Because the urinary bladder stores and releases urine, its normal function includes filling and emptying, accompanied by distension and relaxation. It is known that chronic distension compromises blood flow. Recent studies of the rabbit bladder vasculature have described specializations of that vasculature that appear to enhance blood flow in the bladder wall during distension. The present report describes the location, orientation, and structure of an elastic sheath surrounding the vesicular arteries, which may represent one of these specializations. The location, vasculature, and structure of an accessory elastic sheath surrounding the vesicular arteries of the rabbit bladder is described using light and electron microscopy, India ink injection, and vascular corrosion casting. The common iliac arteries of rabbits were cannulated to permit perfusion of the distal vasculature including the urinary bladder. After the bladder vasculature was visually cleared of blood by perfusion with buffered saline, one of the following procedures was used: 1) for light or electron microscopy, the bladder was perfuse-fixed with buffered 2% glutaraldehyde; 2) the bladder vasculature was filled with India ink for vessel tracing; or 3) corrosion casts of the bladder vasculature were prepared by infusion of a Mercox resin mixture. Casts, cleaned of tissue with KOH, and water and formic acid rinses, are dried, and mounted for routine scanning electron microscopy. The presence of an accessory sheath surrounding the main vesicular arteries and some of their branches in the basal two thirds of the urinary bladder was observed on India ink injected specimens and confirmed by micrographs and vascular corrosion casts. The sheath consists of elastic and collagenous fibers and is separated from the tunica media of the arteries by a loose connective tissue layer of variable width. The sheath is circumscribed by a layer of fine blood vessels. The vesicular arteries undulate within the sheath to an extent which is dependent upon the degree of distension of the bladder. This sheath likely represents a specialization which permits the bladder vasculature to accommodate expansion and contraction of the wall during normal filling and emptying. Undulations or coiling of the vesicular arteries within the loose connective tissue core of the sheath increase with bladder contraction, and apparently the sheath simply holds the artery in position during such coiling. The sheath, may represent a modification of the external elastic lamina found in some muscular arteries.

No description available.

This paper presents an investigation on using the variation of ferrostatic pressure exerted by the molten steel in the strand to the support rolls during continuous casting to detect the location of the final solidification. The final solidification point is of high importance for applying soft reduction during continuous casting in order to ensure inner quality and achieve high productivity. The measurement was conducted at one of the casters at SSAB Oxelösund, of which all the support rolls are separately mounted. The project finds that this method shows promising results and can help to narrow down the range of the location due to certain interferences and noises. The ferrostatic pressure decrease during tail-out and the variation of whether a pressure drop exists is the dividing line of full and partial solidification. With the promising results achieved, more effort should be put to further improve the method.

I Sverige står bostads- och servicesektorn för ca 40 procent av den totala energianvändningen. Riksdagen hade fram till år 2012 ett specifikt mål om att halvera energianvändningen i sektorn till år 2050. I väntan på att ett nytt mål antas skrivs att innebörden för målet kvarstår. Till 2050 ska energianvändningen ha halverats. Denna rapport är en backcastingstudie som har som mål att analysera vad som krävs för att uppnå halveringsmålet genom satsning på fyra huvudåtgärder; nyproduktion, ombyggnad, stegvis förbättring och effektivare användning av bostadsbeståndet. Sex scenarion har satts upp, ett för varje huvudåtgärd och två scenarion som kombinerar de övriga fyra. Resultatet visar vilken väg som kan tänkas vara bäst att gå och at tstora insatser för att nå målet kommer att krävas. Dessa berör bostads- och servicesektorns alla aktörer samt beslutsfattare på samhällets alla nivåer. En beräkning för den potentiella besparingen i koldioxidutsläpp till följd av energiminskningen har också gjorts. Utsläppsminskningarna kan som följd komma att bli av betydande storlek och kan bidra till att Sverige blir ett föregångsland i omställningen till ett hållbart samhälle. / In Sweden, the dwelling and service sector accounts for approximately 40 percent of the total energy use. Up until 2012, the parliament had a specific goal to reduce the energy use by half in the sector to 2050. While waiting for a new goal to be set however, the parliament states that the implication of the goal remains. The energy use shall be reduced by half before the year 2050. This report is a back-casting study that has the aim to analyze what it takes to reach the goal by focusing on four main measures; new construction, reconstruction, gradual improvement and more efficient use of the heated areas in residential buildings. Six scenarios have been set up, one for every main measure and two scenarios that combine the other four. The result shows what path might be best to choose and that extensive and rapid transformationis necessary to reach the goal. These contributions affect all the involved actors as well as stakeholders on all the different levels of society. Resulting reductions in carbon dioxide emissionsdue to the decrease in energy use have also been calculated. The potential reduction can become significant in size and contribute to making Sweden a pioneer in the transformation to asustainable society.

