High performance systems

There is continued interest and much innovative effort to develop new FRC systems with enhanced performance in terms of the technical properties or the cost/effectiveness of the FRC application. In order to achieve such goals greater degrees of freedom in the design of the composites have been exercised, including modifications of the matrix, the fibres, the production process, and combinations of aii three. Such composites cannot be simply classified in terms of the composition of the reinforcing fibres, and should be treated from the point of view of the strategy applied to achieve the enhanced performance. 

A variety of experimental and commercial systems have been developed to achieve strain/deflection hardening composites, using different strategies, all of which are based on the mechanical and micromechanical principles which govern the behaviour of FRC. These principles were outlined in Chapter 4, and their extension to high performance FRC will be discussed in Section 12.2. 

The different types of high performance systems will than be treated separately, based on classification in terms of the performance and the strategy to achieve it, to include the following topics monofibre systems with normal strength matrix, monofibre systems with high strength matrix, hybrid FRC, slip hardening fibres and FRC with polymer-cement matrices. 

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Vinyls. Vinyl resins are thermoplastic polymers made principally from vinyl chloride other monomers such as vinyl acetate or maleic anhydride are copolymerized to add solubUity, adhesion, or other desirable properties (see Maleic anhydride, maleic acid, and fumaric acid). Because of the high, from 4,000 to 35,000, molecular weights large proportions of strong solvents are needed to achieve appHcation viscosities. Whereas vinyls are one of the finest high performance systems for steel, many vinyl coatings do not conform to VOC requirements (see Vinyl polymers). 

Norton offers a new high performance system centered around an improved Intalox metal tower packing, including effective internals to provide the distribution and pressure drop consistent with the higher performance of the packing itself. 

Stella isee Systems (formerly High Performance Systems) http //www.hps-inc.com/... 

Both polyethylene and aramid fibers have increasing applications in a variety of armor products. Body armor is a high performance system for protection against rifle bullets. Armor containing these fibers together with a polymeric matrix in the form a composite can provide ballistic protection as well as structural... 

Y. Komeiji, M. U. H. Yokoyama, M. Taiji, T. Fukushige, D. Sugimoto, R. Takata, A. Shimizu, and K. Itsukashi, A high performance system for molecular dynamics simulation of biomolecules using special purpose computer, in Proc. of Biocomput., 1996. 

This volume is closed by a contribution by Paul Mulvaney and Luis Liz-Marzan who used the nanocoating of Au-nanoparticles as a first step in the rational design of nanohybrids with very special optical and photonic properties. The ability to hybridise metals and inorganic oxides on the colloidal scale while there is no direct bond on a molecular level nicely underlines the potential of modern colloid chemistry to employ and merge very different building blocks on the mesoscale and to realise hybrid situations and high performance systems which are otherwise not accessible. 

If load is increased or speed decreased, the film between the two surfaces becomes thinner and its properties are no longer those of the bulk. The coefficient of friction rises from its lowest value, in hydrodynamic condition, to a higher value (which however is less than for unlubricated surface). This regime of boundary lubrication (Fig. 19) is of utmost interest for high performance systems and one seeks to maintain it on the largest scale at the lower level. However there are few quantitative data, "The mechanism of formation and stabilisation of the boundary film is unknown"... 

Stella 11, High Performance Systems, Inc., 45 Lyme Road, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755. 

Schofield J, Sunderland P. Surface treatments for calcium carbonate fillers in high performance systems. Rubber Fibres Plastics Int [trade journal—Rapra Technology] March 2008. 

Some significantly good payback times (1-7 years) have been achieved [14,17,133], mainly with simple and cheap dryers. The chances for the extensive use of high-performance systems may be improved by integrated construction and multipurpose operation. Using modem process control techniques, the efficiency of solar dryers can be increased. Due attention must be paid to system maintenance and training of the operating personnel. 

Second, the semantic gap between high-level HDL, even RTL, and nedists is already too wide for today s synthesis tools, due chiefly to the overwhelming importance of locality in chip layout. The conq>iler technology incorporated in the synthesis tools has been we in certain areas, vectorization for example, and that hasn t helped. The result is that high-performance systems such as microprocessors have been using low-level descriptions and "data-path compilers". 

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