Roller bearing lubrication with shear thinning lubricants

Lubricants are continually being subjected to increasing mechanical shearing forces. Consequently the interest in materials of variable viscosity has increased. The problem of a roller bearing lubricated by a Casson fluid, which is a shear thinning lubricant, has been investigated; the non-sliding steady state and the squeezed film situation have been studied. At high speeds the load capacity of the Casson fluid is equal to that for a Newtonian fluid of the same viscosity. At low speeds the difference is significant; the Casson fluid film has a load capacity even if the velocities of both cylinders in contact are zero.     

A novel approach for analyzing fuzzy system reliability using different types of intuitionistic fuzzy failure rates of components

This paper addresses the fuzzy system reliability analysis using different types of intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. Till now, in the literature, to analyze the fuzzy system reliability, it is assumed that the failure rates of all components of a system follow the same type of fuzzy set or intuitionistic fuzzy set. However, in practical problems, such type of situation rarely occurs. Therefore, in the present paper, a new algorithm has been introduced to construct the membership function and non-membership function of fuzzy reliability of a system having components following different types of intuitionistic fuzzy failure rates. Functions of intuitionistic fuzzy numbers are calculated to construct the membership function and non-membership function of fuzzy reliability via non-linear programming techniques. Using the proposed algorithm, membership functions and non-membership functions of fuzzy reliability of a series system and a parallel systems are constructed. Our study generalizes the various works of the literature. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the proposed algorithm.     

Hole Quality Measures in Rotary Ultrasonic Drilling of Silicon Dioxide (SiO2): Investigation and Modeling through Designed Experiments

Silicon - The silicon dioxide (i.e. quartz) has been finely viewed as one of the exceedingly claimed contemporary ceramics which is getting broad engineering applications owing to its superior and...     

Hierarchical description of deformation in block copolymer TPEs

We report on the deformation behavior of commercially relevant lamellar and cylindrical tri-block copolymers poly (styrene-b-ethylene-co-butylene-b-styrene) (SEBS) with two different compositions. The structural changes that occur at various length scales have been studied using a simultaneous small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS) during uni-axial tensile deformation of the polygrain samples. SAXS provides information about changes that occur upon deforming the glassy cylindrical or lamellar PS domains. WAXS, on the other hand, is sensitive to the crystallographic structure of the rubbery mid-block. Deformation calorimetry has been used to determine the energetics involved. The combined results from the various techniques indicate that the deformation takes place in three stages. First, at small strains, dilation occurs in the rubbery phase. At intermediate strains, the hard lamellar or cylindrical domains undergo micro-buckling, which is associated with a downturn in the stress–strain curve. Finally, we interpret that at higher strains, the bent lamellar/cylindrical domains rotate in the stretching direction resulting in a significant shear on the rubbery mid-block. This in turn leads to strain-induced crystallization in these materials. Although we could not prove it by WAXS, deformation calorimetry (which is more sensitive than the WAXS) was utilized to show its presence.     

Fuzzy filtering for robust bioconcentration factor modelling

This study introduces a fuzzy filtering based technique for rendering robustness to the modelling methods. We consider a case study dealing with the development of a model for predicting the bioconcentration factor (BCF) of chemicals. The conventional neural/fuzzy BCF models, due to the involved uncertainties, may have a poor generalization performance (i.e. poor prediction performance for new chemicals). Our approach to improve the generalization performance of neural/fuzzy BCF models consists of (1) exploiting a fuzzy filter to filter out the uncertainties from the modelling problem, (2) utilizing the information about uncertainties, being provided by the fuzzy filter, for the identification of robust BCF models with an increased generalization performance. The approach has been illustrated with a data set of 511 chemicals (Dimitrov, S., Dimitrova, N., Parkerton, T., Comber, M., Bonnell, M., Mekenyan, O., 2005. Base-line model for identifying the bioaccumulation potential of chemicals. SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research 16 (6), 531–554) taking different types of neural/fuzzy modelling techniques.     

