Clustering of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) is perhaps the most effective, yet intriguing strategy to enhance T2 relaxivity in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, the underlying mechanism is still not fully understood and the attempts to generalize the classic outersphere theory from single particles to clusters have been found to be inadequate. Here we show that clustering of MNPs enhances local field inhomogeneity due to reduced field symmetry, which can be further elevated by artificially involving iron oxide NPs with heterogeneous geometries in terms of size and shape. The r2 values of iron oxide clusters and Landau–Lifshitz–Gilbert simulations confirmed our hypothesis, indicating that solving magnetic field inhomogeneity may become a powerful way to build correlation between magnetization and T2 relaxivity of MNPs, especially magnetic clusters. This study provides a simple yet distinct mechanism to interpret T2 relaxivity of MNPs, which is crucial to the design of high-performance MRI contrast agents.
In the current study, dislocation activity and storage during creep deformation in a nickel based superalloy (Waspaloy) was investigated, focussing on the storage of geometrically necessary (GND) and statistically stored (SSD) dislocations. Two methods of GND density calculations were used, namely; EBSD Hough Transformation and HR-EBSD Cross Correlation based methods. The storage of dislocations, including SSDs, was investigated by means of TEM imaging. Here, the concept of GND accumulation in soft and hard grains and the effect of neighbouring grain orientation on total dislocation density was examined. Furthermore, the influence of applied stress (below and above Waspaloy yield stress) during creep on deformation micro-mechanism and dislocation density was studied. It was demonstrated that soft grains provided pure shear conditions at least on two octahedral (111) slips for easy dislocation movement reaching the grain boundary without significant geometrically necessary accumulation in the centre of the grain. Hence, the majority of the soft grains appeared to have minimum GND density in the centre of the grain with high GND accumulation in the vicinity of the grain boundaries. However, the values and width of accumulated GND depended on the surrounding grain orientations. Furthermore, it was shown that the hard grains were not favourably oriented for octahedral slip system activation leading to a grain rotation in order to activate any of the available slip systems. Eventually, (i) the hard grain resistance to deformation and (ii) neighbouring grain resistance for the hard grain reorientation caused high GND density on a number of octahedral (111) slip systems. The results also showed that during creep below the yield stress of Waspaloy (500 MPa/700C), the GND accumulation was relatively low due to insufficient microscopic stress level. However, the regions near grain boundaries showed high GND density.Whereas, in addition to the movement of pre-existing dislocations (SSD and GND) at higher mobility rate under 800 MPa/700C above yield creep condition, large numbers of dislocations were generated and moved toward the grain boundaries. This resulted in much higher GND density but narrower width of high intensity GND near the grain boundaries. It is concluded that although GND measurement by means of EBSD can provide a great insight of dislocation accumulation and its behaviour, it is critical however to consider SSD type which is also contributes to the strain hardening of the materials.
This paper investigates the Frequency Modulation Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar sensor for multi-target displacement measurement in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). The principle of three-dimensional (3-D) displacement measurement of civil infrastructures is analyzed. The requirements of high-accuracy displacement and multi-target identification for the measuring sensors are discussed. The fundamental measuring principle of FMCW radar is presented with rigorous mathematical formulas, and further the multiple-target displacement measurement is analyzed and simulated. In addition, a FMCW radar prototype is designed and fabricated based on an off-the-shelf radar frontend and data acquisition (DAQ) card, and the displacement error induced by phase asynchronism is analyzed. The conducted outdoor experiments verify the feasibility of this sensing method applied to multi-target displacement measurement, and experimental results show that three targets located at different distances can be distinguished simultaneously with millimeter level accuracy.
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