Ni625/WC composite coatings added with different amounts of Y ₂O ₃were prepared on the surface of 304 stainless steels by laser cladding. This study focused on the microstructure characteristics, microhardness, and corrosion performances of Ni625/WC composite coatings. The results showed that Y ₂O ₃ can effectively improve the corrosion resistance of the composite coatings. The microstructure from the bottom to the surface of composite coatings consists of plane crystal, cellular crystal, columnar crystal and equiaxed crystal. The Y ₂O ₃content of optimum composite coating was 1.0%. Its microhardness was three times that of matrix material. In addition, the corrosion current density of the composite coating was only 2% of Ni625/WC coating, which was attributed to the good properties of Y ₂O ₃ and appropriate Y ₂O ₃ refined microstructure.

Quantitative ultrasound has been widely used for tissue characterization. In this paper we propose a new approach for tissue compression assessment. The proposed method employs the relation between the tissue scatterers’ local spatial distribution and the resulting frequency power spectrum of the backscattered ultrasonic signal. We show that due to spatial distribution of the scatterers, the power spectrum exhibits characteristic variations. These variations can be extracted using the empirical mode decomposition and analyzed. Validation of our approach is performed by simulations and in-vitro experiments using a tissue sample under compression. The scatterers in the compressed tissue sample approach each other and consequently, the power spectrum of the backscattered signal is modified. We present how to assess this phenomenon with our method. The proposed in this paper approach is general and may provide useful information on tissue scattering properties.