N-type silk fibroin/TiO2 nanocomposite transparent films: electrical and optical properties

This paper highlights the effect of different concentrations of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanoparticles on the electrical and optical properties of silk fibroin (SF). TiO₂ based SF nanocomposite films were prepared using the solvent casting method. Uniform dispersion and agglomeration of nanoparticles, in nanocomposite films, were observed by field emission SEM. The conductivity of pure SF and nanocomposite films was determined by a four-point probe and the TiO₂ nanoparticles were found to bring high conductivity to the nanocomposite films. Dielectric strength improved with the addition of nanoparticles to the SF matrix. Dielectric constant and capacitance of the pure SF and nanocomposite films were measured using an LCR meter, which showed a 10-fold enhancement on the addition of nanoparticles in SF. A very unusual property, i.e. negative resistance, was observed during LCR meter analysis for the nanocomposite films for a particular range of frequency (200–550 kHz), voltage (1 V) and current (0.5–1.5 μA). TiO₂ nanoparticles changed the semiconducting behavior of the SF films from p-type to n-type as measured by the Hall effect experiment. The optical properties of pure SF and nanocomposite films were measured using a UV–visible spectrophotometer. The increased concentration of nanoparticles in the SF has effectively enhanced the absorbing coefficient, refractive index and percentage transmittance and reduced the bandgap energy. These SF/TiO₂ nanocomposite films have shown the potential to be used as dielectric and high refractive index material for optoelectronics applications. © 2021 Society of Industrial Chemistry.     

Preparation and Characterization of Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 + Polyurethane Nanocomposites Using Melt Mixing Method

Silicon - In this study, nanocomposites of Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4/polyurethane were prepared by melt mixing method and determined the influence of amount of Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 (0, 0.5, 1, 2, and 3 wt%)...     

Investigations on the strength of mechanical joints prepared from carbon fiber laminates with addition of carbon nanotubes

The present work is to examine the failure modes and failure loads in pin joints prepared from carbon/epoxy composite laminates with addition of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) as nanofillers. The effect of MWCNT in the carbon/epoxy composites was studied by adding 0.1 to 0.5 wt.% content in the epoxy resin. The maximum tensile strength was observed upto 0.3 wt.%, which is due to the enhanced interfacial bond strength and the efficient stress transfer between the stiff MWCNT and soft polymer matrix through refined polymer/MWCNT interface. The nanocomposite laminates for pin joints were prepared using optimised 0.3 wt.% of MWCNT. The different geometric combinations of width to diameter (W/D) and edge to diameter (E/D) ratios were varied from 2 to 5, respectively. The numerical analysis was performed using Hashin damage criteria along with progressive damage analysis to compare the predicted failure loads with the experimental results.     

Cetyl Trimethyl Ammonium Bromide Modified Montmorillonite-Doped Tasar Silk Fibroin/Polyvinyl Alcohol Blend 3D Nanowebs for Tissue Engineering Applications

Cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) modified montmorillonite (MMT) clay (CTAB-MT) doped, tasar silk fibroin-polyvinyl alcohol blend-based 3D nanowebs are generated through electrospinning technique. The morphological analysis reveals the formation of interlinked 3D nanoweb-like architecture and high surface roughness through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy, respectively. The existence of CTAB-MT in nanowebs is confirmed by Fourier transform infrared and complete exfoliation of clay in the polymer blend matrix along with the altered crystallinity of samples is indicated in X-ray diffraction. The incorporation of CTAB-MT clay has shown the enhancement of thermal and mechanical properties of nanoweb samples while the water uptake capacity is reduced and enzymatic biodegradability is found to slow down. The samples present excellent biocompatibility with no cytotoxicity in the Alamar blue assay and high attachment as well as spreading of L929 fibroblast cells covering the entire surface as observed in SEM. The CTAB-MT clay has imparted the samples with good antimicrobial activity against E. coli and S. aureus bacterial strains. The aforementioned properties of these CTAB-MT clay doped 3D nanowebs direct toward their suitability as a potential candidate for tissue engineering applications in the biomedical field.