Dimensional instability of cement bonded particleboard: Modelling CBPB as a composite of two materials

Copyright @ Springer Verlag. This is a post print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below.Previous papers have quantitatively indicated that the total movement of cement bonded particleboard (CBPB) is equal to the sum of the movement of its components. This paper examined the efficacy of the law of mixtures when applied to the movement of a wood-cement composite under internal swelling or shrinkage stresses. Abundant data generated in companion papers were first manipulated to develop the universal formulae for predicting the movement of components. In conjunction with previous numerical results from image analysis of the structure of CBPB, and the orientated elasticity and stress algorithms, the models for theoretically predicting mass and dimensional changes of CBPB were derived. Validation studies were conducted and these demonstrated an excellent agreement of the theoretical predictions with experimental data for both mass and dimensional changes of CBPB due to internal swelling or shrinkage stresses during adsorption and desorption. The success also implied that CBPB can be treated as a composite and its properties can be well derived by the law of mixtures even though CBPB is an unusual type of composite having a very high volume fraction of wood chips, but a very high mass fraction of cement paste

Dimensional instability of cement bonded particleboard - Part 2: Behaviour and its prediction under cyclic changes in RH

This is a post print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below.This paper examines the dimensional instability of cement bonded particleboard (CBPB) and discusses the behaviour of CBPB during cyclic changes in relative humidities (RH). The results indicated that the changes of CBPB in both mass and dimensions reflected the changes in RH; in a cycle 90–65–35–65–90%RH the change of per percentage change in RH was 1.0:1.3:1.3:2.5 for mass, 1:2:2:1 for length and 1.3:1.1:1.0:1.0 for thickness. The changes were closely related to the structure of CBPB and the nature of the cement paste and wood chips. Thickness change was double that of the length change between 65 and 35%RH and triple that between 65 and 90%RH. The rate of change in mass was much higher than that in dimensions. The hysteresis loops were dissimilar to those of other wood and wood-based materials, with the loops of mass change closed between 65 and 90%RH, while the loops for dimensional changes were open. A set of the former loops moved upward and the latter moved downward with increasing number of cycles, corresponding to an accumulated increase in mass, but decrease in dimensions. The models developed for CBPB under constant and a single changing RH were successfully applied to changes under cyclic RH. The sorption behaviour and dimensional movement of CBPB has been shown to be influenced not only by RH, but also by its intermediate history, with the maximum values for change within every phase of sorption, in both mass and dimensions, being higher for the cycling between 35–90%RH than the cycling regime 35–65–90%RH. The ratios of dimensional changes to mass change of CBPB were greater under the latter regime than under the former regime.Partly Financial Support from the British Council

Process for making composite products

This is the patent application documentation.A process for making composite products such as doors comprises the steps of : i) forming a mass of plant fibres; ii) coating the mass of plant fibres with at least one resin and at least one catalyst without agitating the mass of plant fibres; iii) compacting the mass of plant fbres; and iv) curing the compacted mass of plant fibres; wherein the process also comprises the step of drying the plant fibres wither before and/or after step ii)

Process for making composite products from fibrous waste material

This is the patent application documentation.A process for making composite products from waste material comprises the steps of a) obtaining fibrous material produced by the thermal treatment of waste materials with pressurised steam; b) mixing the fibrous material with a binding material; c) forming he resulting mixture into a shape; d) pressing the shaped mixture under pressure; and e) hardening the mixture; wherein the process also comprises the steps of the separating out the fibrous material and deodorising the fibrous material. The waste material may be domestic bin liner waste

Global Analysis of the Higgs Candidate with Mass ~ 125 GeV

We analyze the properties of the Higgs candidate with mass ~ 125 GeV discovered by the CMS and ATLAS Collaborations, constraining the possible deviations of its couplings from those of a Standard Model Higgs boson. The CMS, ATLAS and Tevatron data are compatible with Standard Model couplings to massive gauge bosons and fermions, and disfavour several types of composite Higgs models unless their couplings resemble those in the Standard Model. We show that the couplings of the Higgs candidate are consistent with a linear dependence on particle masses, scaled by the electroweak scale ~ 246 GeV, the power law and the mass scale both having uncertainties ~ 20%.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, v2 incorporates experimental data released during July 2012 and corrected (and improved) treatment of mass dependence of coupling

