Investigation on the Influence of Basalt Short Fiber on Thermo-Physical Properties of Aluminium Metal Matrix Composites.
The objective of this research work was to investigate 
on the influence of basalt fiber on the microstructure and thermo-physical properties of Al /basalt short fiber metal matrix composites (MMCs). The MMCs were fabricated by liquid metallurgical technique and the basalt short fiber varies from 0 to 10 wt. %. The developed MMCs were characterized for damping, coefficient of thermal expansion, specific heat and electrical resistance using dynamic mechanical analyzer, thermal mechanical analyzer, differential scanning calorimeter and four probe electrometer respectively. The results shows that the specific damping properties and specific heat increase with increasing basalt fibers addition\ but, electrical resistivity and coefficient of thermal expansion decreased.
Mechanical and thermal expansion behavior of hipped aluminum–TiB2 composites
Abstract Aluminum–TiB 2 composites reinforced with 5–20 vol.% ceramic particles were prepared by powder metallurgy (PM) method. Hot isostatic pressing was employed to consolidate the green PM products. The microstructure of metal matrix composites (MMCs) was found to depend greatly on the relative particle size (RPS) ratio between the aluminum and ceramic particles. Microstructural examination revealed that RPS value of 0.56 favors both the densification of MMC compacts and better uniform distribution of ceramic particles. Tensile measurements showed that the Young's modulus and ultimate tensile strength of the Al–TiB 2p MMCs tend to increase with increasing TiB 2p volume content at the expense of tensile ductility. Thermal expansion property of hipped MMCs was measured in the temperature range from 85 to 600 °C. The results showed that the increase in the volume fraction of TiB 2 reinforcement reduces the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of the Al–TiB 2 composites. Moreover, the CTE versus temperature plots exhibited an apparent peak minimum at ∼380 °C during the first heating stage for the composites reinforced with TiB 2  ≥ 15 vol.%. This peak corresponds to the onset of relaxation for the compressive stress, leading to the Al matrix to deform plastically.
An operational method for estimating signal to noise ratios from data acquired with imaging spectrometers
A method, using the concept of local means and local standard deviations of small imaging blocks and using a box counting procedure, has been developed for unsupervised estimation of the average signal to noise ratios of images in which the noise is additive. The method has been applied to simulated images with Gaussian noise, to images acquired with the Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer and with the Geophysical and Environmental Research Imaging Spectrometer. The method is compared with other techniques for estimating signal to noise ratios from imaging data. It is believed that the method is generally applicable to images having many small homogeneous blocks. Because the method does not take into account interband effects, it is not appropriate to use the method to estimate signal to noise ratios from images having nonnegligible interband radiometric calibration errors at spatial scales less than or equal to the size of the small imaging blocks used in the noise estimation.