Search

A novel hard composite solid lubricant coating combining TiN and MoSxhas been developed using pulsed DC closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputtering (CFUBMS). The tribological and mechanical properties together with their interdependencies with the coating microstructures have been assessed and reported elsewhere. This article evaluates the machining performance and correlates the underlying tribological aspects of different TiN-MoSxcoating architectures (deposited at titanium (Ti) cathode currents of 1, 3.5, and 5 A) when dry turning AISI 1080 high-carbon steel. A comparative performance study clearly established the supremacy of the composite coating (deposited at 3.5 A Ti cathode current with ∼12 wt% of MoSx) with a hard TiN underlayer over monolayer TiN, MoSx, and other related coating architectures in terms of cutting force, tool wear, and workpiece surface roughness. The superlubricity behavior of the said composite coated tool resulted in a reduction of cutting force (by up to ∼45% compared to the uncoated tool) and exhibited a tool life of 8 min, which was eight times and more than two times longer than that of the uncoated and conventional hard TiN coated counterparts, respectively. The workpiece surface roughness, Ra, also decreased by 13 to 21% when machined with the TiN-MoSxcoated tool in comparison to the uncoated cemented carbide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agronomic management through better use of inputs benefits farmers both by enhancing productivity and profitability. A field experiment was conducted in consecutive summer seasons (2011–2013) consisting of two mulching (no mulch, polythene mulch), three hydrogel (0, 2.5, 5.0 kg ha−1), and three nutrient management treatments (organic, inorganic, and integrated) in a split–split plot design. Use of mulching and 2.5 kg hydrogel ha−1and integrated nutrient management enhanced pod, haulm, kernel and oil yields, and net economic returns. Partial factor productivity and water-use efficiency were higher under polythene mulch and 5.0 kg hydrogel ha−1. Higher nutrient uptakes were obtained under both mulching and integrated nutrient management. Use of 2.5 kg hydrogel ha−1resulted in more removal of N; P and K uptakes were higher in 5.0 kg hydrogel ha−1. Combination of three managements had a consequence of actual soil N loss, but gains in soil P and K after three cropping cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper reports an investigation into the functional response of textured surfaces with different designs that incorporated arrays of micro-dimples and grooves (40 μm diameter/width and 15 μm depth for both patterns) produced on tungsten carbide (WC) blocks by employing nanosecond (ns) and femtosecond (fs) lasers. In particular, the tribological performance of the textured WC blocks against stainless steel (SS316L) counterbody was evaluated in terms of friction and wear under dry condition compared to an untextured specimen. Friction tests were carried out on a reciprocating sliding tester while unidirectional ball-on-disc method was utilised to assess wear on the mating surfaces. The untextured surface exhibited a continuous rise in the friction coefficient from 0.15 to 0.5 from the start of the cycle to the end while the specimens textured with ns and fs lasers reached steady-state condition after 100 and 200 cycles with values between 0.35-0.45 and 0.3-0.4, respectively. Energy dispersive spectroscopy following wear tests showed a pronounced material transfer from the balls to the textured surfaces with stainless steel filling up some of the dimple and groove cavities; however, the reverse phenomenon was not apparent. Additionally, texturing with the fs laser exhibited formation of nano-ripples/structures in the produced dimples and grooves that can be further studied for creating nano-textured cutting tools or surfaces with super-hydrophobic/anti-ice properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was conducted to assess the effect of soil salinity on yield attributes as well as nutrient accumulation in different plant parts of sevenBrassicacultivars from two different species raised in pot culture experiment with two levels of salinity treatments along with control corresponding to soil electrical conductivity (EC) values of 1.65 (S0), 4.50 (S1) and 6.76 (S2) dS m−1. The experiment was consisted of twelve replications in a completely randomized design. Imposition of salinity stress affected various yield attributing characters including plant height, which ultimately led to severe yield reduction. However, tolerant cultivars, CS 52 and CS 54 performed better under salt treatment showing lesser yield loss. Salinity stress reduced the nitrogen (N) content in leaves of theBrassicaplants, which reflected in decreased seed protein content. Reduced accumulation of iron (Fe), manganese (Mn) and zinc (Zn) was observed in leaf, stem and root at flowering and post-flowering stages, while CS 52 and CS 54 showed less reduction than susceptible cultivars under salinity stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Application of MoS2-based solid lubricant has extreme potential as a coating material of cutting tools because of its superlubricity against most of the engineering materials. However, a detailed study on the effect of such lubricious coating in grinding has never been carried out before. In the present research, the tribological behaviour of MoS2-Ti composite coating with TiN underlayer on electroplated nickel and braze alloy was investigated separately in comparison to TiN coated and uncoated counterparts. Grinding of AISI 52100 steel was also carried out with uncoated, TiN coated and MoS2-Ti coated (with TiN underlayer) monolayer (both electroplated and brazed) cBN wheels. The structure of the coatings and the condition of the grinding wheels were observed under SEM. In tribology test, MoS2-Ti composite coating was found to be best performing on both nickel and braze alloy in terms of coefficient of friction and depth of the wear track. Minimum variation in normal force and remarkably steady behaviour of tangential force were obtained with both MoS2-Ti coated electroplated and brazed wheels over the total experimental run. Large number of grit fracture at and above bond level with some amount of grit pull-out was observed in uncoated electroplated wheels. Uncoated brazed wheels have undergone grit breakage at bond level. However, such failures of grit were significantly arrested with both TiN and MoS2-Ti composite coatings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Nanoelectronic systems are anticipated to be highly susceptible to computation and communication noise. Interestingly, von Neumann addressed the issue of computation in the presence of noisy gates in 1952 and developed a technique called multiplexing. He proposed multiplexing architectures based on two universal logic functions, nand and maj. Generalized combinatorial models to analyze such multiplexing architectures were proposed by von Neumann and extended later by others. In this work, we describe an automated method for computing the effects of noise in both the computational and interconnect hardware of multiplexing-based nanosystems-a method employing a probabilistic model checking tool and extending previous modeling efforts, which only considered gate noise. This method is compared with a recently proposed automation methodology based on probabilistic transfer matrices and used to compute and compare the reliability of individual nand and maj multiplexing systems, both in the presence of gate and interconnect noise. Such a comparative study of nand and maj multiplexing is needed to provide quantitative guidelines for choosing one of the multiplexing schemes. The maximum device failure probabilities that can be accommodated by multiplexing-based fault-tolerant nanosystems are also computed by this method and compared with theoretical results from the literature. This paper provides a framework that can capture probabilistically quantified fault models and provide quick reliability evaluation of multiplexing architectures [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]