Atmospheric pressure chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) for the preparation of biomorphic SiC ceramics derived from paper

Chemical Vapor Infiltration of biological structures such as paper is used here to produce biomorphic SiC ceramics with high temperature resistance. The biological substrate materials are infiltrated with tetramethylsilane (TMS) at atmospheric pressure and elevated temperatures of 790 degrees C. A simple tube furnace (hot-wall reactor) is used for the infiltration process. As result, porous SiC-ceramics are grown which are around 20% smaller and 70% lighter than the initial substrates. This can be explained by the pyrolytic reaction of the substrates while heating them up to 790 degrees C, which is necessary for the infiltration process. Nevertheless, besides the shrinking of the substrates the geometrical form remains nearly unchanged. The resulting materials were heated up to 1000 degrees C in oxygen atmosphere in order to analyze their resistance against oxidation. After this treatment, all of them were still mechanically stable and of unchanged shape while a further mass loss was observed. This confirms the high temperature stability of the prepared materials.     

Epicardial fat thickness is associated with impaired coronary flow reserve in hemodialysis patients

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the main cause of mortality in hemodialysis (HD) patients. Epicardial fat tissue (EFT) is a new risk factor in CVD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between EFT and coronary artery flow reserve (CFR), which is an early indicator of endothelial dysfunction in coronary vessels of HD patients. We performed a cross‐sectional study including 71 chronic HD patients and 65 age‐ and sex‐matched healthy controls. Epicardial fat tissue was significantly higher in HD patients when compared to healthy controls (6.53 ± 1.01 mm vs. 5.79 ± 1.06 mm, respectively, P < 0.001). On transthoracic Doppler echocardiography, CFR values were significantly lower in HD patients when compared to healthy controls (1.73 ± 0.11 vs. 2.32 ± 0.28, P < 0.001). Correlation analysis showed CFR values to be inversely correlated with EFT (r = ?0.287, P < 0.05). Multiple linear regression analysis was used to define independent determinants of EFT in HD patients. Artery flow reserve, age, body mass index and total cholesterol levels were independently correlated with EFT thickness. This study demonstrated that EFT was significantly higher among HD patients compared to healthy controls. In addition, this study was the first to demonstrate an inverse correlation between EFT and CFR in this patient population.     

An efficient sparse matrix‐vector multiplication on CUDA‐enabled graphic processing units for finite element method simulations

Finite element method (FEM) is a well‐developed method to solve real‐world problems that can be modeled with differential equations. As the available computational power increases, complex and large‐size problems can be solved using FEM, which typically involves multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) per node, high order of elements, and an iterative solver requiring several sparse matrix‐vector multiplication operations. In this work, a new storage scheme is proposed for sparse matrices arising from FEM simulations with multiple DOF per node. A sparse matrix‐vector multiplication kernel and its variants using the proposed scheme are also given for CUDA‐enabled GPUs. The proposed scheme and the kernels rely on the mesh connectivity data from FEM discretization and the number of DOF per node. The proposed kernel performance was evaluated on seven test matrices for double‐precision floating point operations. The performance analysis showed that the proposed GPU kernel outperforms the ELLPACK (ELL) and CUSPARSE Hybrid (HYB) format GPU kernels by an average of 42% and 32%, respectively, on a Tesla K20c card. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimation of thermal and flow fields due to natural convection using support vector machines (SVM) in a porous cavity with discrete heat sources

Support vector machines (SVM), a soft programming technique, has been used to estimate the temperature distribution and flow fields in a square porous enclosure heated discretely by three isothermal heaters from the left vertical wall. Right vertical wall of the cavity was isothermal but it has colder temperature than the heaters while remaining walls were adiabatic. A database was prepared by solving the governing equations which were written using Darcy flow model. Using finite difference method to discretize the equation, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code was written. A correlation was developed between Nusselt and Rayleigh numbers. Using obtained database, further values of temperature and velocities were estimated by SVM technique at different Rayleigh numbers and locations of heater. It was observed that SVM was a useful technique on estimation of streamlines and isotherms. Thus, SVM reduces the computational time and helps to solve some cases when CFD fails to solve due to numerical instability.     

