We present a design technique, called partial evaluation triple modular redundancy for hardening combinational circuits against Single Event Upsets (SEU). The input environment is given in terms of signal probabilities of the lines. This is useful information to determine the redundant gates of the given circuit. The basic ideas of partial redundancy and temporal triple modular redundancy are used together to harden the circuit against SEUs. The concept of partial redundancy is used to eliminate the gates whose outputs can be determined in advance. This technique fails in cases when the actual inputs to the circuit are not in accordance to the rounded logic values. In such cases the technique of temporal TMR is used. However, there is some overhead in this process because of the voter circuits and the need to choose the outputs computed by partially evaluated circuit and circuit using temporal TMR. For testing the circuit exhaustively against SEUs, a fault insertion simulator is used. This simulator introduces errors in the circuits during simulation which represent SEUs. This technique of partial evaluation redundancy is thoroughly tested on MCNC’91 benchmarks using Cadence NCLaunch simulator. By employing this technique, in most of the cases we can reduce the area overhead of the hardened circuit when compared with the traditional Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR). The improvement in area is based on the total number of gates and the actual number of outputs. For circuits with large number of gates and less number of outputs, there is greater savings in area. In some cases, the area overhead because of the proposed technique is greater than the traditional TMR. This usually occurs in smaller circuits or in circuits with more number of outputs.

The aim of the thesis is the understanding of the thermal, mechanical and metallurgical phenomena occurring during friction stir welding of a 6005A aluminum alloy and the determination of the mechanical properties of the welded joints. The forces and the torque needed for welding as well as the thermal cycles were measured in the various zones of the joint. A first model predicts the influence of the welding parameters on the thermal cycles, and especially on the asymmetry of the temperature evolution with respect to the weld centerline. A second model links the local microstructural evolutions, and in particular the precipitation kinetics, to the thermomechanical cycles. A third model relates the local microstructures to the local mechanical properties, based on a novel physics-based strain hardening model. Finally, the link between the mechanical properties of the joint in service, the local mechanical properties and the microstructures is modeled using a multi-scale approach including a micro-mechanics damage constitutive model. The models are calibrated and validated through in-depth microstructure characterization and mechanical tests on the base material, on heat treated samples and on the friction stir welds.

The introduction of dual energy CT, DECT, in the field of medical healthcare has made it possible to extract more information of the scanned objects. This in turn has the potential to improve the accuracy in radiation therapy dose planning. One problem that remains before successful material decomposition can be achieved however, is the presence of beam hardening and scatter artifacts that arise in a scan. Methods currently in clinical use for removal of beam hardening often bias the CT numbers. Hence, the possibility for an appropriate tissue decomposition is limited. Here a method for successful decomposition as well as removal of the beam hardening artifact is presented. The method uses effective linear attenuations for the five base materials, water, protein, adipose, cortical bone and marrow, to perform the decomposition on reconstructed simulated data. This is performed inside an iterative loop together with the polychromatic x-ray spectra to remove the beam hardening

The objective of this work is to investigate the suitability of applying silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) technology to extreme environments and to design high-speed circuits in this technology to demonstrate their reliable operation under these conditions. This research focuses on exploring techniques for hardening SiGe HBT digital logic for single event upset (SEU) based on principles of radiation hardening by design (RHBD) as well as on the cryogenic characterization of SiGe HBTs and designing broadband amplifiers for operation at cryogenic temperatures. Representative circuits ranging from shift registers featuring multiple architectures to broadband analog circuits have been implemented in various generations of this technology to enable this effort.

