A Quasi-Nondestructive Evaluation Method for Physical-Mechanical Properties of Fragile Archaeological Wood with TMA: A Case Study of an 800-Year-Old Shipwreck

Archaeological wood is a kind of ‘new material’ that has deteriorated due to long-term degradation. The existing wood science theory and evaluation methods are not fully applicable to archaeological wood. Moreover, current physical-mechanical evaluation methods are inadequate for fragile archaeological wood due to their insufficient accuracy and the large sample amount required, causing difficulties in many necessary physical-mechanical repeatability tests. In light of these limitations, the representative samples on Nanhai No. 1, a merchant shipwreck in the Song Dynasty, were selected as the research objects in this paper. The shipwreck is a typical waterlogged wooden artifact. A quasi-nondestructive physical-mechanical evaluation technique for archaeological wood was developed with the thermomechanical analyzer (TMA). This study used TMA to evaluate the bending strength of representative waterlogged archaeological samples of Nanhai No. 1 shipwreck and sound wood with the same species. Besides, the thermal linear expansion coefficients in the ambient temperature range were obtained. The sizes of the samples used in the tests were only 2 mm × 8 mm × 0.3 mm and 1 cm × 1 cm × 1 cm, respectively. Bending strength results of archaeological wood by the TMA method conformed to the tendency that the bending strength decreases with the increase of decay degree. In addition, the longitudinal linear expansion coefficients of archaeological wood reached 80%–115% of those in the transverse grain direction, which were about 10 times higher than those of the sound wood. The linear expansion coefficients of archaeological wood in three directions were similar. Based on the results of Fourier transform infrared analysis (FT-IR), the significant differences in the physical-mechanical properties of the archaeological wood and the sound wood were induced to be mainly ascribed to the decomposition and the loss of hemicellulose in the archaeological wood. The cell wall substrate could not stabilize the cellulose skeleton, which led to the instability of the tracheid structure of the archaeological wood. This study provided a proven quasi-nondestructive method for the preservation state evaluation of waterlogged archaeological wood (WAW) from the Nanhai I shipwreck and other similar waterlogged wooden relics.

Деформация тонких пленок полуметаллов методом купольного изгиба подложки

The results of a study of the semimetal films deformation produced by dome bending of the substrate are presented. Deformation control was carried out by means of X-ray diffraction analysis. It is shown that the dome bending method can be used to study films under planar deformation in a film-substrate system with different thermal expansion coefficients. The maximum in-plane deformation for bismuth films of 1 mkm thickness order was found. It was shown that the deformation created by the dome bending of the substrate in combination with the use of substrates with different temperature expansion makes it possible to obtain a relative in-plane deformation of bismuth films up to 0.8% at 300 K.

Challenges toward applying UHTC-based composite coating on graphite substrate by spark plasma sintering

In this study, the UHTC-based composite layers where applied on the graphite substrates using SPS method to protect them against ablation. The protective layers had some defects and problems such as crack, fracture, separation, melting, and weak adhesion to the substrate. Several factors such as the thickness of composite layer, the number of protective layers, the SPS conditions (temperature, applied pressure, soaking time and mold), the chemical composition of the layers, the type of the substrate and the mismatch between the thermal expansion coefficients of the substrate and the applied layer(s) affected the quality and connection of the protective layer to the graphite substrate. The amount of additive materials influenced the melting phenomenon in the composite layer; for example, further MoSi2 in the layer led to more melting. The mismatch between the thermal expansion coefficients of the graphite substrate and the composite layer caused stresses during the cooling step, which resulted in cracks in the applied layer. Hence, proximity in the thermal expansion coefficients seems to be necessary for the formation of an acceptable adhesion between the layer and the substrate.

Parametric study on the influence of material properties and geometry on the thermally induced bistability of composite laminates

This paper presents a parametric study on the key parameters that control the thermally induced bistability of cross-ply laminates. The influence of the material properties including the moduli of elasticity and the thermal expansion coefficients and the laminate’s geometry including the aspect ratio (AR) and the width-to-thickness ratio are investigated. The unsymmetric [Formula: see text] and the antisymmetric [Formula: see text] cross-ply laminates are investigated. Five key parameters are varied: the number of plies, the width-to-thickness ratio, the laminate’s aspect ratio, the ratio of the moduli of elasticity, and the ratio of the thermal expansion coefficients of the lamina. The laminate is assumed flat at the cured temperature and a uniform temperature gradient is applied until it is reduced to the room temperature. For each set of parameters, the stable equilibrium shapes of the laminate are obtained using a Ritz model. The ABAQUS finite element package is used to validate the model and an excellent agreement is obtained. Results that show the variation of the curvatures with the width-to-thickness ratio and the onset of the bistability for a variety of parameters are presented. The ratio of the moduli of elasticity and the thermal expansion coefficients significantly affect the critical width-to-thickness ratio at which the laminates become bistable. The unsymmetric laminates show bistability at a lower width-to-thickness ratio compared with the antisymmetric laminates. The results also show that the higher the aspect ratio, the lower the critical width-to-thickness ratio for stability for both laminates.

Development of epitaxial PbS layers obtaining method for photoelectric transducers

Photoelectric transducers are a semiconductor device that converts photonic energy into electrical energy. This paper describes obtained by the hotwall epitaxy method epitaxial PbS layers technology. Materials, methods, technological parameters of synthesis were selected and substantiated. A theoretical model of the p-n transition has been developed. The calculation of the main parameters has been done. The hotwall epitaxy method was chosen for the synthesis, because it allows to obtain layers with required properties in a single technological cycle with an economical consumption of material. BaF2 was chosen as the substrate, because in this case a smaller difference in the identity periods and the layer and the substrate thermal expansion coefficients is achieved.

A New Attractive Method in Solving Families of Fractional Differential Equations by a New Transform

In this paper, we use the ARA transform to solve families of fractional differential equations. New formulas about the ARA transform are presented and implemented in solving some applications. New results related to the ARA integral transform of the Riemann-Liouville fractional integral and the Caputo fractional derivative are obtained and the last one is implemented to create series solutions for the target equations. The procedure proposed in this article is mainly based on some theorems of particular solutions and the expansion coefficients of binomial series. In order to achieve the accuracy and simplicity of the new method, some numerical examples are considered and solved. We obtain the solutions of some families of fractional differential equations in a series form and we show how these solutions lead to some important results that include generalizations of some classical methods.

Numerical solution of a weakly singular integral equation by the method of orthogonal polynomials

A scheme is constructed for the numerical solution of a singular integral equation with a logarithmic kernel by the method of orthogonal polynomials. The proposed schemes for an approximate solution of the problem are based on the representation of the solution function in the form of a linear combination of the Chebyshev orthogonal polynomials and spectral relations that allows to obtain simple analytical expressions for the singular component of the equation. The expansion coefficients of the solution in terms of the Chebyshev polynomial basis are calculated by solving a system of linear algebraic equations. The results of numerical experiments show that on a grid of 20 –30 points, the error of the approximate solution reaches the minimum limit due to the error in representing real floating-point numbers.

Effects of interfacial residual stress on mechanical behavior of SiCf/SiC composites

Layer-structured interphase, existing between reinforcing fiber and ceramics matrix, is an indispensable constituent for fiber-reinforced ceramic composites due to its determinant role in the mechanical behavior of the composites. However, the interphase may suffer high residual stress because of the mismatch of thermal expansion coefficients in the constituents, and this can exert significant influence on the mechanical behavior of the composites. Here, the residual stress in the boron nitride (BN) interphase of continuous SiC fiber-reinforced SiC composites was measured using a micro-Raman spectrometer. The effects of the residual stress on the mechanical behavior of the composites were investigated by correlating the residual stress with the mechanical properties of the composites. The results indicate that the residual stress increases from 26.5 to 82.6 MPa in tension as the fabrication temperature of the composites rises from 1500 to 1650 °C. Moreover, the increasing tensile residual stress leads to significant variation of tensile strain, tensile strength, and fiber/matrix debonding mode of the composites. The sublayer slipping of the interphase caused by the residual stress should be responsible for the transformation of the mechanical behavior. This work can offer important guidance for residual stress adjustment in fiber-reinforced ceramic composites.