Rheokinetic studies and compressive response of high performance polybenzoxazine syntactic foams

Polybenzoxazines are finding increasing usage in demanding applications where high temperature stability is required, especially in the field of aerospace. In this work, thermally stable bisphenol F-based polybenzoxazine [poly(BF-a)] syntactic foams containing varying volume fractions (30–60%) of hollow glass microballoons (HGMs) were prepared and their mechanical response in the quasi-static regime was established. The effect of introducing glass microballoons on the curing profile of benzoxazine resin was studied using both nonisothermal differential scanning calorimetry and rheometry. Temperature-sweep experiments were performed to arrive at the optimal processing window of the benzoxazine-glass microballoons formulations, particularly in terms of viscosity, gelation temperature, and time. Thermally accelerated ring-opening polymerization of the benzoxazine resin led to complete curing of the syntactic foam formulations, as assessed by calorimetric studies. The thermal degradation behavior of the poly(BF-a)/HGM was studied using thermogravimetric analysis. As expected, the density of the syntactic foam specimens decreased with increasing microballoon content. Maximal increase in the specific compressive properties of the poly(BF-a)/HGM samples was observed in formulations containing 40% volume fraction of glass microballoons. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 47234.     

Odour Cues from Fruit Arils of Artocarpus heterophyllus Attract both Sexes of Oriental Fruit Flies

Journal of Chemical Ecology - The Oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) is an economically devastating pest of fruit crops across the globe with stringent quarantine restrictions to...     

Sequency codes for palmprint recognition

This paper presents a new palmprint scheme named as Sequency code (SeqC) which exploits symmetric and asymmetric Gabor filtered responses at different orientations. Concatenation of the zero crossings of these symmetric and asymmetric Gabor responses is performed, and bit transition among concatenated zero crossings is counted at corresponding locations to compute Sequency plane, Seq. Finally, Seq is encoded into Sequency code bit plane features SeqC. The Sequency code requires less computations and time in feature extraction process because of its simple fusion strategy. Performance of Sequency code is validated by carrying out large number of experiments with three different standard databases, i.e., PolyU 2D, PolyU 2nd version, IITD, and Multispectral databases.     

Optimization of photochemical machining process parameters for manufacturing microfluidic channel

In the present study, the investigation on photochemical machining (PCM) of stainless steel (SS-304) by ferric chloride as etchant is reported. SS-304 is machined by PCM process to obtain accurate dimensions and better geometrical features. Weighted grey relational analysis (WGRA) technique is used in optimization of PCM process parameters. DoE (L₂₇) orthogonal array is applied to evaluate machining parameters, such as concentration of etchant, etching time, and temperature of etchant. The multiobjective optimization technique is used to optimize material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness (R_a), undercut (U_c) and etch factor (EF). Weighted grey relational grade is calculated to minimize U_c and surface roughness and to maximize MRR and EF. The quality characteristics MRR, EF, U_c, and R_a are reporting the improvement after the confirmatory test. The optimum machining parameters are processed to manufacture the microfluidic channel used in biomedical applications. The microfluidic channels and its assembly with Y-type for mixing of fluid with a size of 100 µm, 200 µm, and 300 µm are developed and investigated.     

An Energy Efficient QoS Supported Optimized Transmission Rate Technique in WBANs

Wireless Personal Communications - The Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) provide an unprecedented opportunity for ubiquitous real-time health-care and fitness monitoring without impairing the...     

An Efficient Data Delivery Scheme in WBAN to Deal with Shadow Effect due to Postural Mobility

The body movement and change in posture exhibit high mobility in sensor nodes which causes shadowing in the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). Due to this, the connectivity between the nodes in WBAN is affected which further causes failure in data delivery. This article presents a MAC protocol in WBAN to deal with the problem of data delivery due to body movement and postural mobility. It uses an Improved Initial Centroid K-means clustering technique for classification of various human body postures followed by back propagation neural network as a classifier to recognize human body posture. This article proposes a posture aware dynamic data delivery (PA-DDD) protocol to deliver data dynamically. The PA-DDD protocol can be used under varying speed walking scenario. The simulation results show that it prolongs the network lifetime and is energy efficient.

     

Molecular interactions in intercalated organically modified clay and clay-polycaprolactam nanocomposites: Experiments and modeling

In this work we have evaluated molecular interactions in organically modified clay and polymer clay nanocomposite using a combination of experimental (photoacoustic FTIR, XRD) and computational (molecular dynamics (MD)) techniques. The FTIR data reveals hydrogen bond and ionic bond interaction between functional end groups of organic modifier and surface oxygen of interlayer clay sheet lying in the organically modified clay; and, the hydrogen bond formation between intercalated polymer and organic modifier and surface oxygen of clay sheet lying in the interlayer clay gallery in the polymer clay nanocomposite. In this work we report the nature of interactions between clay and polymer, clay and organic modifier in polymer-clay nanocomposites through experiments and molecular dynamics simulations.     

Simultaneous abatement of diesel soot and NOX emissions by effective catalysts at low temperature: An overview

The diesel engine generally achieves the highest fuel, energy, and thermal efficiency due to its very high compression/expansion ratio (14:1 to 25:1). Diesel engines can have a thermal efficiency that exceeds 50%. The main problem is that they emit more pollution like fine black soot particulates (C₈H to C₁₀H) and nitrogen oxides (NO_X). These pollutants have been causing serious problems for human health and the global environment and also impacts on the engine. There are many types of catalysts investigated for simultaneous control of these two pollutants, i.e., platinum group metals (PGM; Pt, Pd, Rh, and Ir) based, spinel-type oxides, hydrotalcite, rare earth metal oxides, mixed transient metal oxides, etc. The high raw material cost of PGM catalysts has become a significant issue, so developing non-PGM catalysts are one of the promising challenges. There are no extra reductants required because soot catalytically oxidizes itself in the presence of NO_X at a faster rate than molecular oxygen and simultaneously NO_X is reduced to nitrogen. The order of oxidation potential of NO_X to oxidized soot in comparison to molecular oxygen is as follows: NO₂ > NO > O₂. To meet the very strict EPA US 2010 and Euro VI regulations of particulate matter (PM) and NO_X for heavy-duty and light-duty vehicular stringent emission, it is very important to apply the integrated catalytic systems to significantly remove PM and NO_X simultaneously. Many papers related to simultaneous control of soot and NO_X over different catalysts have been published but till now some of effective catalysts showing high conversion at low temperatures (possibly within the range typical of diesel exhaust: 150–450°C) have not been reviewed. Thus, this article provides a summary of published information regarding the effective catalysts, their preparation methods, properties, and application for simultaneous control of diesel soot and NO_X.