Effect of Environment on Creep Behavior of an Oxide/Oxide CFCC with ±45° Fiber Orientation

Aerospace applications require materials capable of maintaining superior mechanical properties while operating at high temperatures and oxidizing environments. Nextel™ 720/A (N720/A), an oxide/oxide ceramic matrix composite (CMC) with a porous alumina matrix was developed specifically to provide improved long-term properties and performance at 1200°C. This research evaluated the creep behavior of N720/A with a ±45° fiber orientation at 1200°C in: laboratory air, steam, and argon environments. Creep-rupture tests at the creep stress levels of: 45, 40, 35, and 15 MPa were conducted in each environment. The ultimate tensile strength of N720/A with ±45° fiber orientation was 55 MPa, the elastic modulus (E) was 45 GPa, and failure strain was 0.265%. The creep-rupture results showed a decrease in creep life with increasing creep stress. The material was found to perform best in air, followed by steam, and then argon. Prior to this effort, N720/A was believed to perform best in non-oxidizing environments such as argon. Tests at stress levels ≤ 35 MPa revealed good creep resistance achieving a run out of 100 h in all test environments at 1200°C. Fracture surface observations with a Scanning Electron Microscope showed a correlation between coordinated fiber bundle failure and increased creep life. A qualitative spectral analysis provided evidence of silicon species migration from the mullite phase of the fiber to the matrix in each environment, but increasingly so in steam and argon

Event generation with SHERPA 1.1

In this paper the current release of the Monte Carlo event generator Sherpa, version 1.1, is presented. Sherpa is a general-purpose tool for the simulation of particle collisions at high-energy colliders. It contains a very flexible tree-level matrix-element generator for the calculation of hard scattering processes within the Standard Model and various new physics models. The emission of additional QCD partons off the initial and final states is described through a parton-shower model. To consistently combine multi-parton matrix elements with the QCD parton cascades the approach of Catani, Krauss, Kuhn and Webber is employed. A simple model of multiple interactions is used to account for underlying events in hadron--hadron collisions. The fragmentation of partons into primary hadrons is described using a phenomenological cluster-hadronisation model. A comprehensive library for simulating tau-lepton and hadron decays is provided. Where available form-factor models and matrix elements are used, allowing for the inclusion of spin correlations; effects of virtual and real QED corrections are included using the approach of Yennie, Frautschi and Suura.Comment: 47 pages, 21 figure

The 26^{26}Al Gamma-ray Line from Massive-Star Regions

The measurement of gamma rays from the diffuse afterglow of radioactivity originating in massive-star nucleosynthesis is considered a laboratory for testing models, when specific stellar groups are investigated, at known distance and with well-constrained stellar population. Regions which have been exploited for such studies include Cygnus, Carina, Orion, and Scorpius-Centaurus. The Orion region hosts the Orion OB1 association and its subgroups at about 450~pc distance. We report the detection of $^{26}$Al gamma rays from this region with INTEGRAL/SPI.Comment: Contribution to Symposium "Nuclei in the Cosmos XIV", Niigata, Japan, Jun 2016; 3 pages, 2 figures; accepted for publication in JPS (Japan Physical Society) Conference Proceedings http://jpscp.jps.jp

Coarsening Dynamics of Crystalline Thin Films

The formation of pyramid-like structures in thin-film growth on substrates with a quadratic symmetry, e.g., {001} surfaces, is shown to exhibit anisotropic scaling as there exist two length scales with different time dependences. Analytical and numerical results indicate that for most realizations coarsening of mounds is described by an exponent n=0.2357. However, depending on material parameters, n may lie between 0 (logarithmic coarsening) and 1/3. In contrast, growth on substrates with triangular symmetries ({111} surfaces) is dominated by a single length scale and an exponent n=1/3.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 3 figure

