1,393 research outputs found
Determination of Fracture Toughness of Anisotropic Rocks Under Water Vapour Pressure by Semi-Circular Bend Test
Failure of rock materials is a process of crack propagation. Crack initiation takes place when the crack tip stress intensity K reaches a critical value called fracture toughness, K1C. The rock fracture toughness is known to be affected by the surrounding environment such as temperature, confining pressure and humidity. In order to examine the effect of humidity a series of semi-circular bend tests were performed under various water vapour pressures in a rock material that is known to be anisotropic. Water vapour promotes stress corrosion of rock and therefore the fracture toughness was found to have a decreasing trend with increasing water vapour pressure. The rate of decreasing the fracture toughness depends on the microcrack density that promotes the migration of water vapour into the rock. Also in an anisotropic rock the fracture toughness depends on the direction of crack in relation to the anisotropy of the rock material
Measurement by FIB on the ISS: Two Emissions of Solar Neutrons Detected?
A new type of solar neutron detector (FIB) was launched onboard the Space
Shuttle Endeavour on July 16, 2009, and it began collecting data at the
International Space Station (ISS) on August 25, 2009. This paper summarizes the
three years of observations obtained by the solar neutron detector FIB until
the end of July 2012. The solar neutron detector FIB can determine both the
energy and arrival direction of neutrons. We measured the energy spectra of
background neutrons over the SAA region and elsewhere, and found the typical
trigger rates to be 20 counts/sec and 0.22 counts/sec, respectively. It is
possible to identify solar neutrons to within a level of 0.028 counts/sec,
provided that directional information is applied. Solar neutrons were observed
in association with the M-class solar flares that occurred on March 7 (M3.7)
and June 7 (M2.5) of 2011. This marked the first time that neutrons were
observed in M-class solar flares. A possible interpretaion of the prodcution
process is provided.Comment: 36 pages, 16 figures, and 3 Tables; Advanced in Astronmy, 2012,
Special issue on Cosmic Ray Variablity:Century of Its Obseravtion
Versatile implementation in angle-resolved optical microscopy: its application to local spectrometry of microcavities with PIC-J-aggregates
Versatile novel implementations in microspectroscopy are developed, which can provide angle-resolved optical spectroscopy at local sample areas almost in diffraction limit. By selecting focus position of light flux incident within the back focal plane of the objective lens radially from the position of the optical axis of the microscope with employing off-centered pinhole, we can obtain parallel beam with oblique incidence and its angle tuning at the sample surface. In this paper, we describe our specific optical setup and its practical working principle in detail. We report, as a demonstration of its performance, our latest studies on optical properties of cavity polariton states in the so-called quantum microcavity structures, which contain molecular J-aggregates of pseudoisocyanine (PIC) dye as active working materials. By using the microscope technique, we obtain a fair amount of improvement in the linewidth observation of cavity polariton spectra
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