Metal nanostructures show great applications in chemical sensing, biomedical detection, optical-thermal therapy, and optical communications because of their electromagnetic field enhancement properties at the visible and the near-field infrared wavelengths. Such strong optical field enhancement induced by the localized surface plasmon resonance is dependent on the configurations and the sizes o...

Comprehensive and accurate inspections of welded components have become of increasing importance as NASA develops new hardware such as Ares rocket segments for future exploration missions. Simulation and modeling will play an increasing role in the future for nondestructive evaluation in order to better understand the physics of the inspection process, to prove or disprove the feasibility for a...

Fatigue design of welded structures is primarily based on a nominal stress; hot spot stress methods or local approaches each having several limitations when coupled with finite element modeling. An alternative recent structural stress definition is discussed and implemented in a post-processor. It provides an effective means for the direct coupling of finite element results to the fatigue asses...

use of tailor-welded blanks (twbs) in production has significant advantages such as weight and cost reduction. however, their application requires processes that increase their poor formability in comparison to base materials. one of these procedures is the use of fluid pressure in sheet metal forming. in this paper hydro-mechanical deep drawing process of tailor-welded low carbon steel (st12) ...

Sexual selection often promotes the evolution of elaborate colour signals in males, but the importance of sexually selected colour signals remains poorly studied in amphibians. We used reflectance spectrometry to document pronounced sexual dichromatism and dramatic colour change in Bufo luetkenii, a toad that breeds in large aggregations at the onset of the rainy season in Costa Rica. Our obser...

J. Piątkowski The Silesian University of Technology, Faculty of Materials Science and Metallurgy, Katowice, Poland R. Wieszała, The Silesian University of Technology, Faculty of Transport, Katowice, Poland The paper presents microstructure tests of alloy AlSi17Cu5. In order to disintegrate the primary grain of silicon the so-called time-temperature transformation TTT was applied which was based...