Multi-directional polymer matrix composite materials are increasingly used in load-bearing structural applications ranging from primary aircraft structures and automotive parts to rehabilitation of bridges. Long-term durability, characterized by time-dependent degradation in strength (known as creep-rupture) and modulus (known as creep), is an important concern in these applications. Despite the experimental evidence on the influence of time-dependent damage on creep and creep rupture of multi-directional composites, current level of understanding of this is very limited. Hence, the focus of this thesis is to develop a clear understanding of the time dependent evolution of various damage modes and their influence on creep rupture of polymer matrix composite laminates.Three laminates [0/90/0], [±45/902]s, and [0/902]s were subjected to a wide range of constant stresses at various test temperatures and creep rupture time was recorded.The various damage modes that developed, with stress during tensile testing, and with time during constant stress creep rupture testing were transverse cracking, vertical cracking, delamination, vertical splitting and fiber fracture.The appearance of these damages were time dependent confirming that the FPF stress is time-dependent, while the conventional wisdom is to consider it to be time-independent in design. Beyond FPF, the damage continued to evolve for a certain period of time beyond which additional damage modes started to evolve influencing the evolution rate of one-another.The percentage of creep rupture time during which a single mode of damage was evolving decreased with increase in applied stress and test temperature.Based on these results it is concluded that creep rupture of multidirectional laminates is influenced by contributions from a complex interaction of various damage modes that evolve with time, suggesting that creep rupture predictions could be good approximations only.

Multi-directional polymer matrix composite materials are increasingly used in load-bearing structural applications ranging from primary aircraft structures and automotive parts to rehabilitation of bridges. Long-term durability, characterized by time-dependent degradation in strength (known as creep-rupture) and modulus (known as creep), is an important concern in these applications. Despite the experimental evidence on the influence of time-dependent damage on creep and creep rupture of multi-directional composites, current level of understanding of this is very limited. Hence, the focus of this thesis is to develop a clear understanding of the time dependent evolution of various damage modes and their influence on creep rupture of polymer matrix composite laminates.Three laminates [0/90/0], [±45/902]s, and [0/902]s were subjected to a wide range of constant stresses at various test temperatures and creep rupture time was recorded.The various damage modes that developed, with stress during tensile testing, and with time during constant stress creep rupture testing were transverse cracking, vertical cracking, delamination, vertical splitting and fiber fracture.The appearance of these damages were time dependent confirming that the FPF stress is time-dependent, while the conventional wisdom is to consider it to be time-independent in design. Beyond FPF, the damage continued to evolve for a certain period of time beyond which additional damage modes started to evolve influencing the evolution rate of one-another.The percentage of creep rupture time during which a single mode of damage was evolving decreased with increase in applied stress and test temperature.Based on these results it is concluded that creep rupture of multidirectional laminates is influenced by contributions from a complex interaction of various damage modes that evolve with time, suggesting that creep rupture predictions could be good approximations only.

Multi-directional polymer matrix composite materials are increasingly used in load-bearing structural applications ranging from primary aircraft structures and automotive parts to rehabilitation of bridges. Long-term durability, characterized by time-dependent degradation in strength (known as creep-rupture) and modulus (known as creep), is an important concern in these applications. Despite the experimental evidence on the influence of time-dependent damage on creep and creep rupture of multi-directional composites, current level of understanding of this is very limited. Hence, the focus of this thesis is to develop a clear understanding of the time dependent evolution of various damage modes and their influence on creep rupture of polymer matrix composite laminates.Three laminates [0/90/0], [±45/902]s, and [0/902]s were subjected to a wide range of constant stresses at various test temperatures and creep rupture time was recorded.The various damage modes that developed, with stress during tensile testing, and with time during constant stress creep rupture testing were transverse cracking, vertical cracking, delamination, vertical splitting and fiber fracture.The appearance of these damages were time dependent confirming that the FPF stress is time-dependent, while the conventional wisdom is to consider it to be time-independent in design. Beyond FPF, the damage continued to evolve for a certain period of time beyond which additional damage modes started to evolve influencing the evolution rate of one-another.The percentage of creep rupture time during which a single mode of damage was evolving decreased with increase in applied stress and test temperature.Based on these results it is concluded that creep rupture of multidirectional laminates is influenced by contributions from a complex interaction of various damage modes that evolve with time, suggesting that creep rupture predictions could be good approximations only. / May 2008

