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Direct current A-TIG (DCEN A-TIG) welding using special active agent had eliminated the pores and the oxidation of 2219 high-strength aluminum alloy in welding. Addition of AlF₃–25% LiF active agent to DCEN A-TIG welding and arc morphology showed a trailing phenomenon. However, the change in arc morphology was not remarkable when AlF₃–75% LiF active agent was added. Addition of AlF₃–75% LiF active agent can refine the grain size of DCEN A-TIG joint. The mechanical properties of the weld were optimal at 10% AlF₃–75% LiF active agent. Compared with AC TIG and AC A-TIG welding, DCEN A-TIG welding yielded better results for 2219 Al alloy.

Granular materials as typical soft matter, their transport properties play significant roles in durability and service life in relevant practical engineering structures. Physico-mechanical properties of materials are generally dependent of their microstructures including interfacial and porous characteristics. The formation of such microstructures is directly related to particle components in granular materials. Understanding the interactive mechanism of particle components, microstructures, and transport properties is a problem of great interest in materials research community. The resulting rigorous component-structure-property relations are also valuable for material design and microstructure optimization. This review article describes state-of-the-art progresses on modeling particle components, interfacial and porous configurations and incorporating these internal structural characteristics into modeling transport properties of granular materials. We mainly focus on three issues involving the simulation for geometrical components, the quantitative characterization for interfacial and porous microstructures, and the modeling strategies for diffusive behaviors of granular materials. In the first aspect, in-depth reviews are presented to realize complex morphologies of geometrical particles, to detect the overlap between adjacent nonspherical particles, and to simulate the random packings of nonspherical particles. In the second aspect, we emphasize the development progresses on the interfacial thickness and porosity distribution, the interfacial volume fraction, and the continuum percolation of soft particles representing compliant interfaces and discrete pores. In the final aspect, a literature review is also provided on modeling of transport properties on the forefront of the effective diffusion and anomalous diffusion in multiphase granular materials. Finally, some conclusions and perspectives for future studies are provided.

This paper presents a preliminary work to evaluate the influence of slag and superplasticizer on the early-age hydration of cement pastes by an innovative non-contact impedance measurement, heat evolution method, compressive strength and setting time tests. Besides, the cumulative pore volume obtained from modulus and phase of impedance in different hydration sections is taken to continuously correlate the cumulative heat releasing of cement pastes via the fractal analysis. Retarded phenomena and mechanism of hydration in cement pastes incorporated with slag and superplasticizer are studied, respectively. It is found that the compressive strength and setting time have a good linear relation with the slag amount in blended cement pastes.

The present work includes the analysis of the porosity at different scales using image characterization techniques. Porosities were determined and compared for reservoir rocks through the fractal dimensions obtained from two-dimensional (2D) image analysis. Studies were developed using Optical Microscopy (OM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT). In order to compare the images and analyze the similarities in the porosities, the box-counting method was used to extract the power-law distributions and to obtain the fractal dimensions. Results showed that fractal dimensions were similar for the three different techniques, which included different scale analysis, fact that demonstrates the fractal character of the porosity in the studied systems. The effectiveness of the use of 2D image analysis and the importance of the multiscale study of the porosity were also demonstrated.