Modeling Hot Tearing during Solidification of Steels: Assessment and Improvement of Macroscopic Criteria through the Analysis of Two Experimental Tests

International audienceHot tearing is an unacceptable defect found in products and parts obtained by solidification processes such as ingot and continuous casting. It consists of the development of cracks during solidification, in regions that are not completely solidified, more precisely, in areas of mushy zones with a high fraction of solid (typically 0.9 and beyond), when the material undergoes deformations associated with tensile stress. In this study, two hot tearing tests have been studied in order to evaluate the predictive capability of several macroscopic criteria published in the literature. The first test is a new test specifically designed for constrained shrinkage by the present authors, while the second test is an ingot bending test developed in the 1980s. For both tests, a thermal-mechanical analysis is performed, in order to provide the key variables for the different selected criteria. A comparison with experimental results allows us to make a critical assessment of those criteria regarding their ability to predict crack occurrence. The criterion initially proposed by Won et al.[7] has been found to be the best suited for the prediction of solidification cracking. Because this criterion is essentially based on the "brittle temperature range," (BTR) critical considerations regarding nonequilibrium solidification have led to suggest an extension of this criterion. This new macroscopic criterion improves the prediction capacity

A Coupled Electrical-Thermal-Mechanical Modeling of Gleeble Tensile Tests for Ultra-High-Strength (UHS) Steel at a High Temperature

International audienceA coupled electrical-thermal-mechanical model is proposed aimed at the numerical modeling of Gleeble tension tests at a high temperature. A multidomain, multifield coupling resolution strategy is used for the solution of electrical, energy, and momentum conservation equations by means of the finite element method. Its application to ultra-high-strength steel is considered. After calibration with instrumented experiments, numerical results reveal that significant thermal gradients prevail in Gleeble tensile steel specimen in both axial and radial directions. Such gradients lead to the heterogeneous deformation of the specimen, which is a major difficulty for simple identification techniques of constitutive parameters, based on direct estimations of strain, strain rate, and stress. The proposed direct finite element coupled model can be viewed as an important achievement for subsequent inverse identification methods, which should be used to identify constitutive parameters for steel at a high temperature in the solid state and in the mushy state

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe

Search for the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV

A search for a Higgs boson decaying into two photons is described. The analysis is performed using a dataset recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC from pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.8 inverse femtobarns. Limits are set on the cross section of the standard model Higgs boson decaying to two photons. The expected exclusion limit at 95% confidence level is between 1.4 and 2.4 times the standard model cross section in the mass range between 110 and 150 GeV. The analysis of the data excludes, at 95% confidence level, the standard model Higgs boson decaying into two photons in the mass range 128 to 132 GeV. The largest excess of events above the expected standard model background is observed for a Higgs boson mass hypothesis of 124 GeV with a local significance of 3.1 sigma. The global significance of observing an excess with a local significance greater than 3.1 sigma anywhere in the search range 110-150 GeV is estimated to be 1.8 sigma. More data are required to ascertain the origin of this excess.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Measurement of the Lambda(b) cross section and the anti-Lambda(b) to Lambda(b) ratio with Lambda(b) to J/Psi Lambda decays in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The Lambda(b) differential production cross section and the cross section ratio anti-Lambda(b)/Lambda(b) are measured as functions of transverse momentum pt(Lambda(b)) and rapidity abs(y(Lambda(b))) in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The measurements are based on Lambda(b) decays reconstructed in the exclusive final state J/Psi Lambda, with the subsequent decays J/Psi to an opposite-sign muon pair and Lambda to proton pion, using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.9 inverse femtobarns. The product of the cross section times the branching ratio for Lambda(b) to J/Psi Lambda versus pt(Lambda(b)) falls faster than that of b mesons. The measured value of the cross section times the branching ratio for pt(Lambda(b)) > 10 GeV and abs(y(Lambda(b))) < 2.0 is 1.06 +/- 0.06 +/- 0.12 nb, and the integrated cross section ratio for anti-Lambda(b)/Lambda(b) is 1.02 +/- 0.07 +/- 0.09, where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Search for new physics in events with opposite-sign leptons, jets, and missing transverse energy in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search is presented for physics beyond the standard model (BSM) in final states with a pair of opposite-sign isolated leptons accompanied by jets and missing transverse energy. The search uses LHC data recorded at a center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the CMS detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 5 inverse femtobarns. Two complementary search strategies are employed. The first probes models with a specific dilepton production mechanism that leads to a characteristic kinematic edge in the dilepton mass distribution. The second strategy probes models of dilepton production with heavy, colored objects that decay to final states including invisible particles, leading to very large hadronic activity and missing transverse energy. No evidence for an event yield in excess of the standard model expectations is found. Upper limits on the BSM contributions to the signal regions are deduced from the results, which are used to exclude a region of the parameter space of the constrained minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model. Additional information related to detector efficiencies and response is provided to allow testing specific models of BSM physics not considered in this paper.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of isolated photon production in pp and PbPb collisions at sqrt(sNN) = 2.76 TeV

Isolated photon production is measured in proton-proton and lead-lead collisions at nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energies of 2.76 TeV in the pseudorapidity range |eta|<1.44 and transverse energies ET between 20 and 80 GeV with the CMS detector at the LHC. The measured ET spectra are found to be in good agreement with next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD predictions. The ratio of PbPb to pp isolated photon ET-differential yields, scaled by the number of incoherent nucleon-nucleon collisions, is consistent with unity for all PbPb reaction centralities.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters

Search for Lepton-Flavor-Violating and Lepton-Number-Violating tau to lhh' Decay Modes

We search for lepton-flavor-violating and lepton-number-violating tau decays into a lepton (l = electron or muon) and two charged mesons (h, h' = pion or Kaon) using 854 fb^{-1} of data collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e^+e^- collider. We obtain 90% confidence level upper limits on the tau to lhh' branching fractions in the range (2.0-8.4)*10^{-8}. These results improve upon our previously published upper limits by factors of about 1.8 on average.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett.

Measurement of D0-D0 mixing and search for CP violation in D0→K+K-,π+π- decays with the full Belle data set

We report an improved measurement of D0 – D‾0 mixing and a search for CP violation in D0 decays to CP -even final states K+K− and π+π− . The measurement is based on the final Belle data sample of 976 fb −1 . The results are yCP=(1.11±0.22±0.09)% and AΓ=(−0.03±0.20±0.07)% , where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic

Measurement of the mass difference between top quark and antiquark in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe