Nitrogen rich glasses in the systems Ca-Si-O-N, Sr-Si-O-N and AE-Ca-Si-O-N (AE = Mg, Sr and Ba) have been prepared using a novel glass-synthesis route. The limits of the glass forming regions in the Ca and Sr systems and substitution limits in the AE-Ca-Si-O-N systems have been determined and physical properties of the glasses measured. Transparent glasses were obtained for a few specific compositions in the Ca-Si-O-N and Mg-Ca-Si-O-N systems. All other glasses were found to be translucent gray to opaque black, with the coloration of the glasses depending on the modifier. Small inclusions of Ca/Sr silicides and, in much smaller amounts, elemental Si are believed to be responsible for their poor transparency. A large glass forming region was found for the Ca-Si-O-N system, with glasses retaining up to 58 e/o N and 42 e/o Ca. In comparison, a more narrow glass forming region was found for the corresponding Sr system, with glasses retaining up to 45 e/o N and 39 e/o Sr. The glass formation was found to depend on reaction kinetics and precursors used. A strong exothermic reaction was observed at temperatures 650–1000oC, providing improved conditions for reaction kinetics upon further heating. Physical property measurements for the Ca and Sr glasses showed that glass transition and crystallization temperatures, viscosity, hardness, Young’s modulus and shear modulus depend strongly on the nitrogen content and that these properties increase approximately linearly with increasing nitrogen content. Glass density and refractive index are also dependent on the modifier element and content, in particular for the Sr glasses. Glasses AE-Ca-Si-O-N, with approximately constant (Ca/AE): Si:O:N ratios, showed that mixed modifier glass properties, such as density, molar volume, glass transition temperature, hardness, refractive index can be related to the effective cation field strength of the modifiers.

The snow cover plays an important role not only for the whole climate system but also for tourism and economy in the Lapland winter (e.g. dog sledding, snow mobile, etc). Snow constitutes a shelter for animals and plants during the winter due to thermal isolation, but, on the range of this investigation, it can make grazing difficult for reindeers, if the conditions are not favorable. Different approaches to the study have been made; the first and most important part of the investigation was a campaign in Järämä, in Swedish Lapland. During 3 days (between the 3rd and 5th of March 2009), a series of snow pits were done, recording snow grain size, snow layers depth, snow hardness/compactness, density and temperature. The hardness in the snow was evaluated through ram penetration tests. It was additionally studied the correspondence between the snow layers found in situ and the Sámi terminology. Another approach of the study consisted of satellite observations during the winter season 2008/2009 with day light in the region. The type of imagery used was MODIS (The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) daily snow albedo and 8-day surface reflectance products. Measurements of temperature, precipitation, snow depth were used to cover the polar night time when satellite images were missing. According to these weather observations some snow metamorphisms were also studied, and their influence on the snowpack conditions. Through the comparison between all these forms of data it was found that in the winter season 2008/2009 the conditions for reindeers grazing were not good due to the formation of ice encapsulating the lichens and grass. Additionally several hard snow layers have been found in the snowpack which increase the difficulty to dig in the snow and may cause problems to the reindeers’ digestion. Snow hardness measurements with a ram penetrometer, manual tests and visual grain size observation proved these discovers. Several periods of positive temperature may cause melting/refreezing cycles contributing to the formation of hard snow layers. These conclusions are supported by the snow albedo and surface reflectance satellite imagery. In these images is visible a period with snow albedo decreasing a lot in the beginning of autumn, after the first lasting snowfall. The weather conditions in early fall, when the first durable snow occurs, are of extreme importance for the reindeers’ grazing, and in the case of the studied winter season, the conditions were not favorable.

Nanocrystalline materials have generated immense scientific interest, primarily due to observations of significantly enhanced strength and hardness resulting from Hall-Petch grain size strengthening into the nano-regime. Unfortunately, however, most previous studies have been unable to present material strength measurements using established tensile tests because the most commonly accepted tensile test protocols call for specimen geometries that exceeded the capabilities of most nanocrystalline material synthesis processes. This has led to the development of non-standard mechanical test methodologies for the evaluation of miniature specimens, and/or the persistent use of hardness indentation as a proxy for tensile testing. This study explored why such alternative approaches can be misleading and revealed how reliable tensile ductility measurements and material strength information from hardness indentation may be obtained. To do so, an electrodeposition-based synthesis method to produce artifact-reduced specimens large enough for testing in accordance with ASTM E8 was developed. A large number of 161 samples were produced, tested, and the resultant data evaluated using Weibull statistical analysis. It was found that the impact of electroforming process control on both the absolute value and variability of achievable tensile elongation was strong. Tensile necking was found to obey similar processing quality and geometrical dependencies as in conventional engineering metals. However, unlike conventional engineering metals, intrinsic ductility (as measured by maximum uniform plastic strain) was unexpectedly observed to be independent of microstructure over the grain size range 10-80nm. This indicated that the underlying physical processes of grain boundary-mediated damage development are strain-oriented phenomena that can be best defined by a critical plastic strain regardless of the strength of the material as a whole. It was further shown that the HV = 3•σUTS expression is a reliable predictor of the relationship between hardness and strength for electrodeposited nanocrystalline materials, provided the material is ductile enough to sustain tensile deformation until the onset of necking instability. The widely used relationship HV = 3•σY was found to be inapplicable to this class of materials owing to the fact that they do not deform in an “ideally plastic” manner and instead exhibit plastic deformation that is characteristic of strain hardening behaviour.

Nanocrystalline materials have generated immense scientific interest, primarily due to observations of significantly enhanced strength and hardness resulting from Hall-Petch grain size strengthening into the nano-regime. Unfortunately, however, most previous studies have been unable to present material strength measurements using established tensile tests because the most commonly accepted tensile test protocols call for specimen geometries that exceeded the capabilities of most nanocrystalline material synthesis processes. This has led to the development of non-standard mechanical test methodologies for the evaluation of miniature specimens, and/or the persistent use of hardness indentation as a proxy for tensile testing. This study explored why such alternative approaches can be misleading and revealed how reliable tensile ductility measurements and material strength information from hardness indentation may be obtained. To do so, an electrodeposition-based synthesis method to produce artifact-reduced specimens large enough for testing in accordance with ASTM E8 was developed. A large number of 161 samples were produced, tested, and the resultant data evaluated using Weibull statistical analysis. It was found that the impact of electroforming process control on both the absolute value and variability of achievable tensile elongation was strong. Tensile necking was found to obey similar processing quality and geometrical dependencies as in conventional engineering metals. However, unlike conventional engineering metals, intrinsic ductility (as measured by maximum uniform plastic strain) was unexpectedly observed to be independent of microstructure over the grain size range 10-80nm. This indicated that the underlying physical processes of grain boundary-mediated damage development are strain-oriented phenomena that can be best defined by a critical plastic strain regardless of the strength of the material as a whole. It was further shown that the HV = 3•σUTS expression is a reliable predictor of the relationship between hardness and strength for electrodeposited nanocrystalline materials, provided the material is ductile enough to sustain tensile deformation until the onset of necking instability. The widely used relationship HV = 3•σY was found to be inapplicable to this class of materials owing to the fact that they do not deform in an “ideally plastic” manner and instead exhibit plastic deformation that is characteristic of strain hardening behaviour.

This research focuses on a study of the material parameters of horse hoof. The study of the problem with the factors that affect to the fastening of the shoe is not performed. Three different tests are carried out to obtain the behavior of the horn wall of the horse hoof in different ways, under physiological conditions and variation of hydration level. The first one is a tensile test to obtain both the force/displacement relation and the stress/strain relation and the parameters derived from them. The second is a hardness test to determine how the material resists to several kinds of permanent-shape changes when a force is applied.Finally, a microscopic study is performed to analyze the fracture surface after testing the specimens. A meticulous analysis of the results and a broad comparison with several researches are performed. The end of the thesis work suggests future works needed to solve the problem.

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In this work we formalize a new natural objective (or cost) function for bi-clustering - Monochromatic bi-clustering. Our objective function is suitable for detecting meaningful homogenous clusters based on categorical valued input matrices. Such problems have arisen recently in systems biology where researchers have inferred functional classifications of biological agents based on their pairwise interactions. We analyze the computational complexity of the resulting optimization problems. We show that finding optimal solutions is NP-hard and complement this result by introducing a polynomial time approximation algorithm for this bi-clustering task. This is the first positive approximation guarantee for bi-clustering algorithms. We also show that bi-clustering with our objective function can be viewed as a generalization of correlation clustering.

