Insulating safety analysis of the hot-line sweeping robot

This paper presents a method of calculating the insulating safety distances for hot-line working robots at high voltage when dielectric is adulterated with conducts. Also, finite element method is adopted to calculate the electric field strength to find whether it is beyond the critical. The above methods have been applied to analyze the insulating safety of the robot for hot-line sweeping post insulators in a 220 KV substation. They have also been testified by experimentations.     

A Simple Experimental Technique to Measure Tortuosity in Packed Beds

In this article, a simple and inexpensive experimental technique easy to build in laboratory, for the measurement of tortuosity of a packed bed of inert particles, is described. Experimental values of the tortuosity were obtained with four different packed beds of sand. The experimental results obtained are in good agreement with the theoretical values of tortuosity in a porous media; and the data reported showed the tortuosity to increase with decrease in the void fraction of the packed bed as expected.     

Lower bounds on the stress and strain fields inside random two-phase elastic media

Summary The heterogeneous media under consideration are isotropic composites consisting of two well-ordered elastic isotropic phases and subjected to uniform macroscopic loading. By extending a method due to Lipton [2], lower bounds on the stress and strain fields inside each phase are explicitly established in terms of the phase volume fractions and properties. These bounds on the second moments turn out to be optimal, since they are achieved by the relevant stress and strain fields inside the finite-rank laminates which, constructed by Francfort and Murat [6], attain the Hashin-Shtrikman lower and upper bounds on the elastic bulk and shear moduli.     

Thermal and mechanical properties of epoxy composites reinforced by a natural hydrophobic sand

If a low weight percentage of crude fine fillers can improve properties of polymer materials directly without complicated chemical treatment process involved, it will be significant for many industrial applications. Our previous study indicated that a kind of Cancun natural sand could be an effective filler material for polymer composites. In this current work, the epoxy composites reinforced by this kind of natural sand particles were prepared and thermal and mechanical properties of the composites containing up to 5 wt % of the sand particles were characterized. Results showed that the highest flexural strength appears in the epoxy composite containing 1 wt % sand particles. A damage model was used to interpret the flexural properties, which showed an acceptable agreement with the experimental results. The glass transition temperature, high temperature storage modulus, and dimensional stability of the sand/epoxy composites monotonically increased with the addition of the sand particles. The sand particle/epoxy composites also displayed a noticeable enhancement in thermal conductivity. Theoretical analysis showed that in addition to conduction, other heat transport mechanisms played roles in the improved heat transmission through the composites. As a natural porous micron-scale material, Cancun sand has the potential for applications in cost-effective composites with enhanced mechanical and thermal properties. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

Electronic properties of dehydrogenated nanodiamonds: A first-principles study

First-principles calculations using quantum-mechanical density functional theory (DFT) are carried out to study the geometric structure and electronic properties of dehydrogenated nanodiamonds with diameters varying from 0.8 nm to 1.6 nm. The results show that the electronic properties of dehydrogenated nanodiamond are quite different from those of bulk diamond or hydrogenated nanodiamond. Surface atoms play an important role in the electronic structure, especially the states near the Fermi level, for dehydrogenated nanodiamond. In addition, it has been revealed that the size-dependent feature in the electronic properties for dehydrogenated diamonds is also contributed by the surface effect, in addition to the quantum confinement effect.     

Development of composite tissue scaffolds containing naturally sourced mircoporous hydroxyapatite

The aims of this work were to investigate the conversion of a marine alga into hydroxyapatite (HA), and furthermore to design a composite bone tissue engineering scaffold comprising the synthesised HA within a porous bioresorbable polymer. The marine alga, Phymatolithon calcareum, which exhibits a calcium carbonate honeycomb structure, with a natural architecture of interconnecting permeable pores (microporosity 4–11 μm), provided the initial raw material for this study. The objective was to convert the alga into hydroxyapatite while maintaining its porous morphology using a sequential pyrolysis and chemical synthesis processes. Semi-quantitative XRD analysis of the post-hydrothermal material (pyrolised at 700–750 °C), indicated that the calcium phosphate (CaP) ceramic most likely consisted of a calcium carbonate macroporous lattice, with hydroxyapatite crystals on the surface of the macropores. Cell visibility (cytotoxicity) investigations of osteogenic cells were conducted on the CaP ceramic (i.e., the material post-hydrothermal analysis) which was found to be non-cytotoxic and displayed good biocompatibility when seeded with MG63 cells. Furthermore, a hot press scaffold fabrication technique was developed to produce a composite scaffold of CaP (derived from the marine alga) in a polycaprolactone (PCL) matrix. A salt leaching technique was further explored to introduce macroporosity to the structure (50–200 μm). Analysis indicated that the scaffold contained both micro/macroporosity and mechanical strength, considered necessary for bone tissue engineering applications.