Cyclopolymerization of cinnamate ester derivatives of alkyl α-(hydroxymethyl) acrylates

Summary Three new monomers for cyclopolymerization were synthesized using phase transfer catalysis of ethyl -(chloromethyl) acrylate (ECMA), t-butyl -(bromomethyl) acrylate (TBBMA) and isobornyl -(bromomethyl)acrylate (IBBMA) with cinnamic acid sodium salt. Bulk and solution polymerization at 70–80°C using AIBN gave soluble cyclopolymers with Mn=13650 and Mw=36540 for the ethyl ester, Mn=47700 and Mw=86900 for the t-butyl ester and Mn=3500 and Mw=4650 for the isobornyl ester monomer. The ester polymerizabilities decreased with increasing substituent bulkiness. FTIR spectra showed ca 30 to 93% cyclic units depending on the concentration of the monomer used in polymerizations. DSC thermograms showed that alkyl group size had little effect on Tg's, with values of 151°C, 156°C, and 164°C for the ethyl, t-butyl and isobornyl esters, respectively.     

Synthesis and photopolymerizations of phosphate-containing acrylate/(di)methacrylate monomers from 3-(acryloyloxy)-2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate

Summary Novel phosphorus-containing acrylate/(di)methacrylate monomers based on 3-(acryloyloxy)-2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate (AHM) were prepared by two different methods. The first method involved reaction of AHM with diethylchlorophosphate to produce a phosphate-containing acrylate/methacrylate monomer followed by Michael addition of this monomer with dihexyl amine. In the second method, a hydroxyl-containing dimethacrylate monomer was prepared via Michael addition of hydroxyl amine to AHM followed by its reaction with diethylchlorophosphate. The photopolymerization kinetics of the synthesized monomers were investigated using a differential scanning calorimeter. It was shown that changing the monomer structure allows control of polymerization reactivity and new phosphorus-containing polymers can be obtained.     

A water-soluble Irgacure 2959-based diallylammonium salt system for antibacterial coatings

A water-soluble mixture of a novel diallylammonium salt photoinitiator based on 2-hydroxy-1-[4-(2-hydroxyethoxy) phenyl]-2-methyl-1-propanone (Irgacure 2959 or I2959) and diallylammonium tosylate has been prepared. It shows excellent water-solubility of 6.8 wt% in water, much greater than the solubility of I2959 (<2 wt%). It has a strong absorbance at 269 nm (ε ~ 15731) in methanol. It exhibits 15.6 times higher migration stability than I2959 due to its monomeric nature. Its photoinitiating efficiency of 2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) and poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA, M_n = 575 D) was found to be similar to I2959. PEGDA hydrogels prepared using the synthesized photoinitiator (PI) were found to have highly porous structures (15.44 μm) compared with those using I2959. PEGDA film prepared using this PI has demonstrated antibacterial properties against gram-negative Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 15442) and gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 23235) bacterial species.     

Developing an ecologically friendly isothermal bath to obtain a new class high-tenacity and high-modulus polypropylene fibers

A number of production methods have been developed for high-performance fibers; however, most processes use toxic solvents or generate a lot of unwanted by-products. Our research resulted in the development of a new family of high-performance polypropylene (PP) fibers by utilizing a simple, ecologically friendly bath (ECOB). Various commodity polymers can be used with ECOB melt spinning system at high throughputs and performance benefits. Our treated as-spun PP fibers had a highly oriented, but not crystalline precursor morphology with f _a up to 0.6 generating superior mechanical properties. After drawing at draw ratios of 1.49 at 120 °C, highly oriented crystalline and amorphous phases were achieved for the drawn fibers with f _c and f _a values of 0.95 and 0.87, respectively. This fine structure for ECOB-treated fibers resulted in tenacity close to 12 g/d, initial modulus higher than 150 g/d, and ultimate elongation at break of 20 %. The polymer melting point of the new fibrillar PP fibers increased by 9 °C.     

Self-assembled fibrillar polyethylene crystals with tunable properties

Due to its simple linear chain structure, crystal morphology of linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) fibers can be controlled to fulfill the needs of diverse advanced applications. This study presents a simple two-step method to produce LLDPE fibers with self-assembled fibrillar crystals and highly oriented amorphous phase. Rather than conventional melt spinning, fibers were treated in a two-step eco-friendly bath without drawing after extruded fibers emerge from the spinneret. Treated fibers through the baths demonstrated lower crystallinity, but significantly higher degree of crystal orientation when compared to control fibers of traditional melt spinning. Morphological analysis revealed that a unique microstructure was formed after spinning through a two-step eco-friendly bath. As-spun fibers demonstrated spherulitic morphology which can be transformed into a fibrillar structure followed by post-drawing process. Cross sectional images of the treated LLDPE fibers produced at 400 m/min showed fibrillar PE crystals which can be more dominant upon post-drawing. After two-step bath treatment, produced fibers need low draw ratios to exhibit high performance. Our novel modification followed by hot drawing process can manipulate internal structure with performance of PE fibers to an outstanding level of 0.35 GPa strength and 3 GPa modulus at a production speed of 400 m/min.