Low temperature co-fire ceramic (LTCC) materials technology offers a cost-effective and versatile approach to design and manufacture high performance and reliable advanced microelectronic packages (e.g., for wireless communications). A critical issue in manufacturing LTCC microelectronics is the need to precisely and reproducibly control shrinkage on sintering. Master Sintering Curve (MSC) theory has been evaluated and successfully applied as a tool to predict and control LTCC sintering. Dilatometer sintering experiments were designed and completed to characterize the anisotropic sintering behavior of green LTCC materials formed by tape casting. The resultant master sintering curve generated from these data provides a means to predict density as a function of sintering time and temperature. The application of MSC theory to DuPont 951 Green Tape{trademark} will be demonstrated.
In the past decade, an advanced composite repair technology has made great strides in commercial aviation use. Extensive testing and analysis, through joint programs between the Sandia Labs FAA Airworthiness Assurance Center and the aviation industry, have proven that composite materials can be used to repair damaged aluminum structure. Successful pilot programs have produced flight performance history to establish the viability and durability of bonded composite patches as a permanent repair on commercial aircraft structures. With this foundation in place, efforts are underway to adapt bonded composite repair technology to civil structures. This paper presents a study in the application of composite patches on large trucks and hydraulic shovels typically used in mining operations. Extreme fatigue, temperature, erosive, and corrosive environments induce an array of equipment damage. The current weld repair techniques for these structures provide a fatigue life that is inferior to that of the original plate. Subsequent cracking must be revisited on a regular basis. It is believed that the use of composite doublers, which do not have brittle fracture problems such as those inherent in welds, will help extend the structure's fatigue life and reduce the equipment downtime. Two of the main issues for adapting aircraft composite repairs to civil applications are developing an installation technique for carbon steel structure and accommodating large repairs on extremely thick structures. This paper will focus on the first phase of this study which evaluated the performance of different mechanical and chemical surface preparation techniques. The factors influencing the durability of composite patches in severe field environments will be discussed along with related laminate design and installation issues.
It has recently been shown that local values of the conventional exchange energy per particle cannot be described by an analytic expansion in the density variation. Yet, it is known that the total exchange-correlation (XC) energy per particle does not show any corresponding nonanalyticity. Indeed, the nonanalyticity is here shown to be an effect of the separation into conventional exchange and correlation. We construct an alternative separation in which the exchange part is made well behaved by screening its long-ranged contributions, and the correlation part is adjusted accordingly. This alternative separation is as valid as the conventional one, and introduces no new approximations to the total XC energy. We demonstrate functional development based on this approach by creating and deploying a local-density-approximation-type XC functional. Hence, this work includes both the theory and the practical calculations needed to provide a starting point for an alternative approach towards improved approximations of the total XC energy.