermal regeneration of drying agents in biogas or natural gas treatment and decontamination and/or drying of brickwork

EXTRACTION OF RAILROAD OBJECTS FROM VERY HIGH RESOLUTION HELICOPTER-BORNE LIDAR AND ORTHO-IMAGE DATA

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors and digital aerial camera systems using a slow and low flying aircraft provide a new quality of data for a variety of promising large-scale applications. The main of this study objective is the development of methods for the automated object extraction of railway infrastructure from combined helicopter-based extremely dense laser scanner measurement points and very high resolution digital ortho-imagery. Thus, different existing methods from digital image processing, image segmentation and object recognition have been compared regarding their performance, output quality and level of automation. It turned out that all existing methods are not suitable to meet the requirements (geometrical accuracy of the result, amount of data to be processed etc.). Since original LiDAR point data provides a higher accuracy than derived DTM raster data or ortho-imagery new suited methods for the object extraction from point clouds have been developed. For the extraction of linear features, such as rails and catenaries, two new methods were implemented. The first method sets up on pre-classified laser points as input data. Therefore the RANSAC algorithm was implemented successfully to extract linear objects within the environment of MATLAB and ArcGIS. Second, a knowledge-based classification method was designed to compare a reference profile with the situation along the track using IDL. The results show new prospects to automatically extract railroad objects with a high geometrical accuracy from extremely dense LiDAR data without using aerial imagery. The decision not to use image data was especially caused by the enormous data amount t

Validation of a VR cycling simulation in terms of perceived criticality and experience of presence

Cycling offers many benefits, such as reducing traffic congestion, Iower emissions and health benefits. To further promote cycling, the cyclists' perceived safety needs to be addressed. In this context, automated vehicles offer high potential for designing safe and comfortable interactions with cyclists in the future. A key parameter in these interactions constitutes the proximity of vehicles passing cyclists to avoid causing discomfort. To evaluate specific scenarios with varying proximity, cycling simulators provide a safe and standardized environment for traffic safety research. Therefore, there are numerous efforts to implement cycling simulators for use in research. However, it is important to verify the simulator validity to ensure the generalizability of results. In this work, an implementation of a virtual reality (VR) cycling simulation is presented and it is aimed to investigate the simulator validity in terms of perceived criticality in traffic conflict scenarios as well as the participants' experience of presence within the VR cycling simulation. [from Introduction

Validation of a VR cycling simulation in terms of perceived criticality and experience of presence

Cycling offers many benefits, such as reducing traffic congestion, Iower emissions and health benefits. To further promote cycling, the cyclists' perceived safety needs to be addressed. In this context, automated vehicles offer high potential for designing safe and comfortable interactions with cyclists in the future. A key parameter in these interactions constitutes the proximity of vehicles passing cyclists to avoid causing discomfort. To evaluate specific scenarios with varying proximity, cycling simulators provide a safe and standardized environment for traffic safety research. Therefore, there are numerous efforts to implement cycling simulators for use in research. However, it is important to verify the simulator validity to ensure the generalizability of results. In this work, an implementation of a virtual reality (VR) cycling simulation is presented and it is aimed to investigate the simulator validity in terms of perceived criticality in traffic conflict scenarios as well as the participants' experience of presence within the VR cycling simulation. [from Introduction