Search Results (2)

Pre-treated low carbon steel specimens with flux or flux + tin mixture were coated by hot-dip aluminizing process. Al alloy (6061) was melted and hold at 750 °C. Fluxed and pre-tinned low carbon steel samples were dipped in a molten bath for time intervals of 0.5, 1, 2.5 and 3.5 min. Applying double coating processes via tinning-aluminizing techniques facilitated the formation of Fe-Al intermetallic interface and increasing the thickness of homogenous coating layer over the substrate material. The presence of Sn facilitates to great extent the formation of a better interlayer-free bond of residual flux and/or oxides. The fluxed–dipped steel substrates have inhomogeneous distribution of Al alloy coating as well as an interface with residual flux and oxides for dipping time up to 2.5 min. A homogenous distribution with good thickness morphology of the Al alloy coating and homogeneous thin intermetallic interface was achieved for tinned steel substrate at all applied dipping times. The comparison between the pre-tinning and pre-fluxing processes on steel substrates showed a significant effect of tinning over fluxing treatment acting on the thickness layer of Al-coating and interface using a short time dipping. For dipping time up to 2.5 min, the hardness of pre-tinning substrates is greater than that of fluxed ones due to the presence of residual flux and void interface in fluxed steel. Full article

Ultrasound methods are currently employed in a wide range of applications. They are integrated in complex electronics systems, like clinical echographs, but also in small and compact boards, like industrial sensors, embedded systems, and portable devices. Ultrasound waves are typically generated by energizing a piezoelectric transducer through a high-voltage sequence of small sinusoidal bursts. Moreover, in several applications, the ultrasound board should work in a wide frequency range. This makes the transmitter, i.e., the electronics that drives the transducer, a key part of the circuit. The use of a small transformer simplifies the electronics and reduces the need of high-voltage power sources. Unfortunately, the transformer magnetic core, when subjected to the sequence of bursts employed in ultrasound, is particularly prone to saturation. This phenomenon limits the maximum voltage and/or the minimum frequency the transformer can be employed for. In this work, a transmitter based on a transformer is proposed. Inspired by the technique currently employed in the power network transformers, we added a prefluxing circuit, which improves the saturation performance 2-fold. The proposed transmitter was implemented in a test board and experimented with two commercial transformers at 80 Vpp. Measurements show that the proposed prefluxing circuit moves down the minimum usable frequency 2-fold: from 400 to 200 kHz for one of the two transformers, and from 2.4 to 1.2 MHz for the other. Full article