MDent, Faculty of Haelth Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand

Key words: End zone, prestress transfer, wire tendon, transmission length, pull-in, plain wire, indented wire, concrete strength, size of wire, gradual release, sudden release, shock release, time dependent effects.An empirical investigation into the transfer of prestress force from wire tendons to concrete in the end zones of pretensioned prestressed concrete beams was accomplished in this project. The experimental tests featured 56 small scale prestressed concrete beams.Some of the factors influencing prestress transfer which were considered in the current tests are as follows:(a) type of release - gradual, sudden or shock(b) surface condition of the wire - plain or indented(c) size of the wire(d) concrete compressive strength at the time of transfer(e) time dependent effectsMost of the tests involved gradual release of steel tendons with the prestressing force transferred in approximately ten equal increments. Sudden release in a single step was achieved by allowing the supporting abutments to retract rapidly. Shock release was implemented in some beams by angle grinding the wires. The type of release which gave the best quality of prestress transfer was gradual release. This was followed by sudden and shock releases respectively.There were four types of wires used in the laboratory tests: namely the 5 mm dia. Plain, 5 mm dia. Chevron indented, 7 mm dia. Plain and 7 mm dia. Belgian indented wires. Transmission lengths were determined from strain distributions for these wires. Pull-ins of the wire tendons at the ends of the beams were also measured.There was significant scatter in the experimental data. Different ranges of transmission lengths and pull-ins were obtained for the various types of wires used.Three equations were derived for the 5 mm dia. Plain, 5 mm dia. Chevron and 7 mm dia. Plain wires, which linearly correlated pull-ins to the transmission lengths. ++ / These relationships provide a qualitative and quantitative method of indirectly monitoring for the transmission lengths through the measurements of pull-in.Statistical inference tests proved that indented wires were superior in performance compared to plain wires, but the differences were more apparent for the pull-ins than for the transmission lengths.Comparisons on the influence of tendon size substantiated that greater pull-ins occurred for larger wires but the differences were not significant for the transmission lengths.For concrete strength at the time of transfer of less than 32 MPa, the transmission lengths and pull-ins were significantly larger than those for higher strengths. It is recommended that concrete strength at transfer be at least 32 MPa for pretensioned prestressed concrete.Apart from the maturity and strength of concrete, the quality of a mix also influenced the transmission length and there was limited data to suggest that a better grade mix despite having lower strength at a more tender age could outperform a lower grade mix with greater strength released after a longer curing period.Formulae for plain and indented wires were found by dimensional analysis which correlated the transmission length to the diameter of wire tendon and the stress/strength ratio of the prestressed beams.Pull-ins increased significantly over 6 months but the changes in the transmission lengths were small. Normalised longitudinal strain distributions did not indicate that transmission lengths would remain unchanged over time.

<p>The aim of this study is to find out what effects the omission of intensifiers, interjections and fillers has on the general English subtitle track in the TV-series “The Wire”. Questions addressed in the study include the possible reasons for such omissions, and the consequences of applying omission strategies in this context. Thirteen episodes of the series were investigated in order to see to what extent these three types of words were omitted, and how that affected the experience when watching the series. The investigation showed that the majority of all omitted words in the subtitle track belonged to these three categories, and that technical restrictions were the most common reason for the omissions. Arguably, the lack of intensifiers, interjections and fillers made the language more stiff and formal, which in the end affected the authenticity of “The Wire”.</p>

The present research presents procedures for exploitation of level sensitive latches in wire pipelining. The user gives a Steiner tree, having a signal source and set of destination or sinks, and the location in rectangular plane, capacitive load and required arrival time at each of the destinations. The user also defines a library of non-clocked (buffer) elements and clocked elements (flip-flop and latch), also known as synchronous elements. The first procedure performs concurrent repeater and synchronous element insertion in a bottom-up manner to find the minimum latency that may be achieved between the source and the destinations. The second procedure takes additional input (required latency) for each destination, derived from previous procedure, and finds the repeater and synchronous element assignments for all internal nodes of the Steiner tree, which minimize overall area used. These procedures utilize the latency and area advantages of latch based pipelining over flip-flop based pipelining. The second procedure suggests two methods to tackle the challenges that exist in a latch based design. The deferred delay padding technique is introduced, which removes the short path violations for latches with minimal extra cost.

The characteristics of liquid and solid aerosols have been intensively investigated by means of optical diagnostic techniques. Part I describes the characteristics of liquid aerosol formation formed by heat transfer fluids (HTFs) from bulk liquids. Part II investigates the characteristics of convective transport behavior of solid particles in virtual impactor (VI). The objective of part I is to establish correlations which offer predictions on atomized particle size of HTFs which are widely and commonly used in process industries. There are numerous reports stating that mist explosions formed from leakage cause disastrous accidents in process industries. For safety concerns, the characteristics of mist formation should be known in order to prevent HTFs from catching on fire or exploding. The empirical data on formation of mist are collected by the optical measurement technique, the Fraunhofer diffraction. The Buckingham-PI theorem is applied to establish a correlation between empirical data and representative physical properties of HTFs. Final results of correlations are solved by a statistical method of linear regression. The objective of part II is to investigate the characteristics of convective transport behavior in virtual impactor (VI) which is used to sort polydisperse precursor powder in the process industries of superconductor wire. VI is the device to separate polydisperse particles as a function of particle size by using the difference in inertia between different sizes of particles. To optimize VI performance, the characteristics of convective transport should be identified. This objective is achieved by visualization techniques. The applied visualization techniques are Mie-scattering and laser induced fluorescence (LIF). To investigate analytically, a local Stokes number is introduced in order to offer criteria on predicting the efficiency of VI performance and boundary effect on particle separation. The achieved results can enhance performance and eliminate defects by having knowledge of the behavior of solid particles in VI.

