An investigation into the thermal transport properties of PP/EPDM/clay nanocomposites using a new combined experimental/numerical method

This research work is devoted to the study of the thermal transport properties of nanocomposites based on PP/EPDM/Clay (Polypropylene/Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer/Clay). Six different formulations were designed and the corresponding nanocomposites (with 0, 2, 4 and 6% of clay) were prepared via melt mixing. To achieve the goals, densities, specific heat capacities and thermal conductivities were measured as function of temperature and nanocomposites compositions. A new and novel methodology was developed to determine the thermal conductivity which was based on an inverse heat transfer problem. First, assuming a linear relationship for thermal conductivity, the transient heat transfer equation in a solid specimen was numerically solved. The obtained temperature profile was used as the input to an optimisation technique based on genetic algorithm and the parameters of the thermal conductivity relationship were found. The results showed that the specific heat increases both with increasing of temperature and clay contents. It is also increased with the addition of the rubber to the blend. In all samples, the thermal conductivity decreases with increasing of temperature with a linear relationship. In addition, at relatively constant ratios of PP/EPDM, thermal conductivity of nanocomposite and its sensitivity increase with temperature rise. Moreover, at constant value of clay content, the thermal conductivity is decreased with increase of rubber content. The explanations to above findings were also presented and discussed.     

Effect of modified single‐wall carbon nanotubes on mechanical and morphological properties of thermoplastic elastomer nanocomposites based on (polyamide 6)/(acrylonitrile butadiene rubber)

Thermoplastic elastomer nanocomposites based on acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) and polyamide 6 (PA6), with acid functionalized single‐wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT), were prepared via a direct melt‐mixing process in an internal mixer. The influence of SWNT content (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5) on morphological properties of PA6/NBR with different ratios (80/20, 70/30, 60/40) were then investigated. Characterization of nanocomposites was conducted by using transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and mechanical properties. Scanning electron microscopy micrographs proved the droplet‐matrix blend morphology in which the size of NBR droplets decreased as the SWNT loading increased, suggesting dispersion of SWNT in the PA6 phase. It was further proved by transmission electron microscopy images, showing homogenous dispersion of SWNT in the PA6 phase. Differential scanning calorimetry results showed a slightly reduced percentage of crystallinity in samples containing SWNT. The mechanical properties of nanocomposites indicated an enhancement in tensile strength, modulus, and hardness on increasing SWNT content. J. VINYL ADDIT. TECHNOL., 22:336–341, 2016. © 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Dynamically vulcanized polypropylene/ethylene‐propylene diene monomer/organoclay nanocomposites: Effect of mixing sequence on structural,rheological, and mechanical properties

Dynamically vulcanized thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) nanocomposites based on polypropylene (PP), ethylene‐propylene diene monomer (EPDM) and cloisite 15A were prepared via direct melt mixing in a co‐rotating twin‐screw extruder. The mixing process was carried out with optimized processing parameters (barrel temperature = 180°C; screw speed = 150 rpm; and feeding rate = 0.2 kg/hr). The formulation used to prepare the nanocomposites was fixed to 75/20/5 (PP/EPDM/Cloisite^©15A), expressed in mass fraction. Effect of mixing sequence on the properties of vulcanized and unvulcanized (TPE) nanocomposites prepared under similar conditions was investigated using X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and a tensile testing machine. Results showed that the sequence of mixing does affect the properties of final TPE nanocomposites. Accordingly, nanocomposite samples prepared through mixing the preblended PP/clay masterbatch with EPDM phase, show better clay dispersion within the polymer matrix. J. VINYL ADDIT. TECHNOL., 22:320–325, 2016. © 2014 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Embedding Two P+ Pockets in the Buried Oxide of Nano Silicon on Insulator MOSFETs: Controlled Short Channel Effects and Electric Field

Silicon - This paper proposes an efficient structure for nanoscale silicon on insulator (SOI) MOSFETs. Two P+ pockets are considered in buried oxide, a pocket under source region and another under...     

Cathodic disbondment of epoxy coating with zinc aluminum polyphosphate as a modified zinc phosphate anticorrosion pigment

As an approach to improve the resistance of protective coatings to the disbondment, modification of the formulation through incorporation of zinc aluminum polyphosphate anticorrosion pigment representing third generation phosphates was examined in this paper. The data obtained from cathodic disbonding test, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and pull-off indicated that introduction of zinc aluminum polyphosphate within epoxy coating could provide improved resistance to cathodic disbonding as well as superior adhesion strength. The superiority in the presence of the modified pigment was connected to deposition of a layer at the disbonding front and locally controlled pH as well. The precipitation restricting active zone available for electrochemical reaction was confirmed by SEM.     

Electrochemical study of effect of the concentration of azole derivatives on corrosion behavior of stainless steel in H2SO4

In order to improve corrosion resistance of the stainless steel structures exposed to acidic media, a variety of corrosion inhibitors particularly organic ones have been examined. In this work, the corrosion inhibition performance of two azole derivatives namely benzotriazole and benzothiazole on stainless steel in 1 M sulfuric acid was studied through taking advantage of electrochemical techniques as well as SEM surface analysis. Revealing effectiveness of the two inhibitors, the AC impedance spectra indicated no change in corrosion mechanism. The noise resistance and average current density as parameters extracted from electrochemical noise measurements revealed the direct proportion of inhibition function to the inhibitor concentration. In accordance with the polarization curves, benzotriazole and benzothiazole appeared to act as mixed type inhibitors. The adsorption of the two corrosion inhibitors was shown to obey Langmuir isotherm. Moreover, it was deduced from the isotherm that the type of adsorption can be physical and chemical in nature. The corrosion damage mitigation was also confirmed through SEM in the presence of benzothiazole.     

