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Nanotechnology is now recognized as one of the most promising areas for technological
development in the 21st century. In materials research, the development of
polymer nanocomposites is rapidly emerging as a multidisciplinary research activity
whose results could widen the applications of polymers to the benefit of many different
industries. Nanocomposites are a new class of composites that are particle-filled
polymers for which at least one dimension of the dispersed particle is in the nanometer
range. In the related area polymer/clay nanocomposites have attracted considerable
interest because they often exhibit remarkable property improvements when
compared to virgin polymer or conventional micro- and macro- composites.
The present work addresses the toughening and reinforcement of thermoplastics via
a novel method which allows us to achieve micro- and nanocomposites. In this work
two matrices are used: amorphous polystyrene (PS) and semi-crystalline polyoxymethylene
(POM). Polyurethane (PU) was selected as the toughening agent for POM
and used in its latex form. It is noteworthy that the mean size of rubber latices is
closely matched with that of conventional toughening agents, impact modifiers.
Boehmite alumina and sodium fluorohectorite (FH) were used as reinforcements.
One of the criteria for selecting these fillers was that they are water swellable/
dispersible and thus their nanoscale dispersion can be achieved also in aqueous
polymer latex. A systematic study was performed on how to adapt discontinuousand
continuous manufacturing techniques for the related nanocomposites.
The dispersion of nanofillers was characterized by transmission, scanning electron
and atomic force microcopy (TEM, SEM and AFM respectively), X-ray diffraction
(XRD) techniques, and discussed. The crystallization of POM was studied by means
of differential scanning calorimetry and polarized light optical microscopy (DSC and
PLM, respectively). The mechanical and thermomechanical properties of the composites
were determined in uniaxial tensile, dynamic-mechanical thermal analysis
(DMTA), short-time creep tests, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA).
PS composites were produced first by a discontinuous manufacturing technique,
whereby FH or alumina was incorporated in the PS matrix by melt blending with and
without latex precompounding of PS latex with the nanofiller. It was found that direct melt mixing (DM) of the nanofillers with PS resulted in micro-, whereas the latex mediated
pre-compounding (masterbatch technique, MB) in nanocomposites. FH was
not intercalated by PS when prepared by DM. On the other hand, FH was well dispersed
(mostly intercalated) in PS via the PS latex-mediated predispersion of FH following
the MB route. The nanocomposites produced by MB outperformed the DM
compounded microcomposites in respect to properties like stiffness, strength and
ductility based on dynamic-mechanical and static tensile tests. It was found that the
resistance to creep (summarized in master curves) of the nanocomposites were improved
compared to those of the microcomposites. Master curves (creep compliance
vs. time), constructed based on isothermal creep tests performed at different temperatures,
showed that the nanofiller reinforcement affects mostly the initial creep
compliance.
Next, ternary composites composed of POM, PU and boehmite alumina were produced
by melt blending with and without latex precompounding. Latex precompounding
served for the predispersion of the alumina particles. The related MB was produced
by mixing the PU latex with water dispersible boehmite alumina. The composites
produced by the MB technique outperformed the DM compounded composites in
respect to most of the thermal and mechanical characteristics.
Toughened and/or reinforced PS- and POM-based composites have been successfully
produced by a continuous extrusion technique, too. This technique resulted in
good dispersion of both nanofillers (boehmite) and impact modifier (PU). Compared
to the microcomposites obtained by conventional DM, the nanofiller dispersion became
finer and uniform when using the water-mediated predispersion. The resulting
structure markedly affected the mechanical properties (stiffness and creep resistance)
of the corresponding composites. The impact resistance of POM was highly
enhanced by the addition of PU rubber when manufactured by the continuous extrusion
manufacturing technique. This was traced to the dispersed PU particle size being
in the range required from conventional, impact modifiers.
The prototype of a rapid authoring tool for reusable learning objects, LOXtractor was extended with the ability for importing PDF files and for direct input of plain text. The ability to process PDF files was a major step forward to the goal of creating an application that integrates the creation of small-scale learning objects, their annotation with metadata and their mapping to an ontology for later retrieval into the task solving workflow, as intended by the SLEAM process. Especially small and medium sized enterprises can profit from this easy and affordable way to conserve individual informal learning effort for the whole company.
