The use of stereo scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to investigate the wear mechanism of the wire EDM true metal bond diamond wheel for ceramic grinding is presented. On the grinding wheel, a wedge-shape removal part was machined to enable the examination and measurement of the worn wheel surfaces using the stereo SEM. The stereo SEM was calibrated by comparing results of depth profile of a wear groove with the profilometer measurements. On the surface of the grinding wheel after wire EDM truing and before grinding, the diamond protruding heights were measured in the level of 35 {micro}m, comparing to the 54 {micro}m average size of the diamond in the grinding wheel. The gap between the EDM wire and rotating grinding wheel is estimated to be about 35 to 40 {micro}m. This observation indicates that, during the wire EDM, electrical sparks occur between the metal bond and EDM wire, which leaves the diamond protruding in the gap between the wire and wheel. The protruding diamond is immediately fractured at the start of the grinding process, even under a light grinding condition. After heavy grinding, the grinding wheel surface and the diamond protrusion heights are also investigated using the stereo SEM. The …

Results of applying the wire Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) process to generate precise cylindrical forms on hard, difficult-to-machine materials are presented. A precise, flexible, and corrosion-resistant underwater rotary spindle was designed and added to a conventional two-axis wire EDM machine to enable the generation of free-form cylindrical geometries. A detailed spindle error analysis identifies the major source of error at different frequency. The mathematical model for the material removal of cylindrical wire EDM process is derived. Experiments were conducted to explore the maximum material removal rate for cylindrical and 2D wire EDM of carbide and brass work-materials. Compared to the 2D wire EDM, higher maximum material removal rates may be achieved in the cylindrical wire EDM. This study also investigates the surface integrity and roundness of parts created by the cylindrical wire EDM process. For carbide parts, an arithmetic average surface roughness and roundness as low as 0.68 and 1.7 {micro}m, respectively, can be achieved. Surfaces of the cylindrical EDM parts were examined using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to identify the craters, sub-surface recast layers and heat-affected zones under various process parameters. This study has demonstrated that the cylindrical wire EDM process parameters can be adjusted to achieve either high …

The goal of this project has been to develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a new technology for maintenance engineering: a Just-In-Time Maintenance (JITM) system for rotating machines. The JITM system is based on several key developments at Texas A and M over the past ten years in emerging intelligent information technologies, which if integrated into a single system could provide a revolutionary approach in the way maintenance is performed. Rotating machines, such as induction motors, range from a few horse power (hp) to several thousand hp in size, and they are widely used in nuclear power plants and in other industries. Forced outages caused by induction motor failures are the reason for as much as 15% - 40% of production costs to be attributable to maintenance, whereas plant shutdowns caused by induction motor failures result in daily financial losses to the utility and process industries of $1 M or more. The basic components of the JITM system are the available machine sensors, that is electric current sensors and accelerometers, and the computational algorithms used in the analysis and interpretation of the occurring incipient failures. The JITM system can reduce the costs attributable to maintenance by about 40% and it …

This project was initially targeted to the making of coke for blast furnaces by using proprietary technology of Calderon in a phased approach, and Phase I was completed. The project was then re-directed to the making of iron units. U.S. Steel teamed up with Calderon for a joint effort which will last 30 months to produce directly reduced iron with the potential of converting it into molten iron (hot metal) consistent with the Roadmap recommendations of 1998 prepared by the Steel Industry in cooperation with the Department of Energy. The work which is labeled as Phase II will take place at two levels; namely, the bench scale level and the process development unit (PDU) level.

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A review was conducted of past laboratory-scale test methods and to assess their validity for ranking materials and lubricants for use as piston and liner materials in compression-ignition (CI) and spark-ignition (SI) engines. Most of the previous work was aimed at simulating SI engine environments. This report begins with a discussion of the numerous factors that can affect the validity of an approach to simulating engine conditions in a laboratory. These include not only mechanical, chemical and thermal factors, but also human factors as regards how the vehicle is operated and maintained. The next section provides an annotated review of open literature publications that address the issues of laboratory simulation of engine components. A comparison of these studies indicates a lack of sufficient standardization in procedures to enable a systematic comparison of one publication to another. There were just a few studies that compared several laboratory test methods to engine test results, and these indicated that some test methods correlate, at least qualitatively, better than others. The last section provides a series of recommendations for improving the accuracy and validity of laboratory-scale simulations of engine behavior. It became clear that much of the engine wear damage occurs during start-up when …

Recent work on the VIM Monte Carlo code has aimed at advanced data libraries, ease of use, availability to users outside of Argonne, and fission source convergence algorithms in eigenvalue calculations. VIM is one of three US Monte Carlo codes in the USDOE Nuclear Criticality Safety Program, and is available through RSICC and the NEA Data Bank.