Sand casting is used to manufacture large metal workpieces. The processing is executed by pouring molten metal into a sand mold. During the process, the mold is subjected to mechanical and thermal stress. It is of economic interest to inspect the molds for defects that can affect casting results, in the worst case leading to discarded products. This thesis investigates and proposes an automated solution for inspecting surface cracks in sand molds. A hybrid solution using image processing and convolutional neural networks has been developed. The first is to find and implement a crack detection method that can perform equally well or better than a human. The second objective is to investigate the amount of training data needed. Twenty-one machine learning models have been trained to evaluate the impact training data size along with transfer learning, fine-tuning, data augmentation, and image processing have on performance. As a result, it was found that the image processing part of the method is not effective in finding cracks in its current form. However, the convolutional neural network still achieves good performance. The method has been trained and tested on sand mold core images captured with a test workbench along with images of concrete walls and pavement acquired from the SDNET2018 data set. Sand mold images achieve 82% accuracy and 79% recall when training on 90 images while testing on 28 images separate from training. A maximal performance of 97.9% accuracy and 99.7% recall is achieved when training on 5400 SDNET2018 images and then testing on 608 images. When training on 100 SDNET2018 images and tested on the same 608 images, a performance of 86.0% and 96.7% recall is achieved. It is concluded that the proposed solution is feasible. Transfer learning and data augmentation are essential techniques to achieve good performance if a small amount of data is available, while fine-tuning may give a slight performance boost. Further work should be performed considering the impact of curved geometry on performance. Investigating alternative structures of the convolutional neural network and testing alternative hyperparameters may improve generalization performance. The image processing performance may be improved if the manufacturing process is more precisely defined, as parameters can be more optimally tuned.

<p> Continuous Casting (CC) is an essential process in the steel industry to transform molten steel into solid product. This process begins with primary cooling (PC) where the molten steel is cooled, and the initial solidification begins. It is important to monitor the process of PC as defects such as thinning of the shell in the mold can lead to breakouts. Key parameters in PC are the mold design, casting condition, and steel composition. In the research conducted, key parameters for PC are investigated to analyze the impact on flow formation and solidification. To optimize mold design, angular taper to the narrow face can be employed to accommodate for any shell shrinkage. Utilizing computational fluid dynamics, a range of mold taper is simulated per the developed solidification model with defined temperature-dependent material properties. When simulated without a taper, significant air gap formation in the corners of the mold is visible due to thermal shrinkage of the shell. This air gap decreases the cooling rate due to the shell’s lack of contact with the cooling mold wall. A parametric study of mold taper ranging from no taper to 3° as well as change in casting conditions, superheat and casting speed, are conducted to analyze the impact of taper with respect to the casting conditions. Per the conditions applied, angular taper between 1° and 2° resulted into reduction of undercooling and overcooling in the corner of the mold which is subjected to cooling from the broad face and narrow face of the cool mold wall. The turbulent flow in the mold region was found to drastically influences the quality of steel produced during continuous casting. The flow itself can lead to surface defects or slag entrainment based on the formation. A high surface wave due to turbulence of the injected melt lead to fluctuations and the instability compromised the quality of the steel produced as well as entrained the slag. To regulate the flow, electromagnetic forces can be applied in the mold, dampening the local turbulent flow. As the electrically conductive molten steel interacts with the induced magnetic field, it reduced the velocity of the steel jet released from the ports of the submerged entry nozzle. Per the simulation-based study conducted increasing the EMBr strength from 2975G to 4350G reduced the peak surface wave height by 59.47% and volume of flux rate of decrease by 4.25%. Additionally, increasing the SEN depth from 110 mm to 350 mm increased the average wave height by 19% and volume of flux rate of decrease by 2.6%. Lastly, increasing the mold width from 1.067 m to 1.50m increased average wave height by 8.71% and volume of flux rate of decrease by 0.9%. </p>

