The States-of-arts and Key Scientific Issues on Durability Research of Concrete Structures

Concrete has traditionally been regarded as a durable material requiring little or no maintenance. However, over the past several decades, a number of durability related problems have emerged and stimulated research into the factors relating to concrete durability globally. The challenge now facing practicing engineers is how to design and build structures that not only satisfy the specified structural requirements, but also achieve the performance levels required from a durability standpoint. Research works on concrete structural durability have been widely reported in the literature over the last several decades. In this paper, reviews of four stages of research work on durability, i e, environments, materials, components, and structures, were presented. Afterwards, the key scientific issues in this field were also pointed out.

State of the Art and Perspectives of Hydroforming of Tubes and Sheets

Hollow parts of high accuracy and high strength can be produced by forming methods using liquid media. Hydroforming of tubes has reached a high standard for small parts (volume some 1000 cm3) and is further developed for larger parts (volume some 10.000 cm3). Processes for hydraulic sheet metal forming are sometimes used for small parts from single sheets These pro-cesses are currently under intensive investigation, which is also true for the processing of double layered sheets Single sheets can be formed using membranes which separate the workpiece and the liquid. This results in interesting possibilities for a part and process integration in one step The forming performance of aluminum alloys can be enhanced by using a heated liquid media when forming without membranes.

Assessing trends in wildland-urban interface fire research through text mining: a comprehensive analysis of published literature

Research on fires at the wildland-urban inter-face(WUI)has generated significant insights and advance-ments across various fields of study.Environmental,agri-culture,and social sciences have played prominent roles in understanding the impacts of fires in the environment,in protecting communities,and addressing management challenges.This study aimed to create a database using a text mining technique for global researchers interested in WUI-projects and highlighting the interest of countries in this field.Author’s-Keywords analysis emphasized the dominance of fire science-related terms,especially related to WUI,and identified keyword clusters related to the WUI fire-risk-assessment-system-“exposure”,“danger”,and“vulnerability”within wildfire research.Trends over the past decade showcase shifting research interests with a growing focus on WUI fires,while regional variations highlighted that the“exposure”keyword cluster received greater atten-tion in the southern Europe and South America.However,vulnerability keywords have relatively a lower representation across all regions.The analysis underscores the interdisci-plinary nature of WUI research and emphasizes the need for targeted approaches to address the unique challenges of the wildland-urban interface.Overall,this study provides valu-able insights for researchers and serves as a foundation for further collaboration in this field through the understanding of the trends over recent years and in different regions.

Silicon and hybrid silicon photonic devices for intra-datacenter applications: state of the art and perspectives [Invited]

We review the state of the art and our perspectives on silicon and hybrid silicon photonic devices for optical interconnects in datacenters. After a brief discussion of the key requirements for intra-datacenter optical interconnects, we propose a wavelength-division-multiplexing(WDM)-based optical interconnect for intra-datacenter applications. Following our proposed interconnects configuration, the bulk of the review emphasizes recent developments concerning on-chip hybrid silicon microlasers and WDM transmitters, and silicon photonic switch fabrics for intra-datacenters. For hybrid silicon microlasers and WDM transmitters, we outline the remaining challenges and key issues toward realizing low power consumption, direct modulation, and integration of multiwavelength microlaser arrays. For silicon photonic switch fabrics, we review various topologies and configurations of high-port-count N-by-N switch fabrics using Mach–Zehnder interferometers and microring resonators as switch elements, and discuss their prospects toward practical implementations with active reconfiguration.For the microring-based switch fabrics, we review recent developments of active stabilization schemes at the subsystem level. Last, we outline several large challenges and problems for silicon and hybrid silicon photonics to meet for intra-datacenter applications and propose potential solutions.

Pancreatic imaging:Current status of clinical practices and small animal studies

Different causative factors acting on the pancreas can result in diseases such as pancreatitis, diabetes and pancreatic tumors. The high incidence and mortality of pancreatic diseases have placed diagnostic imaging in a crucial position in daily clinical practice. In this minireview article different pancreatic imaging techniques are discussed, from the standard clinical imaging modalities and state of the art clinical magnetic resonance imaging techniques to current situations in pre-clinical pancreatic imaging studies. In particular, the challenges of pre-clinical rodent pancreatic imaging are addressed, with both the image acquisition techniques and the post-processing methods for rodent pancreatic imaging elaborated.

Optimization for Maximum Nonlinear Buckling Load and Topics on Imperfection of Latticed Shells

The present paper represents comparison of continuum shells and latticed shells with qualitative analysis. For shells, the mechanical characteristics in the two perpendicular directions are continuous and related to each other, and any change in thickness will result in change in stiffness in any direction. In latticed shells, members are discrete and stiffnesses in two mutually perpendicular directions are discontinuous and independent of each other. Therefore, sensitivity of geometrical imperfection for buckling of latticed shells should be different from that of continuum shells. The author proposes a shape optimization method for maximum buckling load of a latticed shell. A single layer latticed dome is taken as a numerical example, and the results show that the buckling load parameter for full area loading case increases 32.75% compared to that of its initial shape. Furthermore, the numerical example demonstrates that an optimum latticed shell with maximum buckling load, unlike an optimum continuum shell, may not be sensitive to its geometrical imperfection.

Bibliometric Study Applied to the Overtopping Wave Energy Converter Device

The present study aims to analyze the state of the art of scientific studies about the Overtopping device used to convert sea wave energy into electrical energy,by means the Bibliometric methodology.The development of this study took place through the selection of articles from conference proceedings,as well as national and international journals.The Bibliometric methodology consists of a statistical tool that allows quantifying the measurement of production indexes.Using selected keywords,it was conducted a survey of studies in the online databases of Science Direct,SciELO and Google Scholar.The works found then went through a filtering process,in order to limit the Bibliometric study only to studies about Overtopping devices as sea Wave Energy Converter(WEC).Finally,the investigation of these selected articles was carried out under the optics of production and authorship study,content study and study of bibliographic references.Where it was identified growth in publications related to the topic,methodologies used and,among other indicators,the authors most cited in the analyzed articles.The predominant keywords used were“Wave Energy Converter”and“Overtopping”.It was noted that Brazilian universities are leaders in the productivity,presenting more than 36%of the scientific production regarding Overtopping WECs.