This research explores the thermal stability of ZrCrAlN material system. For this purpose fourteen different compositions of ZrCrAlN coatings were deposited onto tungsten carbide substrates by using reactive cathodic arc evaporation. These compositions were further annealed at 800oC, 900oC, 1000oC and 1100oC temperatures. EDS was employed to specify the compositions. The crystal structure of the coatings were analysed by XRD, and the hardness of these coatings was determined by Nanoindentation. The experimental findings reported a significant age hardening of Zr0.16Cr0.12Al0.72N and a delayed h-AlN formation in Zr0.07Cr0.40Al0.52N. ZrCrAlN was thus proved to be thermally stable. / Multifilms,A4:2 Growth and characterization of Multicomponent Nitrides by Magnetron Sputtering and Arc evaporation

In this work we formalize a new natural objective (or cost) function for bi-clustering - Monochromatic bi-clustering. Our objective function is suitable for detecting meaningful homogenous clusters based on categorical valued input matrices. Such problems have arisen recently in systems biology where researchers have inferred functional classifications of biological agents based on their pairwise interactions. We analyze the computational complexity of the resulting optimization problems. We show that finding optimal solutions is NP-hard and complement this result by introducing a polynomial time approximation algorithm for this bi-clustering task. This is the first positive approximation guarantee for bi-clustering algorithms. We also show that bi-clustering with our objective function can be viewed as a generalization of correlation clustering.

Hot forming of boron steels is becoming increasingly popular in the automotive industry due to the demands for weight reduction and increased safety requirements for new vehicles. Hot formed components offer a significant increase in strength over conventional cold-formed steels, which has allowed for reductions in material thickness (and thus weight) while maintaining the same strength. Hot formed components are typically used in structural applications to improve the integrity of the vehicle’s cabin in the event of a collision. It has been suggested, however, that the crash performance of certain hot formed parts may be increased by locally tailoring their mechanical properties to improve their energy absorption. The final microstructure of a hot formed part is driven by the rate at which it is cooled within the tooling during the forming and quenching process. By controlling the cooling rate of the part, it is possible to control the final microstructure, and thus the final mechanical properties. This thesis outlines the experimental and numerical studies that were performed for the hot forming of a lab-scale B-pillar. A hot forming die set was developed which has both heating and cooling capabilities to control the local cooling rate of the blank as it is formed and quenched. The first aspect of this research is to produce a hot formed part which is representative of an industrial component, and then to numerically model the process to predict the final mechanical properties. The second aspect is to produce a hot formed part with tailored mechanical properties, such that there are regions of the part with very high strength (very hard) and other regions with increased ductility (softer). By tailoring the microstructure to meet the performance requirement of a hot formed part, it may be possible to optimize its crash behavior and also reduce the overall weight. Cartridge heaters were installed into sections of the tooling allowing it to reach a maximum temperature of 400°C. Cooling channels are used in other sections to maintain it at approximately room temperature. Experiments were performed on 1.2 mm Usibor® 1500P steel at heated die temperatures ranging from 25°C to 400°C. In the fully cooled region, the Vickers hardness of the blank was measured to be 450 – 475 HV, on average. As the temperature of the heated region was increased, a significant softening trend was observed in the areas of the blank that were in contact with the heated tool. The greatest levels of softening occurred in the 400°C heated die trial. Hardness measurements as low as 234 HV were recorded, which represents a reduction in hardness of 49% compared to the fully cooled trials. Numerical models of the experiments were developed using LS-DYNA and use of its advanced hot forming material model which allows for microstructure and hardness prediction within the final part. The numerical models have shown promising results in terms of predicting the hardness trends as the temperature of the die increases. Thermal expansion of the tooling resulted in local changes in the geometry of the tooling which proved to be problematic during the forming and quenching stages of the process. The expansion caused unexpected changes in the part-die contact, and the resulting microstructures were altered. These thermal expansion issues were addressed in the current work by shimming the tooling; however, in future work the tooling should be designed to account for this expansion at the desired operating temperature.