All-Fiber Passively Q-Switched Laser Based on Tm³⁺-Doped Tellurite Fiber

We report all-fiber passively Q-switched Tm3+-doped tellurite fiber lasers. The composite tellurite fiber is specially designed to improve the mechanical strength. Both carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) are inserted separately into the laser cavities as saturable absorbers to demonstrate a fiber integrated setup. In a short, 9 cm tellurite fiber, 1.86 μm pulsed lasers without self-mode-locking effect are demonstrated by in-band pumping at 1.59 μm. An average power of 84 mW is obtained in CNT pulsed laser with 860 ns duration while in SESAM pulsed laser, the average power reaches 21mW with 516 ns pulse width.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61308084, Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai under Grant 12ZR1451600, and Granted Membership of Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6998013

A Collective Breaking of R-Parity

Supersymmetric theories with an R-parity generally yield a striking missing energy signature, with cascade decays concluding in a neutralino that escapes the detector. In theories where R-parity is broken the missing energy is replaced with additional jets or leptons, often making traditional search strategies ineffective. Such R-parity violation is very constrained, however, by resulting B and L violating signals, requiring couplings so small that LSPs will decay outside the detector in all but a few scenarios. In theories with additional matter fields, R-parity can be broken collectively, such that R-parity is not broken by any single coupling, but only by an ensemble of couplings. Cascade decays can proceed normally, with each step only sensitive to one or two couplings at a time, but B and L violation requires the full set, yielding a highly suppressed constraint. s-channel production of new scalar states, typically small for standard RPV, can be large when RPV is broken collectively. While missing energy is absent, making these models difficult to discover by traditional SUSY searches, they produce complicated many object resonances (MORes), with many different possible numbers of jets and leptons. We outline a simple model and discuss its discoverability at the LHC.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figure

Four patients with a history of acute exacerbations of COPD: implementing the CHEST/Canadian Thoracic Society guidelines for preventing exacerbations

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WIMP-nucleus scattering in chiral effective theory

We discuss long-distance QCD corrections to the WIMP-nucleon(s) interactions in the framework of chiral effective theory. For scalar-mediated WIMP-quark interactions, we calculate all the next-to-leading-order corrections to the WIMP-nucleus elastic cross-section, including two-nucleon amplitudes and recoil-energy dependent shifts to the single-nucleon scalar form factors. As a consequence, the scalar-mediated WIMP-nucleus cross-section cannot be parameterized in terms of just two quantities, namely the neutron and proton scalar form factors at zero momentum transfer, but additional parameters appear, depending on the short-distance WIMP-quark interaction. Moreover, multiplicative factorization of the cross-section into particle, nuclear and astro-particle parts is violated. In practice, while the new effects are of the natural size expected by chiral power counting, they become very important in those regions of parameter space where the leading order WIMP-nucleus amplitude is suppressed, including the so-called "isospin-violating dark matter" regime. In these regions of parameter space we find order-of-magnitude corrections to the total scattering rates and qualitative changes to the shape of recoil spectra.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Robust optical delay lines via topological protection

Phenomena associated with topological properties of physical systems are naturally robust against perturbations. This robustness is exemplified by quantized conductance and edge state transport in the quantum Hall and quantum spin Hall effects. Here we show how exploiting topological properties of optical systems can be used to implement robust photonic devices. We demonstrate how quantum spin Hall Hamiltonians can be created with linear optical elements using a network of coupled resonator optical waveguides (CROW) in two dimensions. We find that key features of quantum Hall systems, including the characteristic Hofstadter butterfly and robust edge state transport, can be obtained in such systems. As a specific application, we show that the topological protection can be used to dramatically improve the performance of optical delay lines and to overcome limitations related to disorder in photonic technologies.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures + 12 pages of supplementary informatio