UN is sending peacekeeping operations all over the world. The paper will highlight that UN is not going only with their peacekeeping operation personnel, UN is also bringing private military companies into their ranks. This paper will focus on UN peacekeeping operations in Africa with the focus of non-interstate operations. Traditionally would not the Just war theory be the theory to apply to peacekeeping operations but by UN orthodox behavior of bringing private military contractors into peacekeeping operations, just war theory becomes appropriate. The purpose of this paper is to bring light on UN use of PMC and if PMC has increased UN security during peacekeeping operations. To be able to shed this light, a more extensive empirical study will be made to see UN practice with PMC by descriptive statistics. The paper finds that PMC has been an active force within peacekeeping operations and that PMC is performing several military tasks for UN. It further sees that UN fatalities are increasing in the cases when PMC has been present. Further insight into peacekeeping operation is that higher taxpaying nations are sending fewer troops and commanders compared to less taxpaying nations.

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Full-domain multiscale analyses of unidirectional AS4/H3502 open-hole composite tensile specimens were performed to assess the effect of microscale progressive fiber failures in regions with large stress/strain gradients on macroscale composite strengths. The effect of model discretization at the microscale and macroscale on the calculated composite strengths and analysis times was investigated. Multiple sets of microscale analyses of repeating unit cells, each containing varying numbers of fibers with a distinct statistical distribution of fiber strengths and fiber volume fractions, were used to establish the microscale discretization for use in multiscale calculations. In order to improve computational times, multiscale analyses were performed over a reduced domain of the open-hole specimen. The calculated strengths obtained using reduced domain analyses were comparable to those for full-domain analyses, but at a fraction of the computational cost. Such reduced domain analyses likely are an integral part of efficient adaptive multiscale analyses of large all-composite air vehicles.

abstract: Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC) technology has been shown to possess the necessary qualities for it to be considered as a leading contender for the next generation memory. These qualities include high speed and endurance, extreme scalability, ease of fabrication, ultra low power operation, and perhaps most importantly ease of integration with the CMOS back end of line (BEOL) process flow. One area where detailed study is lacking is the reliability of PMC devices. In previous reliability work, the low and high resistance states were monitored for periods of hours to days without any applied voltage and the results were extrapolated to several years (>10) but little has been done to analyze the low resistance state under stress. With or without stress, the low resistance state appears to be highly stable but a gradual increase in resistance with time, less than one order of magnitude after ten years when extrapolated, has been observed. It is important to understand the physics behind this resistance rise mechanism to comprehend the reliability issues associated with the low resistance state. This is also related to the erase process in PMC cells where the transition from the ON to OFF state occurs under a negative voltage. Hence it is important to investigate this erase process in PMC cells under different conditions and to model it. Analyzing the programming and the erase operations separately is important for any memory technology but its ability to cycle efficiently (reliably) at low voltages and for more than 1E4 cycles (without affecting the cells performance) is more critical. Future memory technologies must operate with the low power supply voltages (<1V) required for small geometry nodes. Low voltage programming of PMC memory devices has previously been demonstrated using slow voltage sweeps and small numbers of fast pulses. In this work PMC memory cells were cycled at low voltages using symmetric pulses with different load resistances and the distribution of the ON and OFF resistances was analyzed. The effect of the program current used during the program-erase cycling on the resulting resistance distributions is also investigated. Finally the variation found in the behavior of similar resistance ON states in PMC cells was analyzed more in detail and measures to reduce this variation were looked into. It was found that slow low current programming helped reducing the variation in erase times of similar resistance ON states in PMC cells. This scheme was also used as a pre-conditioning technique and the improvements in subsequent cycling behavior were compared. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Electrical Engineering 2011

