10,971 research outputs found
Constitutive modeling of steel-polypropylene hybrid fiber reinforced concrete using a non-associated plasticity and its numerical implementation
This paper presents a non-associated plasticity-based constitutive model for hybrid steelâpolypropylene fiber reinforced concrete (HFRC) materials in an attempt to characterize the stressâstrain responses under multiaxial loading scenarios. Together with a five-parameter loading surface and uncoupled hardening and softening regimes, a nonlinear plastic potential function is particularly introduced into the constitutive model with the material constants experimentally determined through a true triaxial compression test, which allows a more accurate estimation of the volumetric dilatency of HFRC. The influence of fiber parameters on the plastic flow direction is also addressed. Furthermore, the developed model is implemented into ABAQUS finite element package through a User-defined Material (UMAT) subroutine that can be applicable for the convenient use in numerical simulation of HFRC materials. A substepping scheme with error control for integrating the elasto-plastic stressâstrain rate equations is presented in detail. Subsequently, the proposed model is evaluated by available multiaxial compression test results of both plain concrete and FRC reported by other researchers. It is shown that the constitutive model can realistically capture the stressâstrain responses as well as the volumetric deformation of HFRC having various fiber reinforcement indices
In-process monitoring and analysis of bearing outer race way grinding based on the power signal
In production engineering, monitoring of the grinding process is critical for acquiring information on material removal, wheel performance, and workpiece quality. Here, a general model of the power signal and material removal rate is proposed to monitor the internal plunge grinding of a bearing outer race way product. Three continuous grinding cycles after dressing were used to analyse the roughing, semi-finishing, finishing and spark-out process under the same parameters. Based on the actual grinding process, a practical analysis method is applied to improve the general model to predict more accurately the power curve. Finally, estimations of grinding wheel performance and grind quality using the grinding power signal model (GPSM) coefficients are also presented. The experimental results showed that the improved power signal model is capable of solving the industrial problem of multi-stage in-feed grinding cycles and improving grind quality
A balanced homodyne detector for high-rate Gaussian-modulated coherent-state quantum key distribution
We discuss excess noise contributions of a practical balanced homodyne
detector in Gaussian-modulated coherent-state (GMCS) quantum key distribution
(QKD). We point out the key generated from the original realistic model of GMCS
QKD may not be secure. In our refined realistic model, we take into account
excess noise due to the finite bandwidth of the homodyne detector and the
fluctuation of the local oscillator. A high speed balanced homodyne detector
suitable for GMCS QKD in the telecommunication wavelength region is built and
experimentally tested. The 3dB bandwidth of the balanced homodyne detector is
found to be 104MHz and its electronic noise level is 13dB below the shot noise
at a local oscillator level of 8.5*10^8 photon per pulse. The secure key rate
of a GMCS QKD experiment with this homodyne detector is expected to reach
Mbits/s over a few kilometers.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figure
Models of Social Groups in Blogosphere Based on Information about Comment Addressees and Sentiments
This work concerns the analysis of number, sizes and other characteristics of
groups identified in the blogosphere using a set of models identifying social
relations. These models differ regarding identification of social relations,
influenced by methods of classifying the addressee of the comments (they are
either the post author or the author of a comment on which this comment is
directly addressing) and by a sentiment calculated for comments considering the
statistics of words present and connotation. The state of a selected blog
portal was analyzed in sequential, partly overlapping time intervals. Groups in
each interval were identified using a version of the CPM algorithm, on the
basis of them, stable groups, existing for at least a minimal assumed duration
of time, were identified.Comment: Gliwa B., Ko\'zlak J., Zygmunt A., Models of Social Groups in
Blogosphere Based on Information about Comment Addressees and Sentiments, in
the K. Aberer et al. (Eds.): SocInfo 2012, LNCS 7710, pp. 475-488, Best Paper
Awar
Nonperturbative Determination of Heavy Meson Bound States
In this paper we obtain a heavy meson bound state equation from the heavy
quark equation of motion in heavy quark effective theory (HQET) and the heavy
meson effective field theory we developed very recently. The bound state
equation is a covariant extention of the light-front bound state equation for
heavy mesons derived from light-front QCD and HQET. We determine the covariant
heavy meson wave function variationally by minimizing the binding energy
. Subsequently the other basic HQET parameters and
, and the heavy quark masses and can also be
consistently determined.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur
Antiviral treatment alters the frequency of activating and inhibitory receptor-expressing natural killer cells in chronic Hepatitis B virus infected patients
Natural killer (NK) cells play a critical role in innate antiviral immunity, but little is known about the impact of antiviral therapy on the frequency of NK cell subsets. To this aim, we performed this longitudinal study to examine the dynamic changes of the frequency of different subsets of NK cells in CHB patients after initiation of tenofovir or adefovir therapy. We found that NK cell numbers and subset distribution differ between CHB patients and normal subjects; furthermore, the association was found between ALT level and CD158b+ NK cell in HBV patients. In tenofovir group, the frequency of NK cells increased during the treatment accompanied by downregulated expression of NKG2A and KIR2DL3. In adefovir group, NK cell numbers did not differ during the treatment, but also accompanied by downregulated expression of NKG2A and KIR2DL3. Our results demonstrate that treatment with tenofovir leads to viral load reduction, and correlated with NK cell frequencies in peripheral blood of chronic hepatitis B virus infection. In addition, treatments with both tenofovir and adefovir in chronic HBV infected patients induce a decrease of the frequency of inhibitory receptor+ NK cells, which may account for the partial restoration of the function of NK cells in peripheral blood following treatment
Security proof of a three-state quantum key distribution protocol without rotational symmetry
Standard security proofs of quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols often
rely on symmetry arguments. In this paper, we prove the security of a
three-state protocol that does not possess rotational symmetry. The three-state
QKD protocol we consider involves three qubit states, where the first two
states, |0_z> and |1_z>, can contribute to key generation and the third state,
|+>=(|0_z>+|1_z>)/\sqrt{2}, is for channel estimation. This protocol has been
proposed and implemented experimentally in some frequency-based QKD systems
where the three states can be prepared easily. Thus, by founding on the
security of this three-state protocol, we prove that these QKD schemes are, in
fact, unconditionally secure against any attacks allowed by quantum mechanics.
The main task in our proof is to upper bound the phase error rate of the qubits
given the bit error rates observed. Unconditional security can then be proved
not only for the ideal case of a single-photon source and perfect detectors,
but also for the realistic case of a phase-randomized weak coherent light
source and imperfect threshold detectors. Our result on the phase error rate
upper bound is independent of the loss in the channel. Also, we compare the
three-state protocol with the BB84 protocol. For the single-photon source case,
our result proves that the BB84 protocol strictly tolerates a higher quantum
bit error rate than the three-state protocol; while for the coherent-source
case, the BB84 protocol achieves a higher key generation rate and secure
distance than the three-state protocol when a decoy-state method is used.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 2 column
- âŠ