The Role of Plastic Flow in Processes of High-speed Sintering of Ceramic Materials under Pressure

A model to describe the kinetics of the compaction of conductive nitride ceramics using electropulse technologies is developed. The relationship between density and pressure is established on the basis of three components of the geometric, plastic and stressed state, which is affects the contact area between the particles. The model takes into account the change in the relative area of the interpartial contacts under the action oftwo mechanisms of mass transfer-diffusion and plastic flow. It is shown that a decrease in the particle size of the powder leads to an in-crease in the diffusion contribution and a decrease in the plastic flow, at all other conditions being equal. And for the case of nano-sized particles, diffusion mass transfer is predominant.Increasing in the heating rate leads to a decrease in the contribution of dif-fusion mass transfer at equal temperatures, as well as to an increase in the temperature of the beginning of shrinkage.The processes of plasma-plasma sintering, high-voltage electro-pulsed consolidation and hot pressing control the same mechanisms, plastic flow and diffusion mass transfer, which do not require, in the first approximation, the influence of the electric current on the properties of materials. Keywords: spark-plasma sintering, high-voltage electrodischarge consolidation, sintering kinetic

Effect of an electric field on superfluid helium scintillation produced by alpha-particle sources

We report a study of the intensity and time dependence of scintillation produced by weak alpha particle sources in superfluid helium in the presence of an electric field (0 - 45 kV/cm) in the temperature range of 0.2 K to 1.1 K at the saturated vapor pressure. Both the prompt and the delayed components of the scintillation exhibit a reduction in intensity with the application of an electric field. The reduction in the intensity of the prompt component is well approximated by a linear dependence on the electric field strength with a reduction of 15% at 45 kV/cm. When analyzed using the Kramers theory of columnar recombination, this electric field dependence leads to the conclusion that roughly 40% of the scintillation results from species formed from atoms originally promoted to excited states and 60% from excimers created by ionization and subsequent recombination with the charges initially having a cylindrical Gaussian distribution about the alpha track of 60 nm radius. The intensity of the delayed component of the scintillation has a stronger dependence on the electric field strength and on temperature. The implications of these data on the mechanisms affecting scintillation in liquid helium are discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 23 figure

The environment effect on operation of in-vessel mirrors for plasma diagnostics in fusion devices

First mirrors will be the plasma facing components of optical diagnostic systems in ITER. Mirror surfaces will undergo modification caused by erosion and re-deposition processes [1,2]. As a consequence, the mirror performance may be changed and may deteriorate [3,4]. In the divertor region it may also be obscured by deposition [5-7]. The limited access to in-vessel components of ITER calls for testing the mirror materials in present day devices in order to gather information on the material damage and degradation of the mirror performance, i.e. reflectivity. A dedicated experimental programme, First Mirror Test (FMT), has been initiated at the JET tokamak within the framework Tritium Retention Studies (TRS).Comment: 12th International Congress on Plasma Physics, 25-29 October 2004, Nice (France).Submitted by B. Schunke on behalf of V. Voytseny

Treatment of petroleum-contaminated water resources: modern techniques

The article deals with the issue of petroleum-contaminated water resources. The authors have analyzed the dynamics of oil spills, including the world's largest ones, and claimed the issue to be global. The modern methods of mitigating oil spill effects have been studied, as well as the modern techniques of water resource treatment. The particular attention is paid to peat sorbent production, which is considered a promising trend of petroleum- contaminated water treatment

Short-term Mechanical Properties of Fe-Cr-Al-Si Alloys

The purpose of this work is to study the short-term mechanical properties of Fe-Cr-AlSi-based alloys. Within the framework of this work, alloys with a chromium content of 5 to 14 wt%, aluminum from 0 to 4 wt%, and silicon from 0 to 4 wt% are considered. The samples were tested in three different states - in the deformed state (cold rolling by 80%), and also after annealing at a temperature of 450 and 650 ∘C with a duration of 1000 h.As a result, the characteristics of the strength and plasticity of alloys in the deformed state, as well as after provoking annealing, were obtained. It is shown that embrittlement isn’t observed in the investigated composition region and annealing conditions, and the strength of the alloys is directly proportional to the sum of the alloying elements Al + Si. Keywords: cladding; VVER; tolerant fuel, ferrite steel; Corrosion-resistant steel, tensile strength, yield strengt

Shock-induced structures in copper

Shock loading of M3 copper within strain rate range of 5·10 6-5,7·10 6 s -1 reveals a nucleation of structural objects of 5-30 µm in diameter, which present the three dimensional frameworks composed from shear bands of 50-200 nm spacing. The structures are shown to be nucleated by means of interference of longitudinal and periphery release waves. Transition of the material into structure unstable state responsible for the shear banding happens when rate of change of the velocity variance at the mesoscale becomes higher than the rate of change of the mean particle velocity. The sites of nucleation of 3D-structures are speculated to be the staking faults generated under action of chaotic velocity pulsations relevant to dynamic deformation. The physical model for formation of 3D-structures takes into account the intersection of the partial dislocations and Lomer - Cottrell barriers