Lubricants are an essential component in high-performance mechanical equipment, but traditional lubricants are becoming inadequate for meeting the increasing demands for anti-friction and anti-wear properties and they discharge harmful chemicals to the environment. The purpose of the present study was to explore the use of sepiolite as a novel oil additive to extend the performance of lubricants. Sepiolite nanofibers were first treated by acid followed by a dry air flow, aimed at increasing the pore volume and decreasing the particle size. Then the nanofibers were further modified by an organosilane coupling agent to reduce the surface free energy and to improve the dispersion stability in lubricant. A significant improvement in the performance of the lubricant was achieved by using the modified sepiolite nanofibers as an additive. When the amount of modified sepiolite nanofibers added was 1.5 wt.%, the best performance was demonstrated by the lubricant, showing a viscosity increase at 40°C and 100°C, and an increase in resistance to oxidation. Moreover, the acid value and pour point decreased, and the copper sheet corrosion level dropped to its lowest value.

In the design of the filter antenna, the filter unit with the same structure as the radiation patch not only improves the selectivity of the band edge, but also helps to improve the in-band impedance. In this design, a compact circular monopole filtering antenna with improved sideband selectivity and in-band impedance using a circular-stub-load resonator is proposed. To obtain better sideband selection characteristics and in-band impedance characteristics, and reduce the mismatch problem caused by the introduction of the filter, a branch-loaded filter with the same resonance mode as the antenna radiation patch is designed. In addition, different shape branch loading structures of the bandpass filter are also studied. The experimental results show that when the loading unit of the filter and the radiation structure of the antenna have the same structure, both good in-band impedance characteristics and sideband selectivity characteristics can be obtained from the filter antenna. The antenna reflection coefficient bandwidth is from 3 to 11 GHz (114%), and the maximum reflection coefficient is only −15 dB, showing good in-band impedance characteristics and sideband selection characteristics. The filter antenna realizes the integration of antenna filtering without increasing the size, and the final size of the antenna is 30 × 25 mm2.

In this study, a compact ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna with quintuple band-notched and wide-band rejection characteristics is studied. The proposed antenna mainly consists of a rectangular radiating patch, a microstrip feeding line, and a modified rectangular ground plane. The quintuple band-notched functions with narrow stop bands are achieved at WiMAX (3.3–3.7 GHz), WLAN (5.15–5.35 GHz and 5.725–5.825 GHz), C-band IEEE INSAT/super-extended (6.7–7.1 GHz) by using three modified inverted U-shaped slots and two symmetrical rectangular slots on the radiating path. Each stop band formed in the UWB antenna can be adjusted independently, and deep reflection zeros are formed between the adjacent stop bands. The formation of reflection zeros improves the band-edge selectivity of the stop band, and the notch characteristics are more prominent. To further study the wide stop band (C-band and X-band) with good selectivity characteristics, a pair of L-shaped open slot is added to the edges of two rectangular slots. Additionally, a pair of modified Rho-shaped resonators is located near the feeding line to realize band-notched characteristic at ITU service bands (8.025–8.4 GHz), thus a quintuple band-notched UWB antenna is achieved. The shape factor (ratio of the −3 dB bandwidth to the −10 dB bandwidth) of the wide stop band is 0.56, which indicates that the antenna has excellent band-edge selectivity. To verify the performance of the proposed design, both the time-domain and the frequency-domain characteristics of the antenna have been studied and analyzed. The simulated and measured results verify the design as a good candidate for various portable UWB applications.

As distinctive spontaneous polarization and far-infrared radiation characteristics, the natural mineral tourmaline (TM) has the regulatory effect on crystallization behavior, which possesses potential application in biomimetic mineralization and bone regeneration. In this study, polyurethane (PU) and gelatin (GE) membranes with different adding proportion of TM nanoparticles were prepared via electrospinning. Additionally, the effect of TM nanoparticles on the mineralization process of hydrophobic PU and hydrophilic GE was investigated by immersing the composite TM/PU and TM/GE electrospun membranes in the 10× simulated body fluid (10SBF) at 37 °C for varying periods of time. SEM images confirmed the well-dispersed TM nanoparticles in the PU and GE electrospun fibers. The mineralization deposition was characterized by the SEM, EDS, XRD, and FTIR, and it indicated that two types of calcium phosphate deposits with different Ca/P molar ratios were obtained when TM/PU membranes and TM/GE membranes were incubated in 10SBF. Honeycomb-like hydroxyapatite crystals nucleated and grew faster on TM/PU and TM/GE membranes than the pure PU and GE membranes, respectively. Furthermore, with the increase of the added TM nanoparticles in the composite membranes, more calcium phosphate crystals were precipitated. These results showed that the added TM nanoparticles were able to improve the mineralization of polymer fibrous membranes, which is potential for the composite bone scaffold.

In this paper, the design of a graded honeycomb radar absorbing structure (RAS) is presented to realize both a wide bandwidth and absorption over a wide range of angles. For both transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic polarization, a fractional bandwidth of more than 118.6% is achieved for at least a 10 dB reflectivity reduction when the incident angle is <45°, an 8 dB reduction when the incident angle is <55° and a 5 dB reduction when the incident angle is <70°. Meanwhile the 10 dB reduction upper angle limit is approximately 30° for the uniform coating honeycomb RAS in the literature, which loses its absorbing ability when the incident angle is larger than 55°. Furthermore, the total thickness of our design is 10.7 mm, which is only approximately 1.29 times that of the theoretical limitation. The good agreement between the calculated, simulated, and measured results demonstrates the validity of this optimization.

In shipborne Transfer Alignment (TA) applications, partial observability is one of the most important factors limiting convergence velocity. This paper proposes a new method of attributing weak observable states and lever-arm variables to a group of constraints in order to improve the observability of TA model. This yields the so-called Constrained Transfer Alignment (CTA) model which is uniformly observable even under zero-manoeuvre conditions. Within this framework, the Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE) and its stability analysis are also addressed. Finally, comparative simulation results are given to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach.