It has been proofed that Reconfigurable Computing System possesses the potential to promote system efficiency. Fine-Grain Reconfigurable Computing System, which integrates the co-design of software and hardware, is the prevailing current in system designing with low clock rate and high efficiency. The thesis focuses on computing-oriented Fine-Grain Reconfigurable Computing System of software-hardware interwork, and setting up invoking working model for software program and hardware module as well. The designing of software and hardware can be integrated into one program, which deals with the hardware as a function. By quick computing of hardware, it can promote system efficiency. This interwork mechanism can be combined into traditional instruction execute pipeline. It composes manageable Fine-Grain for Reconfigurable Computing System as a new processor architecture, which brings up new command to support execution of software-hardware interwork mechanism. The model architecture is verified by algorithms of multimedia application, such as Motion Estimation and DCT. In addition, it presents the optimizing model by analysis and comparison of software and hardware efficiency.

Disinfestation using microwaves can be an alternate to chemical methods of killing insects in grain. A pilot-scale industrial microwave dryer operating at 2.45 GHz was used to determine the mortality of life stages of Tribolium castaneum (Herbst), Sitophilus granarius (L.) and Cryptolestes ferrugineus (Stephens) adults in wheat, barley, and rye. Grain samples of 50 g each at 14, 16, and 18% moisture content were infested with stored-grain insects. The samples were then exposed to microwave energy at 200, 300, 400, and 500 W for exposure times of 28 and 56 s. Complete (100%) mortality was achieved for adults of three insect species at 500 W, 28 s and at 400 W, 56 s in barley and wheat. In rye, complete mortality of adult T. castaneum and S. granarius was achieved at 400 W, 28 s and at 300 W, 56 s whereas for C. ferrugineus, complete mortality was achieved at 500 W, 28 s and at 400 W, 56 s. The average temperature of wheat, barley, and rye at 500 W and 28 s was around 80, 71 and 82oC, respectively, and moisture loss was 2.0, 1.9 and 2.5 percentage points, respectively. Among the life stages of T. castaneum in wheat, eggs were the most susceptible followed by larvae, and the least susceptible were the pupae and adults. Among the life stages of T. castaneum in barley and rye, eggs were the most susceptible and adults were the least susceptible with no significant difference between pupae and larvae. There was no significant difference in the mortality of adults at 14, 16, and 18% moisture content barley and rye and the life stages of T. castaneum and S. granarius in rye. Germination of seeds decreased with an increase in power level or exposure time or both. There was no significant difference in the quality characteristics of microwave-heated wheat and rye except for reduced flour yield in rye. The quality of the barley treated at 500 W, 28 s was the same as the control, whereas, there was significant decrease in the quality of barley treated at 400 W, 56 s. / May 2009

This thesis focuses on the study of the size effect in the elastic-viscoplastic response of pure face centered cubic polycrystalline materials. First, the effect of vacancy diffusion is studied via the use of a two-phase self-consistent scheme in which the inclusion phase represents grain interiors and the matrix phase represents grain boundaries. The behavior of the inclusion phase is driven by the activity of dislocations, described with typical strain hardening laws, and by the activity of Coble creep. The behavior of the matrix phase is modeled as elastic-perfect plastic. This model is then extended to account for the possible activity of Lifschitz sliding. The active role of grain boundaries to the viscoplastic deformation is studied with the introduction of a novel method allowing the scale transition from the atomistic scale to the macroscopic scale. A model describing the mechanism of grain boundary dislocation emission and penetration is informed with molecular simulations and finite element simulations. The macroscopic response of the material is then predicted with use of several self-consistent schemes, among which two novel three-phases schemes are introduced. The most refined micromechanical scheme proposed is based on a two-phase representation of the material and is valid in the elastic-viscoplastic regime and accounts for the effect of slightly weakened interfaces.