By employing stimulated Raman backscattering in a plasma, information carried by a laser pulse can be captured in the form of a very slowly propagating plasma wave that persists for a time large compared with the pulse duration. If the plasma is then probed with a short laser pulse, the information stored in the plasma wave can be retrieved in a second scattered electromagnetic wave. The recording and retrieving processes can conserve robustly the pulse shape, thus enabling the recording and retrieving with fidelity of information stored in optical signals.

Major automobile companies worldwide are undertaking vigorous research and development efforts aimed at developing fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs). Proton membrane exchange (PEM)-based FCVs require hydrogen (H{sub 2}) as the fuel-cell (FC) fuel. Because production and distribution infrastructure for H{sub 2} off board FCVs as a transportation fuel does not exist yet, researchers are developing FCVs that can use hydrocarbon fuels, such as methanol (MeOH) and gasoline, for onboard production of H{sub 2} via fuel processors. Direct H{sub 2} FCVs have no vehicular emissions, while FCVs powered by hydrocarbon fuels have near-zero emissions of criteria pollutants and some carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) emissions. However, production of H{sub 2} can generate a large amount of emissions and suffer significant energy losses. A complete evaluation of the energy and emission impacts of FCVs requires an analysis of energy use and emissions during all stages, from energy feedstock wells to vehicle wheels--a so-called ''well-to-wheels'' (WTW) analysis. This paper focuses on FCVs powered by several transportation fuels. Gasoline vehicles (GVs) equipped with internal combustion engines (ICEs) are the baseline technology to which FCVs are compared. Table 1 lists the 13 fuel pathways included in this study. Petroleum-to-gasoline (with 30-ppm sulfur [S] content) is the baseline fuel …

Today's restrictive environmental regulations encourage paper mills to close their water systems. Closed water systems increase the level of contaminants significantly. Accumulations of solid suspensions are detrimental to both the papermaking process and the final products. To remove these solids, technologies such as flotation using dissolved air (DAF), centrifuging, and screening have been developed. Dissolved Air Flotation systems are commonly used to clarify whitewater. These passive systems use high pressure to dissolve air into whitewater. When the pressure is released, air micro-bubbles form and attach themselves to fibers and particles, which then float to the surface where they are mechanically skimmed off. There is an economic incentive to explore alternatives to the DAF technology to drive down the cost of whitewater processing and minimize the use of chemicals. The installed capital cost for a DAF system is significant and a typical DAF system takes up considerable space. An alternative approach, which is the subject of this project, involves a dual method combining the advantages of chemical flocculation and in-line ultrasonic clarification to efficiently remove flocculated contaminants from a water stream

This is a Technical Report under a program funded by the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to obtain the necessary information to assess the viability of lower cost alternatives to commercially available activated carbon for mercury control in coal-fired utilities. During this reporting period, several sorbent samples have been tested by URS in their laboratory fixed-bed system. The sorbents were evaluated under conditions simulating flue gas from power plants burning Powder River Basin (PRB) and low sulfur eastern bituminous coals. The equilibrium adsorption capacities of the sorbents for both elemental and oxidized mercury are presented. A team meeting discussing the overall program and meetings with Midwest Generation and Wisconsin Electric Power Company (WEPCO) concerning field testing occurred during this reporting period.

Dimensional changes in PBX materials resulting from temperature change are of interest to engineers, designers and modelers. In this paper we present data from recent measurements made on LX17-1, as well as on the material's binder and its energetic constituent. LX17-1 is made from 7.5% KEL-F 800 binder combined with 92.5% wet aminated TATB energetic crystals. Due apparently to the anisotropic expansionary behavior of the TATB, the material exhibits irreversible growth, in addition to the usual reversible expansions and contractions associated with temperature change. In an effort understand reversible and irreversible growth behavior and to verify consistency between our measurements and those made historically, measurements were performed on billet pressed LX17-1, on die pressed TATB, and on KEL-F alone. It is important to realize that, for materials involving TATB, expansionary behavior results from the combined effects of reversible and irreversible (ratchet growth) phenomena.

We have developed cermet membranes that nongalvanically separate hydrogen from gas mixtures. The highest measured hydrogen flux was 16.2 cm{sup 3} (STP)/min-cm{sup 2} for an ANL-3a membrane at 900 C. For ANL-3 membranes with thickness of 0.04-0.5 mm, permeation rate is limited by the bulk diffusion of hydrogen through the metal phase. The effect of hydrogen partial pressure on permeation rate confirmed this conclusion and suggested that higher permeation rates may be obtained by decreasing the membrane thickness. Permeation rate in a syngas atmosphere for times up to 190 h showed no degradation in performance, which indicates that ANL-3 may be suitable for long-term, practical hydrogen separation.

With the advent of a rapidly proliferating international computer network, it became feasible to consider remote operation of instrumentation normally operated locally. For modern electron microscopes, the growing automation and computer control of many instrumental operations facilitated the task of providing remote operation. In order to provide use of NCEM TEMs by distant users, a project was instituted in 1995 to place a unique instrument, a Kratos EM-1500 operating at 1.5MeV, on-line for remote use. In 1996, the Materials Microcharacterization Collaboratory (MMC) was created as a pilot project within the US Department of Energy's DOE2000 program to establish national collaboratories to provide access via the Internet to unique or expensive DOE research facilities as well as to expertise for remote collaboration, experimentation, production, software development, modeling, and measurement. A major LBNL contribution to the MMC was construction of DeepView, a microscope-independent computer-control system that could be ported to other MMC members to provide a common graphical user-interface (GUI) for control of any MMC instrument over the wide area network.

Two-dimensional, steady flow of a liquid metal slender jet pouring from a nozzle in the presence of a transverse, nonuniform magnetic field is studied. The surface tension has been neglected, while gravity is shown to be not important. The main aim of the study is to evaluate the importance of the inertial effects. It has been shown that for gradually varying fields characteristic for the divertor region of a tokamak, inertial effects are negligible for N > 10, where N is the interaction parameter. Thus the inertialess flow model is expected to give good results even for relatively low magnetic fields and high jet velocity. Simple relations for the jet thickness and velocity have been derived. The results show that the jet becomes thicker if the field increases along the flow and thinner if it decreases.

OAK-B135 The Arabidopsis transcription factor LEAFY (LFY) acts upstream of homeotic genes such as AGAMOUS (AG) to confer floral identity on meristems that arise after the transition to reproductive development. Compared to the genetic circuitry regulating the establishment of floral meristem identity, little is known about its maintenance. Previous experiments with fly heterozygous plants and ag mutants grown in conditions that reduce the floral inductive stimulus have shown that both genes are required to prevent reversion of floral to inflorescence meristems. Here, we present evidence that LFY maintains floral meristem identity independently of AG, and that the primary role of LFY is either direct repression of shoot identity genes or repression of an intermediate factor that activates shoot identity genes. The latter conclusions were deduced from the phenotypes conferred by a gain-of-function transgene, LFY:VP16, that appears to act as a dominant negative, or antimorphic, allele during maintenance of floral meristem identity. These observations contrast with previous findings that LFY acts as a direct activator of floral homeotic genes, supporting the hypothesis that the transcriptional activity of LFY is dependent on specific co-regulators.

Uncertainties in climate observations are revealed when alternate observationally based data sets are compared. General circulation model-based ''reanalyses'' of meteorological observations will yield different results from different models, even if identical sets of raw unanalyzed data form their starting points. We have examined 25 longitude-latitude fields (including selected levels for three-dimensional quantities) encompassing atmospheric climate variables for which the PCMDI observational data base contains two or more high-quality sources. For the most part we compare ECMWF with NCEP reanalysis. In some cases, we compare in situ and/or satellite-derived data with reanalysis. To obtain an overview of the differences for all 25 fields, we use a graphical technique developed for climate model diagnosis: a ''portrait diagram'' displaying root-mean-square differences between the alternate data sources. With a few exceptions (arising from the requirement that RMS differences be normalized to accommodate different units of variables) the portrait diagrams indicate areas of agreement and disagreement that can be confirmed by examining traditional graphics such as zonal mean plots. In accord with conventional wisdom, the greatest agreement between alternate data sets--hence the smallest implied observational uncertainty--occurs for upper tropospheric zonal wind. We also find fairly good agreement between reanalysis and more direct measures of precipitation, …

This document presents a set of guidelines for authors who wish to express themselves more clearly to foreign readers, or readers whose first language is not American English. Topics include idioms, technical terms, jargon, word meaning, acronyms, and international conventions of measurement. The guidelines will help writers of technical documents present their ideas more effectively to audiences that may include individuals whose first language is not American English, including audiences with individuals from other English-speaking countries.

A sacrificial layer is usually used to release electroformed microstructures. Because of the chemistry applied to the sacrificial layer, only a limited number of metals can be used for electroforming. A novel method to fabricate freestanding electroformed copper structures is presented. A graphite substrate allows the release of the metal part, by abrasive removal of the graphite after electroforming. Results on fabrication of high-aspect-ratio freestanding copper grids are presented; these can be used as x-ray collimator in medical imaging to reduce scattered radiation. This process has potential application to the fabrication of injection molds and microparts on pick-and-place carriers for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).