Rapid growth in sensors and sensor technology introduces variety of products to the market. The increasing number of available sensor concepts and implementations demands more versatile sensor electronics and signal conditioning. Nowadays signal conditioning for the available spectrum of sensors is becoming more and more challenging. Moreover, developing a sensor signal conditioning ASIC is a function of cost, area, and robustness to maintain signal integrity. Field programmable analog approaches and the recent evolvable hardware approaches offer partial solution for advanced compensation as well as for rapid prototyping. The recent research field of evolutionary concepts focuses predominantly on digital and is at its advancement stage in analog domain. Thus, the main research goal is to combine the ever increasing industrial demand for sensor signal conditioning with evolutionary concepts and dynamically reconfigurable matched analog arrays implemented in main stream Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductors (CMOS) technologies to yield an intelligent and smart sensor system with acceptable fault tolerance and the so called self-x features, such as self-monitoring, self-repairing and self-trimming. For this aim, the work suggests and progresses towards a novel, time continuous and dynamically reconfigurable signal conditioning hardware platform suitable to support variety of sensors. The state-of-the-art has been investigated with regard to existing programmable/reconfigurable analog devices and the common industrial application scenario and circuits, in particular including resource and sizing analysis for proper motivation of design decisions. The pursued intermediate granular level approach called as Field Programmable Medium-granular mixed signal Array (FPMA) offers flexibility, trimming and rapid prototyping capabilities. The proposed approach targets at the investigation of industrial applicability of evolvable hardware concepts and to merge it with reconfigurable or programmable analog concepts, and industrial electronics standards and needs for next generation robust and flexible sensor systems. The devised programmable sensor signal conditioning test chips, namely FPMA1/FPMA2, designed in 0.35 µm (C35B4) Austriamicrosystems, can be used as a single instance, off the shelf chip at the PCB level for conditioning or in the loop with dedicated software to inherit the aspired self-x features. The use of such self–x sensor system carries the promise of improved flexibility, better accuracy and reduced vulnerability to manufacturing deviations and drift. An embedded system, namely PHYTEC miniMODUL-515C was used to program and characterize the mixed-signal test chips in various feedback arrangements to answer some of the questions raised by the research goals. Wide range of established analog circuits, ranging from single output to fully differential amplifiers, was investigated at different hierarchical levels to realize circuits like instrumentation amplifier and filters. A more extensive design issues based on low-power like for e.g., sub-threshold design were investigated and a novel soft sleep mode idea was proposed. The bandwidth limitations observed in the state of the art fine granular approaches were enhanced by the proposed intermediate granular approach. The so designed sensor signal conditioning instrumentation amplifier was then compared to the commercially available products in the market like LT 1167, INA 125 and AD 8250. In an adaptive prototype, evolutionary approaches, in particular based on particle swarm optimization with multi-objectives, were just deployed to all the test samples of FPMA1/FMPA2 (15 each) to exhibit self-x properties and to recover from manufacturing variations and drift. The variations observed in the performance of the test samples were compensated through reconfiguration for the desired specification.
In this paper we develop a network location model that combines the characteristics of ordered median and gradual cover models resulting in the Ordered Gradual Covering Location Problem (OGCLP). The Gradual Cover Location Problem (GCLP) was specifically designed to extend the basic cover objective to capture sensitivity with respect to absolute travel distance. Ordered Median Location problems are a generalization of most of the classical locations problems like p-median or p-center problems. They can be modeled by using so-called ordered median functions. These functions multiply a weight to the cost of fulfilling the demand of a customer which depends on the position of that cost relative to the costs of fulfilling the demand of the other customers. We derive Finite Dominating Sets (FDS) for the one facility case of the OGCLP. Moreover, we present efficient algorithms for determining the FDS and also discuss the conditional case where a certain number of facilities are already assumed to exist and one new facility is to be added. For the multi-facility case we are able to identify a finite set of potential facility locations a priori, which essentially converts the network location model into its discrete counterpart. For the multi-facility discrete OGCLP we discuss several Integer Programming formulations and give computational results.
This thesis is devoted to the study of tropical curves with emphasis on their enumerative geometry. Major results include a conceptual proof of the fact that the number of rational tropical plane curves interpolating an appropriate number of general points is independent of the choice of points, the computation of intersection products of Psi-classes on the moduli space of rational tropical curves, a computation of the number of tropical elliptic plane curves of given degree and fixed tropical j-invariant as well as a tropical analogue of the Riemann-Roch theorem for algebraic curves. The result are obtained in joint work with Hannah Markwig and/or Andreas Gathmann.
