The Legislature required the Controller to contract with actuaries for California's first valuation of unfunded state retiree health liabilities. reported that the state's estimated unfunded liabilities total $48 billion. This report answers key questions concerning the valuation and identifies actions the Legislature could take to address the state's liabilities. Analyst's Office (LAO) is a no...

A new method for improving the efficiency of laser drilling has been developed. Two synchronized free-running laser pulses from a tandem-head Nd:YAG laser are capable of drilling through 1/8-in-thick stainless-steel targets at a standoff distance of 1 m without gas-assist. The combination of a high-energy laser pulse for melting with a properly tailored high-intensity laser pulse for liquid exp...

Hole drilling operations are common in fibre reinforced plastics FRP’s to facilitate fastener assembly to other parts in more complex structures. As these materials are non-homogeneous, drilling causes some damages, like delamination, for example. Delamination can be reduced by a careful selection of drilling parameters, drill material and drill bit geometry. In this work two types of laminates...

During the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 331 at the Iheya North hydrothermal system in the Mid-Okinawa Trough by the D/V Chikyu, we conducted microbiological contamination tests of the drilling and coring operations. The contamination from the drilling mud fluids was assessed using both perfluorocarbon tracers (PFT) and fluorescent microsphere beads. PFT infiltration was d...

The fiber reinforced plastics (FRPs) are being used widely in the most diverse applications ranging from the aerospace to the sports goods industry. Drilling in particular is important to facilitate the assembly operations of structurally intricate composite products. The drilling of holes in FRPs leads to drilling induced damage which is an important research area. The researchers worldwide ha...

Laser drilling has emerged in the last five years as the most widely accepted method of creating microvias in high-density electronic interconnect and chip packaging devices. Most commercially available laser drilling tools are currently based on one of two laser types: far-IR CO2 lasers and UV solid state lasers at 355 nm. While CO2 lasers are recognized for their high average power and drilli...

Drilling engineering is not only a systematic engineering that involves several workcategories, work procedures,intersectant and continuous operation, but also is a concealed underground engineering. There are uncertain factors in drilling projects, which have the characteristics of high investment and risk. On the basis of the overall analysis of the two factors of geology and engineering, the...

This paper presents an application of an ontology based system for automated text analysis using a sample of a drilling report to demonstrate how the methodology works. The methodology used here consists basically of organizing the knowledge related to the drilling process by elaborating the ontology of some typical problems. The whole process was carried out with the assistance of a drilling e...

The study to evaluate the toxicity of used drilling muds (drilling wastes) and their impact on gill structure of the post larvae of tiger prawn Penaeus monodon has been done. The results showed that the 96 h LC50 of used drilling muds ranged from 30740 and 78271 ppm SPP. All toxicity values considered to be above the standard of Indonesian government (LC50≤30000 ppm SPP). Histological observati...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to evaluate the temperature change during low-speed drilling using infrared thermography. MATERIAL AND METHODS Pig ribs were used to provide cortical bone of a similar quality to human mandible. Heat production by three implant drill systems (two conventional drilling systems and one low-speed drilling system) was evaluated by measuring the bone temper...