Detailed study of the equation of state, elasticity, and hardness of selected superconducting transition-metal nitrides reveals interesting correlations among their physical properties. Both the bulk modulus and Vickers hardness are found to decrease with increasing zero-pressure volume in NbN, HfN, and ZrN. The computed elastic constants from first principles satisfy c11 > c12 > c44 for NbN, b...

This paper studies the addition of fibers from end-of-life tires to commercial mortar mixtures. Two different types of mortar, one lime-plastic and other cement-fluid, are mixed with different percentage of fibers ranging from 0% to 1%. The changes in bulk density, consistency, compressive and flexural strength, dynamic Young modulus and water absorption are studied. According to the results, c...

Heave compensator is a system that mitigates transmission of heave movement from vessels to the equipment in the vessel. In drilling industry, a heave compensator enables drilling in offshore environments. Heave compensator attenuates movement transmitted from the vessel to the drill string and drill bit ensuring security and efficiency of the offshore drilling process. Common types of heave co...

The single-crystal elastic moduli of San Carlos olivine, (Mg0.9Fe0.1)2SiO4, were determined at seven pressures between 2.5 and 32.5 GPa by Brillouin spectroscopy in a diamond anvil cell. The unit cell volume was also determined at each pressure (and ambient pressure) by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The shear elastic moduli exhibit non-linear pressure dependencies. In particular, a non-line...

Earth's lowermost mantle has thermal, chemical, and mineralogical complexities that require precise seismological characterization. Stacking, migration, and modeling of over 10,000 P and S waves that traverse the deep mantle under the Cocos plate resolve structures above the core-mantle boundary. A small -0.07 +/- 0.15% decrease of P wave velocity (Vp) is accompanied by a 1.5 +/- 0.5% increase ...

Titanium alloys are favorable implant materials for medical applications, due to their desirable mechanical properties and biochemical compatibility. However, current bio-titanium alloys were formulated principally by trial and error, which by no means represents the optimum. Here a theoretical investigation of the influence of alloying elements and interstitial elements on the bulk modulus and...

Anesthetics expand cell membranes, and high pressures (about 10-15 MPa) antagonize the anesthetic action. It is also known that inhalation anesthetics expand elastomer membranes. The mechanism of pressure antagonism of anesthetic action on membrane expansion was investigated in the present study with Silastic membranes. Halothane increased the length of Silastic membrane (0.14% per kPa), with a...

Using the first-principles calculations, the electronic structure, chemical bonding, mechanical, thermodynamics and superconductor properties of NbRuB are investigated. The optimized lattice parameters were in good agreement with the experimental data. The analysis of the density of states and chemical bonding implies that the metallic behavior of NbRuB originates from the Ru and Nb, and the bo...

We investigated pressure-dependent changes in the optical properties of PbS nanocrystal quantum dots (NQD) by combining X-ray scattering and optical absorption spectroscopy in a diamond anvil cell. We discovered that the excitonic absorption peak vanishes as the NQD crystal structure reversibly undergoes the pressure-induced phase transition from rock-salt to orthorhombic structure. In the rock...

[1] Aluminum has been reported to have a remarkably strong effect on the thermoelastic properties of MgSiO3 perovskite. However, the sound velocities of aluminous MgSiO3 perovskite have not been previously measured, even though this phase likely dominates most of the chemistry in Earth’s lower mantle. Here we report the first sound velocity measurements on aluminous MgSiO3 perovskite using Bril...