Day 21

There is good good news and possibly good news. I'll divulge the good good news first.


Out of the 7 new articles I've found that referenced Deschamps only one paper clearly contains similar equations. Modeling of whole process of ageing precipitation and strengthening in Al-Cu-Mg-Ag alloys with high Cu-to-Mg mass ratio  by the Hou et al group.  The similarity of equations seems to be traced back to the Kampmann and Wagner group. This information is GREAT because now I know where Deschamps is getting their equations. Also the Hou paper gives FULL REFERENCES! As in includes titles of the articles, which is fabulous considering the last Kampmann paper I received was in GERMAN!! That's right...German. And the paper is 91 pages long. So, thank God I found it in English thanks to Hou. THANK YOU HOU!!

I've asked for the paper through Inter-library Loan, which I hope to receive by next week. The Hou paper is exactly what I am doing except with a different alloy.  Hou is Al-Cu-Mg-Ag, while I am working with Al-Zn-Mg-Cu. The group stated that the results from their model in comparison to experimental data is in "good agreement", and they included the numbers! I am taking this as good news, because that may mean that once I get this program running the model will hopefully agree with Al7075 numbers.

Now for the possibly good news. 

I know for a fact that I can use the syms, diff and subs commands, because a colleague of mine did the same with a code of his. I don't think I can do the entire code like this but I feel good knowing I can do some of the code like this. The difficulty I am coming up with is the iteration loop over time until it converges. I'm not sure when it converges (obviously), and I'm having difficulty writing the loop! There is something I am missing, but I'm not sure what it is. So, now is the time to get out my MATLAB for Dummies book. That's what I am going to do now.

I got a hold of Prof. Graham :) BUT he is in the Netherlands :/ I'm jealous not going to lie, but I digress. Even though he is in the Netherlands; he stated that he would be back next week. So, I will be trying my best to figure out this iteration/subs loop business until he returns to town.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Friday evening and a GREAT weekend!!!

"The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer.  Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems." ~G.W. Allport