Refinement mechanism of cerium addition on solidification structure and sigma phase of super austenitic stainless steel S32654

The influence of Ce addition on the solidification structure and σphase of super austenitic stainless steel S32654 was systematically investigated via microstructural characterization and thermodynamic calcula- tion. The results indicate that a small addition of Ce could modify MgO and MnS into Ce-bearing inclu- sions Ce_(2)O_(3)and Ce_(2)O_(2)S. Ce addition led to noticeable refinement of both the dendrite structure and σphase. The refinement mechanism could be attributed to the combined actions of effective Ce-bearing inclusions and solute Ce. Effective Ce-bearing inclusions could serve as heterogeneous nucleation cores of austenite as well as σphase, which provided a favorable prerequisite for their refinement. Solute Ce significantly enhanced the undercooling degree of the system, further promoting dendrite structure re- finement. Meanwhile, solute Ce improved the eutectic precipitation conditions of σphase and further promoted its nucleation, while the dendrite refinement limited its growth space. Finally, more fine and dispersed σphase particles formed in S32654 with Ce addition. The refinement of dendrite structure and σ phase will reduce the temperature and time required for high-temperature homogenization, which is beneficial to the hot working of this steel.

SwiftArray: Accelerating Queries on Multidimensional Arrays

Scientific instruments and simulation programs are generating large amounts of multidimensional array data. Queries with value and dimension subsetting conditions are commonly used by scientists to find useful information from big array data, and data storage and indexing methods play an important role in supporting queries on multidimensional array data efficiently. In this paper, we propose SwiftArray, a new storage layout with indexing techniques to accelerate queries with value and dimension subsetting conditions. In SwiftArray, the multidimensional array is divided into blocks and each block stores sorted values. Blocks are placed in the order of a Hilbert space-filling curve to improve data locality for dimension subsetting queries. We propose a 2-D-Bin method to build an index for the blocks＇ value ranges, which is an efficient way to avoid accessing unnecessary blocks for value subsetting queries. Our evaluations show that SwiftArray surpasses the NetCDF-4 format and FastBit indexing technique for queries on multidimensional arrays.