Intelligent and independent processes for overcoming big graphs

Poor locality as a natural property of graph data structures causes enormous amount of network traffic in large-scale distributed graph processing systems. Moreover, data transmission through the network is one of the most expensive operations in a distributed system. Therefore, reduction of network usage is highly required by a new graph computational model. In this paper, increasing the degree of machine independency has been considered a key factor of network traffic reduction. The proposed system benefits from a three-layered computational model to perfectly leverage the power of local information as much as possible. Moreover, this model simultaneously takes the advantages of both message-based and shared-state communication paradigms. Vertices can read and update values of others in the lowest layer directly, while they must send messages in other layers. By the use of memorization techniques, the proposed model introduces a new kind of intelligence that has encouraging effects on removing useless communications. Distinctive results of our experiments confirm significant improvements of the proposed model in relation to the previous systems like Pregel, GPS, and Blogel, as well as ExPregel. The results also show that the overhead of making processes independent along with intelligent is negligible in comparison with the cost of additional network communications.     

Cryptanalysis of an iterated halving-based hash function: CRUSH

Iterated Halving has been suggested as a replacement to the Merkle?Damga?rd (MD) construction in 2004 anticipating the attacks on the MDx family of hash functions. The CRUSH hash function provides a specific instantiation of the block cipher for Iterated Halving. The authors identify structural problems with the scheme and show that they can trivially identify collisions and second preimages on many equal-length messages of length ten blocks or more. The cost is ten decryptions of the block cipher, this being less than the generation of a single digest. In addition, these attacks can be used to differentiate CRUSH from a random oracle in O(1). The authors show that the complexity of finding a preimage in the unpadded CRUSH with the length encoding is negligible and extend this attack on CRUSH with the length encoding in cost O(2/sup 32/). This attack is a multi-preimage attack, since the attacker can produce a large number of messages for a given message digest for the cost of O(2/sup 32/). Hence, this attack can be used as a multi-collision and a multisecond- preimage as well. They show that if the attacker knows the last 64-bits of the message digest in advance, he can do the time-consuming part of the attack off-line. The authors show that even if Iterated Halving is repaired, the construction has practical issues that means it is not suitable for general deployment.     

The Ablation and Oxidation Behaviors of SiC Coatings on Graphite Prepared by Slurry Sintering and Pack Cementation

SiC coatings were generated on graphite using slurry sintering (SS) and pack cementation (PC). The samples’ ablation features were assessed by an oxyacetylene torch. The rates of mass ablation of the PC–SiC and SS–SiC coatings were approximated 2.17?×?10^?3 and 9.52?×?10^?3 g s^?1, respectively, decreased by 84.1 and 29.6% compared to the uncoated samples. It was mainly attributed to the formation of a SiO₂ layer on the surface. The continuous SiO₂ molten film formed via the PC–SiC oxidation generates a sealing mechanism which can be an obstacle against the oxygen diffusion and hinder more ablation. This is while discontinuous SiO₂ film formed from the thin SS–SiC cannot protect the graphite effectively. The non-isothermal oxidation test shows that without the SiC coating, the sample weight is lost largely from 25 to 1500 °C, and its weight loss was 2.2% after the TGA. However, after coating, the samples possessed excellent oxidation protection and weight losses of SS–SiC and PC–SiC coatings are down to 1.3 and 0.6%, respectively. The more oxidation of the graphite substrate occurred due to the formation of macrocracks in the coating during the TGA and also the formation of holes on SiO₂ glass layer owing to release of CO or CO₂.     

Effect of carbon steel microstructures and molecular structure of two new Schiff base compounds on inhibition performance in 1 M HCl solution by EIS

In this investigation, attempts have been made to study the inhibitive effect of N,N′-ortho-phenylen acetyle acetone imine (S1) and 4-[(3-{[1-(2-hydroxy phenyl) methylidene] amino} propyl] ethanemidol]-1,3-benzenediol (S2) in the concentration range of 50–400 ppm for mild steel with two different microstructures resulted from two different heat treatments (annealed (A) and quenched and tempered (Q&T)) in 1 M hydrochloric acid by ac impedance spectroscopy. The tests were conducted in acid solutions in the absence and presence of different concentrations of S1 and S2 Schiff bases for both microstructures. A sole time constant was observed from Bode-phase angle plots in the presence of inhibitors which reveals that the action of inhibitors is through adsorption on the surface. The charge transfer resistance and inhibition efficiency increases with the increase in Schiff bases concentration for both microstructures. The perlite samples in the absence of inhibitors in 1 M hydrochloric acid indicated slightly less corrosion than martensite ones, which was because of more protective oxide layers. Furthermore in the presence of S1 and S2, these samples showed better adsorption than martensite one. Schiff base S1 showed a better inhibition against corrosion in comparison with S2. Both S1 and S2 adsorbed on steel surface according to a Langmuir adsorption isotherm model. The associated Gibbs free energies for S1 on both microstructures are more than S2.