INTEGRAL/SPI γ -ray line spectroscopy : Response and background characteristics

© 2018 ESO. Reproduced with permission from Astronomy & Astrophysics. Content in the UH Research Archive is made available for personal research, educational, and non-commercial purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, all content is protected by copyright, and in the absence of an open license, permissions for further re-use should be sought from the publisher, the author, or other copyright holder.Context. The space based γ-ray observatory INTEGRAL of the European Space Agency (ESA) includes the spectrometer instrument "SPI". This is a coded mask telescope featuring a 19-element Germanium detector array for high-resolution γ-ray spectroscopy, encapsulated in a scintillation detector assembly that provides a veto for background from charged particles. In space, cosmic rays irradiate spacecraft and instruments, which, in spite of the vetoing detectors, results in a large instrumental background from activation of those materials, and leads to deterioration of the charge collection properties of the Ge detectors.Aim. We aim to determine the measurement characteristics of our detectors and their evolution with time, that is, their spectral response and instrumental background. These incur systematic variations in the SPI signal from celestial photons, hence their determination from a broad empirical database enables a reduction of underlying systematics in data analysis. For this, we explore compromises balancing temporal and spectral resolution within statistical limitations. Our goal is to enable modelling of background applicable to spectroscopic studies of the sky, accounting separately for changes of the spectral response and of instrumental background.Methods. We use 13.5 years of INTEGRAL/SPI data, which consist of spectra for each detector and for each pointing of the satellite. Spectral fits to each such spectrum, with independent but coherent treatment of continuum and line backgrounds, provides us with details about separated background components. From the strongest background lines, we first determine how the spectral response changes with time. Applying symmetry and long-term stability tests, we eliminate degeneracies and reduce statistical fluctuations of background parameters, with the aim of providing a self-consistent description of the spectral response for each individual detector. Accounting for this, we then determine how the instrumental background components change in intensities and other characteristics, most-importantly their relative distribution among detectors.Results. Spectral resolution of Ge detectors in space degrades with time, up to 15% within half a year, consistently for all detectors, and across the SPI energy range. Semi-annual annealing operations recover these losses, yet there is a small long-term degradation. The intensity of instrumental background varies anti-correlated to solar activity, in general. There are significant differences among different lines and with respect to continuum. Background lines are found to have a characteristic, well-defined and long-term consistent intensity ratio among detectors. We use this to categorise lines in groups of similar behaviour. The dataset of spectral-response and background parameters as fitted across the INTEGRAL mission allows studies of SPI spectral response and background behaviour in a broad perspective, and efficiently supports precision modelling of instrumental background.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Dysplasia epiphysealis hemimelica of the distal ulna: a case report and review of the literature

Dysplasia epiphysealis hemimelica (DEH) or Trevor's Disease is a very rare disease with an estimated incidence of one in 1.000.000. The majority of cases reported affect the lower limb and only 25 case reports of 33 cases with affection of the upper limb have been published. Here we present a case of DEH affecting the distal ulnar epiphysis and the lunate in an eleven-year-old girl, a DEH location described extremely rarely before. We firstly do not only present clinical and radiological findings (plane radiographs, CT, MRI), but also the surgical approach and the histopathological results of DEH in this uncommon location. Although extremely rare, DEH should be considered also in non-typical locations

Inland extent of the Weddell Sea Rift imaged by new aerogeophysical data

Peer reviewedPostprin

Nuclear currents based on the integral form of the continuity equation

We present an approach to obtain new forms of the nuclear electromagnetic current, which is based on an integral form of the continuity equation. The procedure can be used to restore current conservation in model calculations in which the continuity equation is not verified. Besides, it provides, as a particular result, the so-called Siegert's form of the nuclear current, first obtained by Friar and Fallieros by extending Siegert's theorem to arbitrary values of the momentum transfer. The new currents are explicitly conserved and permit a straightforward analysis of their behavior at both low and high momentum transfers. The results are illustrated with a simple nuclear model which includes a harmonic oscillator mean potential.Comment: 19 pages, revtex, plus 2 PS figure