Experimental Investigations on Charge Induction and Microseismic Characteristics of the Coal and Rock under Different Loading Rates

The research on charge induction and microseismic characteristics of coal and rock under different loading rates is of great significance for rockburst prediction. In this study, the coal and sandstone samples from the No. 11 mine of Pingdingshan Coal Mine are prepared. The charge induction and microseismic synchronous comprehensive monitoring system is built. The uniaxial compression tests of coal and sandstone samples under the different loading rates are conducted. The charge induction and microseismic signal characteristics in the deformation and fracture process of the coal and rock under the different loading rates are studied. The results show that, with the increase of loading rate, the compressive strength of the coal and rock samples increases and the time from the peak stress to instability failure becomes shorter. At the same loading rate, the softening failure stage time of coal is longer than that of sandstone. With the increase of loading rate, the duration of charge-induced signal and microseismic signal is longer and the events’ number and amplitude of charge signal and microseismic signal increase in the deformation and fracture process of the coal and rock. Before the instability failure, the charge-induced signal and microseismic signal have both synchronous and asynchronous signals, and the amplitude of charge-induced and microseismic signals in each channel is different, which is related to the distance from the position of each sensor to the fracture point of the sample. During the instability failure, the charge induction and microseismic signals of each channel are generated synchronously, and the signal amplitude reaches the maximum values of 50 pC and 6 × 10−3 m/s at the same time. With the increase of specimen stress, the dominant frequency of microseismic signals first increases and then decreases, while the amplitude of dominant frequency increases synchronously. The dominant frequency amplitude of microseismic signals is the largest in instability failure. With the increase of loading rate, the spectrum amplitude of microseismic signals changes little in the compaction stage, but the spectrum amplitude increases in other stages. At the same loading speed, the events’ number of the microseismic signal of coal samples after peak stress is more than that of sandstone samples, and the signal amplitude is also larger. However, the spectrum distribution range of microseismic signals of coal samples is wider than that of sandstone samples, and the spectrum amplitude of coal samples is lower than that of sandstone. With the increase of loading rate, the time of the first generation of high-amplitude signals is advanced, and the stress of specimen becomes smaller when the first generation of high-amplitude signals occurs. With the increase of loading rate, the duration of microseismic and charge signal is longer, and the mean square amplitude of charge signal is larger.

Electroluminescence and Electron Avalanching in Two-Phase Detectors

Electroluminescence and electron avalanching are the physical effects used in two-phase argon and xenon detectors for dark matter searches and neutrino detection, to amplify the primary ionization signal directly in cryogenic noble-gas media. We review the concepts of such light and charge signal amplification, including a combination thereof, both in the gas and in the liquid phase. Puzzling aspects of the physics of electroluminescence and electron avalanching in two-phase detectors are explained, and detection techniques based on these effects are described.

Analysis of Similarities and Differences between Acoustic Emission and Charge Signal Based on Fractal Characteristics of Coal Fracture

Rock burst is a catastrophic dynamic disaster caused by sudden failure and instability of coal, which brings threats to deep coal mining; the AE-charge signals and the fragment distribution are related to both mechanical properties of coal and disaster early warning directly. Hence, the variation of AE and charge induction during coal failure, fractal feature of coal fragments, and their relationship should be studied in depth. In this paper, uniaxial loading test was carried out for coal with bursting tendency samples produced by blocks cored from 800 m depth in Xiaoqing coal mine of the Tiefa Coal Group in northeast China; the fractal characteristics of specimens are obtained by using the statistical fractal method. The mechanics of similarities and differences between acoustic emission and charge signal is investigated by using loading experiments and theoretical analysis. It is found that the fragments of coal have good self-similarity properties; the fractal dimension of the specimens is in the range 2.085–2.521, the maximum range being 2.300–2.468, which is slightly higher than that of rock. The high-amplitude pulses of the acoustic emission and charge are concentrated in the macroscopic fissure development and expansion stage but they have asynchronous characteristics between them. The charge generation process is accompanied by the inhomogeneous deformation and sliding friction; the friction slip is the major one and is analysed theoretically. A theoretical model for the force-electric coupling relationship is established. The statistical results show that both the acoustic emission and the charge signal accumulation have a significantly proportional relationship with the fractal dimension. Both the acoustic emission and charge signal reveal coal breakage evolution process, which will help in obtaining the precursor information on coal failure. Furthermore, the monitoring results can predict the extent of coal mass instability.

Spin-charge conversion in NiMnSb Heusler alloy films

Half-metallic Heusler alloys are attracting considerable attention because of their unique half-metallic band structures, which exhibit high spin polarization and yield huge magnetoresistance ratios. Besides serving as ferromagnetic electrodes, Heusler alloys also have the potential to host spin-charge conversion. Here, we report on the spin-charge conversion effect in the prototypical Heusler alloy NiMnSb. An unusual charge signal was observed with a sign change at low temperature, which can be manipulated by film thickness and ordering structure. It is found that the spin-charge conversion has two contributions. First, the interfacial contribution causes a negative voltage signal, which is almost constant versus temperature. The second contribution is temperature dependent because it is dominated by minority states due to thermally excited magnons in the bulk part of the film. This work provides a pathway for the manipulation of spin-charge conversion in ferromagnetic metals by interface-bulk engineering for spintronic devices.