The objective of this project is to demonstrate at pilot scale the use of solid honeycomb catalysts to promote the oxidation of elemental mercury in the flue gas from coal combustion. The project is being funded by the U.S. DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory under Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-01NT41185. EPRI, Great River Energy (GRE), and City Public Service (CPS) of San Antonio are project co-funders. URS Group is the prime contractor. The mercury catalytic oxidation process under development uses catalyst materials applied to honeycomb substrates to promote the oxidation of elemental mercury in the flue gas from coal-fired power plants that have wet lime or limestone flue gas desulfurization (FGD) systems. Oxidized mercury is removed in the wet FGD absorbers and co-precipitates in a stable form with the byproducts from the FGD system. The co-precipitated mercury does not appear to adversely affect the disposal or reuse properties of the FGD byproduct. The current project will test previously identified, effective catalyst materials at a larger, pilot scale and in a commercial form, so as to provide engineering data for future full-scale designs. The pilot-scale tests will continue for up to 14 months at each of two sites to provide longer-term catalyst life …

Presently the Heavy Ion Fusion Virtual National Laboratory is researching ion sources and injector concepts to understand how to optimize beam brightness over a range of currents (50-2000 mA argon equivalent). One concept initially accelerates millimeter size, milliamp beamlets to 1 MeV before merging them into centimeter size, ampere beams. Computer simulations have shown the final brightness of the merged beams is dominated by the emittance growth of the merging process, as long as the beamlets ion temperature is below a few eV. Thus, a RF multicusp source capable of high current density can produce beams with better brightness compared to ones extracted from a colder source with a large aperture and lower current density. As such, experiments have begun to develop a RF multicusp source capable of delivering one amp of extracted beam current. It is expected that it will require 10 kW of 13 MHz RF power delivered via a quartz shielded, one and half turn, four inch diameter antenna. Important considerations in the development of the source include the dependence of current density and beam ion temperature on consumed RF power and gas pressure. A fast rise time ({approx}100 ns) for the extracted beam pulse must also …

With the advent of fast computer systems, Scientists are now able to generate terabytes of simulation data. Unfortunately, the shear size of these data sets has made efficient exploration of them impossible. To aid scientists in gathering knowledge from their simulation data, we have developed an ad-hoc query infrastructure. Our system, called AQSim (short for Ad-hoc Queries for Simulation) reduces the data storage requirements and access times in two stages. First, it creates and stores mathematical and statistical models of the data. Second, it evaluates queries on the models of the data instead of on the entire data set. In this paper, we present two simple but highly effective statistical modeling techniques for simulation data. Our first modeling technique computes the true mean of systematic partitions of the data. It makes no assumptions about the distribution of the data and uses a variant of the root mean square error to evaluate a model. In our second statistical modeling technique, we use the Andersen-Darling goodness-of-fit method on systematic partitions of the data. This second method evaluates a model by how well it passes the normality test on the data. Both of our statistical models summarize the data so as to answer …

We have demonstrated that a bulk absorber coupled to a TES can serve as a good gamma-ray spectrometer. Our measured energy resolution of 70 eV at 60 keV is among the best measurements in this field. We have also shown excellent agreement between the noise predictions and measured noise. Despite this good result, we noted that our detector design has shortcomings with a low count rate and vulnerabilities with the linearity of energy response. We addressed these issues by implementation of an active negative feedback bias. We demonstrated the effects of active bias such as additional pulse shortening, reduction of TES change in temperature during a pulse, and linearization of energy response at low energy. Linearization at higher energy is possible with optimized heat capacities and thermal conductivities of the microcalorimeter. However, the current fabrication process has low control and repeatability over the thermal properties. Thus, optimization of the detector performance is difficult until the fabrication process is improved. Currently, several efforts are underway to better control the fabrication of our gamma-ray spectrometers. We are developing a full-wafer process to produce TES films. We are investigating the thermal conductivity and surface roughness of thicker SiN membranes. We are exploring alternative …

The Analytical Development Section of Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) was requested by the Facilities Disposition Division (FDD) to determine the holdup of enriched uranium in the 321-M facility as part of an overall deactivation project of the facility. The 321-M facility was used to fabricate enriched uranium fuel assemblies, lithium-aluminum target tubes, neptunium assemblies, and miscellaneous components for the production reactors. The facility also includes the 324-M storage building and the passageway connecting it to 321-M. The results of the holdup assays are essential for determining compliance with the Waste Acceptance Criteria, Material Control and Accountability, and to meet criticality safety controls. This report covers holdup measurements of uranium residue in the exhaust piping elbows removed from the roof the 321-M facility.