In recent years, formal property checking has become adopted successfully in industry and is used increasingly to solve the industrial verification tasks. This success results from property checking formulations that are well adapted to specific methodologies. In particular, assertion checking and property checking methodologies based on Bounded Model Checking or related techniques have matured tremendously during the last decade and are well supported by industrial methodologies. This is particularly true for formal property checking of computational System-on-Chip (SoC) modules. This work is based on a SAT-based formulation of property checking called Interval Property Checking (IPC). IPC originates in the Siemens company and is in industrial use since the mid 1990s. IPC handles a special type of safety properties, which specify operations in intervals between abstract starting and ending states. This paves the way for extremely efficient proving procedures. However, there are still two problems in the IPC-based verification methodology flow that reduce the productivity of the methodology and sometimes hamper adoption of IPC. First, IPC may return false counterexamples since its computational bounded circuit model only captures local reachability information, i.e., long-term dependencies may be missed. If this happens, the properties need to be strengthened with reachability invariants in order to rule out the spurious counterexamples. Identifying strong enough invariants is a laborious manual task. Second, a set of properties needs to be formulated manually for each individual design to be verified. This set, however, isn’t re-usable for different designs. This work exploits special features of communication modules in SoCs to solve these problems and to improve the productivity of the IPC methodology flow. First, the work proposes a decomposition-based reachability analysis to solve the problem of identifying reachability information automatically. Second, this work develops a generic, reusable set of properties for protocol compliance verification.
Within this thesis a series of molecular species has been studied, with focus on hydrogen bonded species and on (solvated) transition metal complexes. Experimental techniques such as FT-ICR-MS and IRMPD were combined with ab initio calculations for the determination of structure and reactivity of the aforementioned types of systems. On the basis of high level electronic structure calculations of neutral water clusters (H2O)n with n = 17-21 a transitional size regime has been determined, where a structural stabilization between all-surface and interior configurations alternates with the addition or removal of a single water molecule. Electronic structure calculations suggested that for n = 17 and 19 the interior configuration would be energetically more stable than the all-surface one. The gas phase infrared spectrum of the singly hydrated ammonium ion, NH4+(H2O), had previously been recorded by photodissociation spectroscopy of mass selected ions and interpreted by means of ab initio calculations. The present work provides additional information on the shape of the potential energy curves of NH4+(H2O) along the N-H distance on MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ level of theory yielding an anharmonic potential shape. Calculation of potential energy curves of the O-H mode of the intramolecular hydrogen bond of various dicarboxylic acids (oxalic to adipic acid) revealed that the shapes of the potentials directly correlate to the size of the system and the resulting ring strain The shape of the potential is also influenced by the charge of the system. Calculation of anharmonic frequencies based on the VPT2 approach lead to reasonable results in all systems with narrow potentials. IRMPD spectra of complexes in the gas phase have been recorded for a series of cationic vanadium oxide complexes when reacted with acetonitrile, methanol and ethanol. The experimental spectra are compared to calculated absorption spectra. The systematic DFT study identifies potential candidates for reductive nitrile coupling in cationic transition metal acetonitrile complexes. On the basis of the calculations, the formation of metallacyclic structures in group 3 through 7 complexes can be ruled out. Solvation of the transition metal cation by five acetonitrile ligands leads to a reductive nitrile coupling reaction in three types of complexes, namely those containing either niobium, tantalum or tungsten.
This thesis is devoted to deal with the stochastic optimization problems in various situations with the aid of the Martingale method. Chapter 2 discusses the Martingale method and its applications to the basic optimization problems, which are well addressed in the literature (for example, [15], [23] and [24]). In Chapter 3, we study the problem of maximizing expected utility of real terminal wealth in the presence of an index bond. Chapter 4, which is a modification of the original research paper joint with Korn and Ewald [39], investigates an optimization problem faced by a DC pension fund manager under inflationary risk. Although the problem is addressed in the context of a pension fund, it presents a way of how to deal with the optimization problem, in the case there is a (positive) endowment. In Chapter 5, we turn to a situation where the additional income, other than the income from returns on investment, is gained by supplying labor. Chapter 6 concerns a situation where the market considered is incomplete. A trick of completing an incomplete market is presented there. The general theory which supports the discussion followed is summarized in the first chapter.
We present results and views about a project in assisted living. The scenario is a room in which an elderly and/or disabled person lives who is not able to perform certain actions due to restricted mobility. We enable the person to express commands verbally that will then be executed automatically. There are several severe problems involved that complicate the situation. The person may utter the command in a rather unexpected way, the person makes an error or the action cannot be performed due to several reasons. In our approach we present an architecture with three components: The recognition component that contains novel features in the signal processing, the analysis component that logically analyzes the command, and the execution component that performs the action automatically. All three components communicate with each other.
Recently we developed a discrete model of elastic rods with symmetric cross section suitable for a fast simulation of quasistatic deformations [33]. The model is based on Kirchhoff’s geometrically exact theory of rods. Unlike simple models of “mass & spring” type typically used in VR applications, our model provides a proper coupling of bending and torsion. The computational approach comprises a variational formulation combined with a finite difference discretization of the continuum model. Approximate solutions of the equilibrium equations for sequentially varying boundary conditions are obtained by means of energy minimization using a nonlinear CG method. As the computational performance of our model yields solution times within the range of milliseconds, our approach proves to be sufficient to simulate an interactive manipulation of such flexible rods in virtual reality applications in real time.