The petrographic composition of coal has a significant impact on its technological and sorption properties. That composition is most frequently determined by means of microscope quantitative analyses. Thus, aside from the purely scientific aspect, such measurements have an important practical application in the industrial usage of coal, as well as in issues related to the safety in underground mining facilities. The article discusses research aiming at analyzing the usefulness of selected parameters of a digital image description in the process of automatic identification of macerals of the inertinite group using neural networks. The description of the investigated images was based on statistical parameters determined on the basis of a histogram and co-occurrence matrix (Haralick parameters). Each of the studied macerals was described by means of a 20-element feature vector. An analysis of its principal components (PCA) was conducted, along with establishing the relationship between the number of the applied components and the effectiveness of the MLP network. Based on that, the optimum number of input variables for the investigated classification task was chosen, which resulted in reduction of the size of the network’s hidden layer. As part of the discussed research, the authors also analyzed the process of classification of macerals of the inertinite group using an algorithm based on a group of MLP networks, where each network possessed one output. As a result, average recognition effectiveness of 80.9% was obtained for a single MLP network, and of 93.6% for a group of neural networks. The obtained results indicate that it is possible to use the proposed methodology as a tool supporting microscopic analyses of coal.

The work three ceramic compositions based on PbZr0.49Ti0.51O3 doped with manganese (Mn), antimony (Sb), lanthanum (La) and tungsten (W) were obtained. The introduction of a set of admixtures was aimed at improving the sinterability of ceramic materials and optimizing its electrophysical parameters. Multi-component materials of the PZT-type with a general formula: ­Pb(Zr0.49Ti0.51)0.94Mn0.021Sb0.016LayWzO3 (where y from 0.008 to 0.012 and z from 0.012 to 0.014) were prepared by the conventional mixed oxide method. After mixing and drying the powder mixtures were calcined in air at 850°C for 4 h, while densification of the powders was carried out by the free sintering method at 1150°C for 2 h. The final steps of technology were grinding, polishing, annealing and putting silver paste electrodes onto both surfaces of the samples for electrical testing.

XRD, SEM, EDS, dielectric, ferroelectric, piezoelectric properties and DC electrical conductivity of the obtained ceramic compositions were carried out. X-ray tests of the crystal structure conducted at room temperature have shown that all obtained the PZT-type materials were a single phase (perovskite type) without the presence of a foreign phase. Symmetry of the crystal lattice was identified as space group P4mm. Temperature dielectric studies have shown high values of dielectric permittivity and low dielectric loss. The presented physical properties of ceramic samples based on PZT confirm their predisposition for application in modern microelectronic and micromechatronic applications.