The present dissertation describes part of the efforts directed towards the development of computational tools to support process modeling. This work is also a further development of the Thermoslag software developed in the Division of Materials Process Science, KTH. The essential parts of the thesis are a) development of a semi-empirical model for the estimation of the molar volumes/densities of multicomponent slags with a view to incorporate the same in the model for viscosities and b) further development of the viscosity model for application towards fluorid- containing slags, as for example, mould flux slags. The model for the estimation of molar volume is based on a correlation between the relative integral molar volume of a slag system and the relative integral molar enthalpies of mixing of the same system. The integral molar enthalpies of the relevant systems could be evaluated from the Gibbs energy data available in the Thermoslag software. The binary parameters were evaluated from experimental measurements of the molar volumes. Satisfactory correlations were obtained in the case of the binary silicate and aluminate systems. The model was extended to ternary and multi component systems by computing the molar volumes using the binary parameters. The model predictions showed agreements with the molar volume data available in literature. The model was used to estimate the molar volumes of industrial slags as well as to trace the trends in molar volume due to compositional variations. The advantage of the present approach is that it would enable prediction of molar volumes of slags that are compatible with the thermodynamic data available. With a view to extend the existing model for viscosities to F--containing slags, the viscosities of mould flux slags for continues casting in steel production have been investigated in the present work. The measurements were carried out utilizing the rotating cylinder method. Seven mould fluxes used in the Swedish steel industry and the impact of Al2O3 pick up by mould flux slags on viscosities were included in the study. The results showed that even relatively small additions of Al2O3 are related with a significant increase in viscosity / QC 20101123

Introduction: Production systems go through changes over time and there are different factors driving the change. Metal Additive manufacturing (AM) could be a factor with industries that already havetaken interest in the manufacturing technique. Qualification and standards of manufacturing guide consistent product quality and could face challenges when implementing AM. However,most publications about metal AM are currently posted from a material point of view. This requires more publications with comprehensive overviews of metal AM and dive deeper into metal AMs industry applications, limitations and challenges. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to identify challenges that may arise in the implementation of AM. The intention is also to compare the conventional method of sand casting with AM for metal production targeted at excavators. This is accomplished by specifically highlighting the metallurgical benefits of AM. Research Questions: RQ1: What challenges arise when qualifying AM products for excavators? RQ2: What are the metallurgical benefits of an AM produced product in comparison to a Sand Casted product for excavator bucket teeth? Method: An inductive approach has been taken, with a literature, empirical and case study conducted.The construction of the theoretical framework used information from scientific articles and books. The findings of the empirical study arrived from information gathered through observations and experimentation, with help and interpretation from the case companies. The empirical findings will assist in answering the research questions. The case study consisted of metallurgical testing in form of porosity analysis, microstructure examination, hardness- and chemical composition test. Conclusion: Several challenges were discovered that will impact the qualification of AM products. These can affect the results derived from the case study, providing incorrect data. It can however be seen as beneficial as it provides knowledge of how to reduce or eliminate their impact withfuture analyses.The AM products tested, displayed positive metallurgical properties in comparison with sand casted products. A standout trait was the consistency in the dimension and density of the AM products, displaying how AM can create nearly identical products.

A new material for use as a proton exchange membrane in fuel cells has been developed: a blend of a perfluorocyclobutane-based block ionomer (S-PFCB) and Poly (vinylidene-co-hexafluoropropylene) (Kynar Flex, KF). This thesis details the work done thus far to characterize the morphology of this material, using small angle x-ray scattering, differential scanning calorimetry, atomic force micrscopy, and some other techniques to a lesser extent. Small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) of pure S-PFCB showed a strong block copolymer- associated phase separation, on the order of 25 nm. Differential scanning Calorimetry (DSC) confirmed this finding. SAXS also revealed the presence of a peak representing individual ionic aggregates on the order of 3 nm. Finally, it was shown with DSC that no crystallinity develops in the S-PFCB block copolymer, while one of the blocks, known as 6F, crystallizes extensively. SAXS of incremental blend compositions of KF and S-PFCB revealed a steady increase in size of the block copolymer phase separation peak in SAXS, demonstrative of the miscibility of KF and the non-sulfonated 6F block of S-PFCB. Furthermore, this incremental study determined the scattering vector range relevant for comparing amounts of KF crystallinity. DSC of incremental blend compositions revealed two phases of KF crystallinity develops upon cooling a membrane, independent of cooling rate. Atomic force microscopy (AFM), small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) corroborate to suggest a nonuniform morphology through the thickness of solution cast membranes. Also, the effect of different casting temperatures and after-casting anneals on morphology was assessed. Future work on this project involves morphological studies at various relative humidities and temperatures, as well as following up on discoveries already made. Finally, transmission electron micrscopy (TEM) should be performed to provide a visual analog, which will greatly help in developing an accurate morphological model. / Master of Science

