Internal Curing Mechanism of Sepiolite in Cement Paste

In order to explore the internal curing mechanism of sepiolite in cement-based materials,the effects of sepiolite on the water consumption of standard consistency,setting time,viscosity,strength,pore structure characteristics,micro-hardness characteristics and two-dimensional surface characteristics of cement paste were studied,respectively.The experimental results show that the water consumption of standard consistency increases linearly with the increase of sepiolite content.The setting time and viscosity are also lengthened and increased with the addition of sepiolite,respectively.When the content of sepiolite exceeds 5%,the strength of the specimen increases significantly.The BET results show that the pore structure of the interfacial transition zone(ITZ)in hardened cement paste(HCP)with sepiolite is optimized after curing for28 d and its pore volume content with below 10 nm is decreased,especially for the specimen with a lower watercement ratio.The characteristics of microhardness and strength of specimens have the same law.Backscattered electron image(BSE-IA)shows that the ITZ of the specimen with sepiolite is denser and the unhydrated cement particles are less than the reference specimen.

Spheroidization of molybdenum powder by radio frequency thermal plasma

To control the morphology and particle size of dense spherical molybdenum powder prepared by radio frequency（RF） plasma from irregular molybdenum powder as a precursor, plasma process parameters were optimized in this paper. The effects of the carrier gas flow rate and molybdenum powder feeding rate on the shape and size of the final products were studied. The molybdenum powder morphology was examined using high-resolution scanning electron microscopy. The powder phases were analyzed by X-ray diffraction. The tap density and apparent density of the molybdenum powder were investigated using a Hall flow meter and a Scott volumeter. The optimal process parameters for the spherical molybdenum powder preparation are 50 g/min powder feeding rate and 0.6 m^3/h carrier gas rate. In addition, pure spherical molybdenum powder can be obtained from irregular powder, and the tap density is enhanced after plasma processing. The average size is reduced from 72 to 62 μm, and the tap density is increased from 2.7 to 6.2 g/cm^3. Therefore, RF plasma is a promising method for the preparation of high-density and high-purity spherical powders.

A Parallel FEA Computing Kernel for Building Structures

With the rapid development of high-rise buildings and long-span structures in the recent years, high performance com- putation (HPC) is becoming more and more important, sometimes even crucial, for the design and construction of com- plex building structures. To satisfy the engineering requirements of HPC, a parallel FEA computing kernel, which is designed typically for the analysis of complex building structures, will be presented and illustrated in this paper. This kernel program is based on the Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL) and coded by FORTRAN 2008 syntax, which is a parallel computer language. To improve the capability and efficiency of the computing kernel program, the parallel concepts of modern FORTRAN, such as elemental procedure, do concurrent, etc., have been applied extensively in coding and the famous PARDISO solver in MKL has been called to solve the Large-sparse system of linear equations. The ultimate objective of developing the computing kernel is to make the personal computer have the ability to analysis large building structures up to ten million degree of freedoms (DOFs). Up to now, the linear static analysis and dynamic analysis have been achieved while the nonlinear analysis, including geometric and material nonlinearity, has not been finished yet. Therefore, the numerical examples in this paper will be concentrated on demonstrating the validity and efficiency of the linear analysis and modal analysis for large FE models, while ignoring the verification of the nonlinear analysis capabilities.

Hybrid Post-Processing Procedure for Displacement-Based Plane Elements

In the analysis of high-rise building, traditional displacement-based plane elements are often used to get the in-plane internal forces of the shear walls by stress integration. Limited by the singular problem produced by wall holes and the loss of precision induced by using differential method to derive strains, the displacement-based elements cannot always present accuracy enough for design. In this paper, the hybrid post-processing procedure based on the Hellinger-Reissner variational principle is used for improving the stress precision of two quadrilateral plane elements. In order to find the best stress field, three different forms are assumed for the displacement-based plane elements and with drilling DOF. Numerical results show that by using the proposed method, the accuracy of stress solutions of these two displacement-based plane elements can be improved.