14,581 research outputs found

    Development of a mechatronic sorting system for removing contaminants from wool

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    Automated visual inspection (AVI) systems have been extended to many fields, such as agriculture and the food, plastic and textile industries. Generally, most visual systems only inspect product defects, and then analyze and grade them due to the lack of any sorting function. This main reason rests with the difficulty of using the image data in real time. However, it is increasingly important to either sort good products from bad or grade products into separate groups usingAVI systems. This article describes the development of a mechatronic sorting system and its integration with a vision system for automatically removing contaminants from wool in real time. The integration is implemented by a personal computer, which continuously processes live images under the Windows 2000 operating system. The developed real-time sorting approach is also applicable to many other AVI systems

    Generation of internal stress and its effects

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    Internal stresses may be generated continually in many polycrystalline materials. Their existence is manifested by changes in crystal defect concentration and arrangement, by surface observations, by macroscopic shape changes and particularly by alteration of mechanical properties when external stresses are simultaneously imposed

    Crowding at the Front of the Marathon Packs

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    We study the crowding of near-extreme events in the time gaps between successive finishers in major international marathons. Naively, one might expect these gaps to become progressively larger for better-placing finishers. While such an increase does indeed occur from the middle of the finishing pack down to approximately 20th place, the gaps saturate for the first 10-20 finishers. We give a probabilistic account of this feature. However, the data suggests that the gaps have a weak maximum around the 10th place, a feature that seems to have a sociological origin.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; version 2: published manuscript with various changes in response to referee comments and some additional improvement

    The effect of combustor outlet temperature profiles on ramjet thrust

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    The desirability of obtaining an even distribution of temperature at the outlet of a ramjet combustor is indicated theoretically. Results of experiments on a particular combustion system over a limited range of conditions using a series of mixers are presented. The results suggest that mixers are desirable for high Mach Number ramjets operating at low overall fuel-air ratios. The material presented in this report is based on the work carried out by M. R. Williams in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Diploma of the College of Aeronautics, and is essentially a summary of his thesis. The work was part of M.O.S. Research Contract 7/Exptl./72

    Irreversibility in response to forces acting on graphene sheets

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    The amount of rippling in graphene sheets is related to the interactions with the substrate or with the suspending structure. Here, we report on an irreversibility in the response to forces that act on suspended graphene sheets. This may explain why one always observes a ripple structure on suspended graphene. We show that a compression-relaxation mechanism produces static ripples on graphene sheets and determine a peculiar temperature TcT_c, such that for T<TcT<T_c the free-energy of the rippled graphene is smaller than that of roughened graphene. We also show that TcT_c depends on the structural parameters and increases with increasing sample size.Comment: 4 pages, 4 Figure

    Influence of copper on the electronic properties of amorphous chalcogenides

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    We have studied the influence of alloying copper with amorphous arsenic sulfide on the electronic properties of this material. In our computer-generated models, copper is found in two-fold near-linear and four-fold square-planar configurations, which apparently correspond to Cu(I) and Cu(II) oxidation states. The number of overcoordinated atoms, both arsenic and sulfur, grows with increasing concentration of copper. Overcoordinated sulfur is found in trigonal planar configuration, and overcoordinated (four-fold) arsenic is in tetrahedral configuration. Addition of copper suppresses the localization of lone-pair electrons on chalcogen atoms, and localized states at the top of the valence band are due to Cu 3d orbitals. Evidently, these additional Cu states, which are positioned at the same energies as the states due to ([As4]-)-([S_3]+) pairs, are responsible for masking photodarkening in Cu chalcogenides
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