Casting, Solidification, Aluminum, Physical Metallurgy, Mechanical Metallurgy, Strengthening Model, Aluminum Wrought Alloys, Aluminum 7xxx Series, Al-Zn-Mg-Cu / Over the past decades, researchers in casting fields, especially in semi-solid metal state, have endeavored to find new ways to enable the Al wrought alloys of casting using the conventional casting processes; mainly in order to improve the product properties and decrease the product cost. The thixoforming and rheocasting processes have been presented as ways by which the microstructure of Al-base wrought alloys can be changed into non-dendritic, which in turn can lead to improvement to the mechanical properties. This can be because the effect of the non-dendritic microstructure on the mechanical properties of the material. Unfortunately, these processes have proved to be cost prohibitive and be a bit complicated for commercial applications. Further, conventional casting of Al-base wrought alloys along with their superior properties and performance have been a challenge for foundry industry due to the main disadvantage of hot tearing or hot cracking during solidification process. This can render the cast component ineffective. To overcome the disadvantages of thixoforming and rheocasting processes, Controlled Diffusion Solidification (CDS) process was innovated mainly to enable casting of aluminum wrought alloys with a non-dendritic morphology of the primary Al phase in the resultant cast microstructure and thus alleviating the problem of hot tearing and obtaining a cost effective product with improved mechanical properties. The CDS is a simple process involving mixing of two precursor alloys of different thermal masses (temperature and solute) and subsequently casting the resultant mixture of the desired solute composition and temperature as a near net shaped cast product. The process can easily be commercialized with a marginal capital cost required for set up such as the addition of an extra holding furnace. Further, the CDS process would prove itself to be unique in its ability to cast Al-based wrought alloys into near net shaped components without additional processes and cost. The originality of this study is to present a viable casting process for the Al-7xxx wrought alloys (Al-Zn-Mg-Cu); by which the Al-7xxx family alloys are presented in cast condition to have an acceptable uniaxial property range that is comparable with their wrought counterparts. This study presents the process and alloy parameters necessary for the casting of Al-7xxx wrought alloys (Al-Zn-Mg-Cu), by using the CDS process coupling with tilt pour gravity casting (TPGC) machine. The uniaxial tensile mechanical properties of several Al-7xxx CDS castings under various heat treatment conditions, namely, solutionizing (T4), peak aged (T6) and annealing (O), necessary for development of an ageing process on the material were investigated and presented. The tilt pour gravity casting process coupled with the CDS technology was employed to demonstrate the ability to cast Al-7xxx wrought alloys into high integrity components with high strength and ductility. The microstructure characterization was carried out by Electron Microscopy (TEM, SEM and EDS) and DSC test experiments for all the as cast (F), T4, T6 and anneals (O) conditions of the CDS cast components. Also, the predictive capabilities for the yield strength of Al 7xxx alloys CDS cast components was investigated using structural-properties modeling for the various strengthening effects that are recently proposed specifically for the Al-7xxx wrought counterparts. The study has successfully led to a more in-depth understanding of the innovative CDS casting process by applying it to several compositions of Al-7xxx wrought alloys in an industrial scale CDS casting experiments, using tilt pour gravity casting (TPGC) machine. This will hopefully lead us to a clearer path towards commercializing the CDS process and obtaining a viable casting process for Al-base wrought alloys into near net shape components without much change to economics of the casting process. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Casting, Solidification, Aluminum, Physical Metallurgy, Mechanical Metallurgy, Strengthening Model, Aluminum Wrought Alloys, Aluminum 7xxx Series, Al-Zn-Mg-Cu