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It is impossible to improve the quality of the machines, to increase their reliability and lifetime if the working conditions and the properties of the material are not analyzed. We must know the type of the material (hardening, softening or cyclically stabile), what is chosen for the constructions in low cycle loading, because strain and stress change during the exploitation and depend on this type. If we know the type of the material, we can determine the possibility of its application in concrete exploitation conditions. Real working conditions of the most constructions are close to loading with limited strain (hard straining), because elastic and plastic deformation is met in the zones of crack and stress concentration, that are surrounded with elastically deformed material. The low cycle loading curves parameters A, and are used for the computation of elastic plastic strain curves. These parameters are obtained from the soft low cycle loading results in many cases. The other possible ways for the determination of parameters A, and are shown in this work. The most investigated materials had the initial instability in the interval . For more objective evaluation of stress strain curves parameters A, and , all values of width of hysteresis loop up to semicycle were rejected as insignificant in comparison with the rest lifetime in cycles range . The parameter for the evaluation of hardening (softening) intensity was determined, when the values of... [to full text]

Atsparumas šalčiui ir ištvermingumas žiemą – pagrindiniai veiksniai, lemiantys augalų geografinį pasiskirstymą. Be to, šie veiksniai turi didžiulę įtaką kultūrinių augalų derlingumui. Braškės, kurios yra tarp svarbiausių uoginių augalų pasaulyje ir Lietuvoje, stipriai pašąla esant nepastoviai sniego dangai, vis dažniau pasitaikančiomis permainingomis žiemojimo sąlygomis. Nepakankamas braškių ištvermingumas žiemą, aiškių kriterijų, kurie leistų per trumpesnį nei kelių metų laikotarpį atrinkti ištvermingas veisles nebuvimas, apsunkina naujų, adaptyvių, derlingų, kokybiškomis uogomis, braškių veislių sukūrimą ir introdukciją. Atsparumo šalčiui mechanizmai intensyviai tirti naudojant modelinius augalus, tačiau žinių apie žiemojančių kultūrinių augalų, kurių įvairovė labai didelė, ištvermingumo žiemą mechanizmus ir jo genetinį reguliavimą labai trūksta. Atsparių šalčiui augalų atrankai vykdyti reikalingos žinios apie augalų užsigrūdinimą, apie atsparumą šalčiui lemiančius veiksnius ir juos kontroliuojančius genus. Tiriant augalus kontroliuojamomis sąlygomis in vitro, galima ištirti atskirų veiksnių įtaką užsigrūdinimui ir atsparumui šalčiui, atsiribojant nuo, neišvengiamo natūraliomis sąlygomis, daugelio įvairių veiksnių poveikio. Braškių užsigrūdinimas ir atsparumas šalčiui svarbūs ne vien tik atrankai. Genetinių išteklių išsaugojimas ateities kartoms - svarbus šiuolaikinės biologijos uždavinys. Didelių kolekcijų išsaugojimą palengvina ir sąnaudas sumažina, augalų laikymas... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Cold hardiness and resistance in winter are key factors determining the geographical distribution of plants. In addition, these factors have a huge impact on harvest of cultural plants. Strawberries, which are among the most important berry plants in the world and in Lithuania, are vulnerable to cold because of unstable snow cover, which is more and more often occurring during variable wintering conditions. Insufficient resistance of strawberries in winter, absence of clear criteria, which enable to select the most resistant varieties during a shorter time than the few year period, impedes the development and introduction of new, adaptive, fertile, and of high-quality berries strawberry cultivars. The mechanisms of cold hardiness were intensively investigated using model plants. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the genetic regulation mechanisms of winterhardiness of cultural plants. For the selection of resistant to cold plants, the knowledge about plants cold acclimation and factors determining cold resistance and controlling genes is necessary. Investigating the plants under controlled conditions in vitro, it is possible to investigate the influence of individual factors on acclimation and cold hardiness by disassociating from the influence of many different factors, which is unavoidable under natural conditions. The cold acclimation and cold hardiness of strawberries are important not only for breeding. Preservation of plant genetic resources for future... [to full text]

Lateral pressures on non-yielding walls due to surface strip loads were investigated considering the non-linear stress-strain behaviour of the soil by finite element analyses. Data obtained from the finite element analyses were used to train neural networks in order to obtain a solution to assess the total lateral thrust and its point of application on a non-yielding wall due to a strip load. A 2-layered backpropogation type neural network was used. An artificial neural network solution was obtained, as a function of six parameters including the shear strength parameters of the soil ( cohesion and angle of friction ). The effects of each input parameter on the lateral thrust and point of application were summarized and the results were compared with the conventional linear elastic solution.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2005. / Supervisor: J. D. Embury. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-245).