abstract: Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC) is a technology platform which utilizes mass transport in solid or liquid electrolyte coupled with electrochemical (redox) reactions to form or remove nanoscale metallic electrodeposits on or in the electrolyte. The ability to redistribute metal mass and form metallic nanostructure in or on a structure in situ, via the application of a bias on laterally placed electrodes, creates a large number of promising applications. A novel PMC-based lateral microwave switch was fabricated and characterized for use in microwave systems. It has demonstrated low insertion loss, high isolation, low voltage operation, low power and low energy consumption, and excellent linearity. Due to its non-volatile nature the switch operates with fewer biases and its simple planar geometry makes possible innovative device structures which can be potentially integrated into microwave power distribution circuits. PMC technology is also used to develop lateral dendritic metal electrodes. A lateral metallic dendritic network can be grown in a solid electrolyte (GeSe) or electrodeposited on SiO2 or Si using a water-mediated method. These dendritic electrodes grown in a solid electrolyte (GeSe) can be used to lower resistances for applications like self-healing interconnects despite its relatively low light transparency; while the dendritic electrodes grown using water-mediated method can be potentially integrated into solar cell applications, like replacing conventional Ag screen-printed top electrodes as they not only reduce resistances but also are highly transparent. This research effort also laid a solid foundation for developing dendritic plasmonic structures. A PMC-based lateral dendritic plasmonic structure is a device that has metallic dendritic networks grown electrochemically on SiO2 with a thin layer of surface metal nanoparticles in liquid electrolyte. These structures increase the distribution of particle sizes by connecting pre-deposited Ag nanoparticles into fractal structures and result in three significant effects, resonance red-shift, resonance broadening and resonance enhancement, on surface plasmon resonance for light trapping simultaneously, which can potentially enhance thin film solar cells' performance at longer wavelengths. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Electrical Engineering 2011

abstract: Advances in software and applications continue to demand advances in memory. The ideal memory would be non-volatile and have maximal capacity, speed, retention time, endurance, and radiation hardness while also having minimal physical size, energy usage, and cost. The programmable metallization cell (PMC) is an emerging memory technology that is likely to surpass flash memory in all the listed ideal memory characteristics. A comprehensive physics-based model is needed to fully understand PMC operation and aid in design optimization. With the intent of advancing the PMC modeling effort, this thesis presents two simulation models for the PMC. The first model is a finite element model based on Silvaco Atlas finite element analysis software. Limitations of the software are identified that make this model inconsistent with the operating mechanism of the PMC. The second model is a physics-based numerical model developed for the PMC. This model is successful in matching data measured from a chalcogenide glass PMC designed and manufactured at ASU. Matched operating characteristics observable in the current and resistance vs. voltage data include the OFF/ON resistances and write/erase and electrodeposition voltage thresholds. Multilevel programming is also explained and demonstrated with the numerical model. The numerical model has already proven useful by revealing some information presented about the operation and characteristics of the PMC. / Dissertation/Thesis / PMC numerical model written in M for Octave/MATLAB / M.S. Electrical Engineering 2013

This paper addresses the relationship between Private Military Contractors and their use, whether operationally active or strictly training, on civil war recidivism. The paper aims to contribute to the wider research on Private Military Contractors, and specifically whether their use can cause commitment problems or information asymmetries that can hamper peace-making. To do this, the hypothesis that the use of Private Military Contractors in an active, operational role leads to a higher probability of civil war recidivism than the use of Private Military Contractors in a training, non-operational role is examined. The hypothesis is tested by applying Mill’s method of agreement on a pair of across-case, structured, focused comparisons between two cases with operationally active Private Military Contractors on the one hand, and two cases of strictly training Private Military Contractors on the other. The operationally active Private Military Contractor cases are Executive Outcomes in the first half of the Sierra Leonean Civil War and Wagner Group in the War in Donbas, and the strictly training Private Military Contractor cases are Sandline International in the second half of the Sierra Leonean Civil War and MPRI in the Croatian War of Independence. The first two cases had seen civil war recidivism and operationally active Private Military Contractors, and the latter two had not experienced civil war recidivism yet had seen training Private Military Contractors operate. The cases were selected to be as different as possible in other relevant factors. The empirical data is gathered from many different sources including the UCDP, the World Bank and a vast variety of reputable news media. This paper’s empirical findings do not lend support for the hypothesis, nor unequivocal support for the proposed causal mechanism.