The aim of this study is to find out what effects the omission of intensifiers, interjections and fillers has on the general English subtitle track in the TV-series “The Wire”. Questions addressed in the study include the possible reasons for such omissions, and the consequences of applying omission strategies in this context. Thirteen episodes of the series were investigated in order to see to what extent these three types of words were omitted, and how that affected the experience when watching the series. The investigation showed that the majority of all omitted words in the subtitle track belonged to these three categories, and that technical restrictions were the most common reason for the omissions. Arguably, the lack of intensifiers, interjections and fillers made the language more stiff and formal, which in the end affected the authenticity of “The Wire”.

Detta projekt har haft till syfte att få en ökad förståelse för materialet och dess egenskaper vid dragning. Det har utförts sex olika försök, vilka har genomförts med två olika ingångsvinklar, 12° och 18°, hos sten, liten nibs samt stor nibs. Försöken har genomförts i produktion där prover har tagits ut för att sedan ha analyserats i labb. Resultat från dragprov, hårdhetsprofil, martensithalts- samt smörjmedelsmängdsmätning har studerats och lett fram till slutsatser. Slutsatserna som dragits visar på att ytan på tråden dragen med ingångsvinkel 12° hade färre defekter än tråd som var dragen med 18°. Defekter som hittades på tråd dragen med stor nibs 18° bestod till stor del av tvärsprickor. Över lag såg resultaten liknande ut i samtliga tester för både 12° och 18°, dock var resultatet av tråd dragen med liten nibs 12° avvikande vid flera tester efter första draget. / This project has been designed to get a better understanding of the material and its properties in wire drawing. There have been six different experiments which were conducted with two different drawing angles of three different kinds of drawing dies; regular drawing die, smaller nib and bigger nib. The experiments have been through the beginning of the production where samples have been taken out and then be analyzed in the lab. Results from tensile tests, hardness profile, martensite- and lubrication quantity measurements has been studied and led to the conclusions. The conclusion shows that the surface of the wire drawn with the drawing angle 12° had fewer defects than the wire drawn with 18°. Defects that were found on the wire drawn with the bigger nib 18° consisted largely of transverse cracks. Generally the results were similar in all tests for both 12° and 18°, however, the results was diverge on several tests for the smaller nib 12° after the drawing die.

No description available.

Wire bond reliability testing typically consists of aging bonds in a high temperature environment for long time periods, and removing samples at intervals to assess bond shear strength and characterize the bond cross sections. In this way, the degradation of the bond can be monitored at discrete time intervals, and it is determined whether the bond will be reliable during the specific service life. This process can be labour and time intensive. An alternative method is reported using an existing test chip that allows for contact resistance measurements and provides signals from piezoresistive integrated CMOS microsensors located around test bond pads. The sensors are sensitive to radial compressive or tensile stresses occurring on the bond pad due to intermetallic formation, oxidation, and crack formation at the bond interface. Two sets of identical test chips are bonded with optimized Au ball bonds and aged for 2000 h at 175 ºC. One set is connected to equipment which monitors signals from the stress sensors and the contact resistance of the bonds. The other set is destructively tested by shear tests and cross sectioning. It is found that the stress sensors are capable of indicating which stage of bond aging is experienced by relating the signal to the relative density of the intermetallic compounds (IMCs) and oxide which form during aging. This research offers a valuable new method for accelerating bond process development. By using the sensors to determine the stage of aging experienced and the magnitude of changes happening to the bond, the initial bond quality and bond reliability can be roughly characterized. A useful application is in comparing large samples of bonds made under varying conditions, and determining relative reliabilities of the bonds. A small sample size is required, as the sensors allow for complete continuous aging histories of individual bonds, which was not previously possible. A new test chip is designed for use in future studies which allows for contact resistance measurement, and provides stress signals for up to 55 bonds. A multiplexer integrated on the chip allows for measurements from one specified bond pad at a time. The chip is also equipped with x and yforce measurements which can be used to monitor bond process, and a resistive temperature detector for temperature measurement. A miniaturized bond aging system is designed to facilitate future works where chips are subject to high temperature storage. A heating element fits over the cavity of a microelectronic package containing the test chip, and allows for precise temperature control, while using less power than a conventional oven, and maintaining a low temperature at electrical connections to the package.

In the last decade, reliability problems have become a critical subject in power modules. Understanding design weakness and failure mechanisms of thick wire bond are two critical steps in managing the risk of wire bond heel crack which is the topic of this thesis. Although this thesis does not target a specific type of power modules, we note that thick wire bond heel crack failures occur in Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs). In fact, our aim is to understand failure mechanism in 300μm thick wire bonds with different geometries and materials. Since these wires experience harsh environmental conditions and high load transients, the wires undergo repetitive flexural movement which causes heel crack due to fatigue. For the purpose of understanding this failure mechanism, two experimental setups are built and utilized. The first experimental setup loads the wires using constant currents and observes the response using a scanning laser vibrometer to measure the displacement. The second experimental setup applies repetitive prescribed displacement to the first foot of the wire and detects fatigue failure using a Wheatstone bridge. It is realized that wires have different displacement property depending on their geometry and material. Maximum displacements are observed for Al-H11 instead of CuCorAl and PowerCu.