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The mechanical properties of materials strongly depend on their microstructure. Therefore, engineering the material's microstructure can lead to improving its mechanical properties. One method for enhancing the strength of metallic materials consists of refining the grain size down to the nanometer scale. Such nanostructured materials possess remarkable strength without using conventional metallurgical strengthening methods. However, this strength often comes at the expense of workhardening capacity, thus favoring flow localization and loss of ductility and toughness. The deformation behavior of nanostructured metallic materials has been extensively studied in the literature. However, little is known of their fracture behavior. In this study, the mechanical behavior of a nanostructured, nearly pure material is investigated in order to link processing conditions, microstructure, and fracture locus in stress space. With focus laid on BCC materials which can undergo a ductile-to-brittle transition, Interstitial- Free (IF) steel is chosen. The microstructure is refined using Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) to achieve ultra-fine grain (UFG) materials with grain sizes in the range 100nm- 1 mu m. Equal Channel Angular Extrusion (ECAE) is used to obtain three types of UFG-IF steel microstructures by varying the extrusion rate and processing temperature. The deformation behavior is investigated for the three UFG materials using round smooth bars and is compared with the behavior of the as-received material. The damage behavior and the fracture mechanisms are studied using tensile round notched bars with varying notch radii. The findings indicate a remarkable combination of strength and notch ductility at room temperature, including for the material with the finest microstructure. They also point to the need for careful characterization of temperature effects before such materials can be considered in structural applications.

At present the scale of multimedia and communication systems has become more and more complicated due to the fast development of them. In order to improve the capability of real-time processing and shorten system development time, the ability to reconfigure system architecture becomes an important and flexible design consideration. In this thesis, we propose a reconfigurable processing unit, FMRPU, which is a fine-grain multi-context reconfigurable processing unit targeting at high-throughput and data-parallel applications. It contains 64 reconfigurable logic arrays, 16 switch boxes, and connects with each other via three hierarchical-level connectivities. To avoid the excessive routing path to be the bottleneck of mapped circuits, we design the data stream switch to rearrange data streams. According to the simulation results, the longest routing path of FMRPU only takes 6.5 ns at 0.35 processes, which is able to construct the required logic circuit efficiently. Compare with same kind devices in dealing with Motion Estimation operations, the performance is raise to 17% and is excellent to other same kind architectures in executing other DSP algorithms.

Pressureless-sintering of non-stoichiometric barium titanate (BaTiO3) powder of TiO2-excess compositions has been investigated. Crystalline phases were analysed by X-ray diffractometry. Attention has been paid to the analysis of the corresponding sintered microstructure by adopting scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Large plate-like grains grown abnormally containing {111} double twin lamellae are commonly found in low-temperature (1332oC) sintered BaTiO3, by presence of a liquid phase, or by twinning, or as discussed in this experiments by partial dislocations. Samples were sintered in air at 1250oC for 1¡B4 and 50 h. In this respect, the emphasis is discussed about the role of the partial dislocations in the early stage of twin formation. Both analytic dislocations exist on the {111} double twin lamellae within abnormal grain and the interface between abnormal grain and normal grain. In the experimental process, dislocation type with the Burgers vector ‹110› and ‹112› has been found except for the ‹111›. For the Burgers vector ‹110› in the perovskite structure, it is possible to envisage that edge dislocations with [100] Burgers vector can be dissociated in their climb plane ([100] ¡÷ 1/2[101] + 1/2[10 ]). Moreover, the perovskite structure has been deformed form ‹110› dislocation (perfect dislocation). Oppositely, the [112] Burgers vector has been formed both partial dislocation type and perfect dislocation type. For sintering at 50 h, we can conjecture the grain growth mold by Shockley or Frank partial dislocation affect on the macroscopic step. Experimental results show that Shockley and Frank partial dislocations have not been found on the {111} double twin lamellae.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 64 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-64).

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2001. / Bibliography: leaves 114-137.

Thesis (PhD.(Food Science))-University of Pretoria, 2009. / Includes English summary. Includes bibliographical references.