The failure behaviours of unidirectional pultruded carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites were monitored by the electrical resistance measurement during tensile loading, three-point-bending, interlaminar shear loading. The tensile failure behaviour of carbon fiber tows was also investigated by the electrical resistance measurement. Infrared thermography non-destructive evaluation was performed in real time during tensile test of CFRP composites to validate the change of microdamage in the materials. Experiment results demonstrated that the CFRP composites and carbon fiber tows were damaged by different damage mechinsms during tensile loading, for the CFRP composites, mainly being in the forms of matrix damage and the debonding between matrix and fibers, while for the carbon fiber tows, mainly being in the forms of fiber fracture. The correlation between the infrared thermographs and the change in the electrical resistance could be regarded as an evidence of the damage mechanisms of the CFRP composites. During three-point-bending loading, the main damage forms were the simultaneity fracture of matrix and fibers firstly, then matrix cracking and the debonding between matrix and fiber were carried out. This results can be shown in Fig. 9(a) and (b). During interlaminar shear loading, the change in the electrical resistance was related to the damage degree of interlaminar structure. Electrical resistance measurement was more sensitive to the damage behaviour of the CFRP composites than the stress/time curve.

There are terrestrial signatures of the solar activity cycle in ice core data (Ram & Stoltz 1999), but the variations in the sun's irradiance over the cycle seem too small to account for the signature (Lean 1997; Goode & Dziembowski 2003). Thus, one would expect that the signature must arise from an indirect effect(s) of solar activity. Such an indirect effect would be expected to manifest itself in the earth's reflectance. Further, the earth's climate depends directly on the albedo. Continuous observations of the earthshine have been carried out from Big Bear Solar Observatory since December 1998, with some more sporadic measurements made during the years 1994 and 1995. We have determined the annual albedos both from our observations and from simulations utilizing the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) scene model and various datasets for the cloud cover, as well as snow and ice cover. With these, we look for inter-annual and longer-term changes in the earth's total reflectance, or Bond albedo. We find that both our observations and simulations indicate that the albedo was significantly higher during 1994-1995 (activity minimum) than for the more recent period covering 1999-2001 (activity maximum). However, the sizes of the changes seem somewhat discrepant. Possible indirect solar influences on the earth's Bond albedo are discussed to emphasize that our earthshine data are already sufficiently precise to detect, if they occur, any meaningful changes in the earth's reflectance. Still greater precision will occur as we expand our single site observations to a global network.

A white light flare was observed at the limb on 16 August 1989 in He 10830 Å spectra, Hα slit jaw photo-grams, and white light filter-grams of ⋋=5600 Å ±800 Å. The kernels of the white light flare are not spatially related with Ha brightenings, suggesting that the flare energy would be released at the photosphere.

This paper introduces a knot adjustment algorithm for adjusting the end k knots of a k th order B-spline curve without changing its shape. Then we show its application in extension of B-spline curves and approximate merging of B-spline curves.