A Fast Evaluation Method for Electrical Performance of Frequency and Pattern Reconfigurable Microstrip Antenna Based on Electromechanical Coupling.

With the constant increase in communication requirements in modern society, the number and type of antennas on communication platforms have been increasing at an accelerating rate. This has led to a continuous increase in platform volume and weight, and the electromagnetic environment of antenna operating has increasingly worsened, seriously restricting the further development of communication systems. As a new communication system antenna type, a reconfigurable microstrip antenna can reconstruct operating frequencies, beam directions, etc., by changing the antenna structure to provide the good multifunction characteristics of a single antenna, avoiding the electromagnetic compatibility issues caused by numerous system antennas. At present, most of the research on reconfigurable antennas judges the influence of structural characteristics on electromagnetic characteristics by simulation, which has imposed restrictions on their development and application. Therefore, a reconfigurable antenna with a resonant frequency of 8.66 GHz and 15.26 GHz and a reconfigurable antenna with maximum radiation directions of 36.2° and -36.5° are designed in this paper, and the electromechanical coupling theory of the reconfigurable antennas is studied. The resonance frequency coupling model and the pattern function coupling model considering the structural deformation of a reconfigurable microstrip antenna are established. Within the applicable range of antenna structural parameters, the relative error between the resonance frequency coupling model and the pattern function coupling model is less than 5%, which meets practical engineering application requirements. Finally, the method is shown by experimentation to verify the accuracy and validity of the proposed electromechanical coupling model.

A Novel Manifold Dual-Microchannel Flow Field Structure with High-Performance Heat Dissipation.

With the development of miniaturization and integration of electronic devices, the conventional manifold microchannels (MMCs) structure has been unable to meet the heat dissipation requirements caused by the rapid growth of internal heat flux. There is an urgent need to design a new heat dissipation structure with higher heat dissipation capacity to ensure the working stability and life of electronic devices. In this paper, we designed a novel manifold dual-microchannel (MDMC) cooling system that embedded the microchannel structure into the manifold microchannel structure. The MDMC not only has good heat dissipation performance that can meet the development needs of electronic equipment to miniaturization and integration, but also has a compact structure that does not increase the overall thickness and volume compared with MMC. The high temperature uniformity and heat transfer performance of MDMC are significantly improved compared to MMC. The Tmax is reduced by 13.6% and 17.5% at the heat flux density of 300 W/cm2 and 700 W/cm2, respectively. In addition, the influence of the inlet-2 velocity and the total microchannels number on the heat transfer performance of the MDMC structure are numerically investigated. The results show that the decrease rate of Tmax and ΔT is about 6.69% and 16% with the increase of inlet-2 velocity from 1.2 m/s to 2.4 m/s and microchannels number from 10 to 48, respectively. At the same time, the best temperature uniformity is obtained when the number of microchannels is 16.

Thermal Induced Interface Mechanical Response Analysis of SMT Lead-Free Solder Joint and Its Adaptive Optimization.

Surface mount technology (SMT) plays an important role in integrated circuits, but due to thermal stress alternation caused by temperature cycling, it tends to have thermo-mechanical reliability problems. At the same time, considering the environmental and health problems of lead (Pb)-based solders, the electronics industry has turned to lead-free solders, such as ternary alloy Sn-3Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305). As lead-free solders exhibit visco-plastic mechanical properties significantly affected by temperature, their thermo-mechanical reliability has received considerable attention. In this study, the interface delamination of an SMT solder joint using a SAC305 alloy under temperature cycling has been analyzed by the nonlinear finite element method. The results indicate that the highest contact pressure at the four corners of the termination/solder horizontal interface means that delamination is most likely to occur, followed by the y-direction side region of the solder/land interface and the top arc region of the termination/solder vertical interface. It should be noted that in order to keep the shape of the solder joint in the finite element model consistent with the actual situation after the reflow process, a minimum energy-based morphology evolution method has been incorporated into the established finite element model. Eventually, an Improved Efficient Global Optimization (IEGO) method was used to optimize the geometry of the SMT solder joint in order to reduce the contact pressure at critical points and critical regions. The optimization result shows that the contact pressure at the critical points and at the critical regions decreases significantly, which also means that the probability of thermal-induced delamination decreases.

Correction to: Temperature and Pressure Dependences of the Elastic Properties of Tantalum Single Crystals Under <100> Tensile Loading: A Molecular Dynamics Study.

In the original publication of this article [1] the third author was typesetted by mistake.

Temperature and Pressure Dependences of the Elastic Properties of Tantalum Single Crystals Under <100> Tensile Loading: A Molecular Dynamics Study.

Atomistic simulations are capable of providing insights into physical mechanisms responsible for mechanical properties of the transition metal of Tantalum (Ta). By using molecular dynamics (MD) method, temperature and pressure dependences of the elastic properties of Ta single crystals are investigated through <100> tensile loading. First of all, a comparative study between two types of embedded-atom method (EAM) potentials is made in term of the elastic properties of Ta single crystals. The results show that Ravelo-EAM (Physical Review B, 2013, 88: 134101) potential behaves well at different hydrostatic pressures. Then, the MD simulation results based on the Ravelo-EAM potential show that Ta will experience a body-centered-cubic (BCC) to face-centered-cubic (FCC) phase transition before fracture under <100> tensile loading at 1 K temperature, and model size and strain rate have no obvious effects on tensile behaviors of Ta. Next, from the simulation results at the system temperature from 1 to 1500 K, it can be derived that the elastic modulus of E100 linearly decrease with the increasing temperature, while the yielding stress decrease with conforming a quadratic polynomial formula. Finally, the pressure dependence of the elastic properties is performed from 0 to 140 GPa and the observations show that the elastic modulus increases with the increasing pressure overall.

A Terrestrial Microbial Fuel Cell for Powering a Single-Hop Wireless Sensor Network.

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are envisioned as one of the most promising alternative renewable energy sources because they can generate electric current continuously while treating waste. Terrestrial Microbial Fuel Cells (TMFCs) can be inoculated and work on the use of soil, which further extends the application areas of MFCs. Energy supply, as a primary influential factor determining the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) nodes, remains an open challenge in sensor networks. In theory, sensor nodes powered by MFCs have an eternal life. However, low power density and high internal resistance of MFCs are two pronounced problems in their operation. A single-hop WSN powered by a TMFC experimental setup was designed and experimented with. Power generation performance of the proposed TMFC, the relationships between the performance of the power generation and the environment temperature, the water content of the soil by weight were measured by experiments. Results show that the TMFC can achieve good power generation performance under special environmental conditions. Furthermore, the experiments with sensor data acquisition and wireless transmission of the TMFC powering WSN were carried out. We demonstrate that the obtained experimental results validate the feasibility of TMFCs powering WSNs.