Highly Stretchable and Sensitive Strain Sensors Using Fragmentized Graphene Foam

Stretchable electronics have recently been extensively investigated for the development of highly advanced human‐interactive devices. Here, a highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensor is fabricated based on the composite of fragmentized graphene foam (FGF) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). A graphene foam (GF) is disintegrated into 200–300 μm sized fragments while maintaining its 3D structure by using a vortex mixer, forming a percolation network of the FGFs. The strain sensor shows high sensitivity with a gauge factor of 15 to 29, which is much higher compared to the GF/PDMS strain sensor with a gauge factor of 2.2. It is attributed to the great change in the contact resistance between FGFs over the large contact area, when stretched. In addition to the high sensitivity, the FGF/PDMS strain sensor exhibits high stretchability over 70% and high durability over 10 000 stretching‐releasing cycles. When the sensor is attached to the human body, it functions as a health‐monitoring device by detecting various human motions such as the bending of elbows and fingers in addition to the pulse of radial artery. Finally, by using the FGF, PDMS, and μ‐LEDs, a stretchable touch sensor array is fabricated, thus demonstrating its potential application as an artificial skin.     

Natural Palm Olein Polyol as a Replacement for Polyether Polyols in Viscoelastic Polyurethane Foam

The impact of replacing three polyether polyols with different levels of a single palm olein‐based natural oil polyol (NOP) was systematically correlated with the changes in foaming reactivity, cell structure, physico‐mechanical properties, and morphology of viscoelastic (VE) foams. The data show that replacing the polyether polyols with the NOP slightly increased the rate of the foaming reactivity. Increasing the NOP content resulted in increased cell size and cells remained fully open. Increased NOP content contributed to higher load bearing properties of VE foam, which can be attributed to higher functionality of NOP compared to polyether polyols. Addition of the NOP slightly increased the resilience of the foams, however, the hysteresis which is the measure of energy absorption remained mostly unaffected. Age properties, characterized by dry and humid compression sets, were mostly unaffected by the replacement of the polyether polyol with the NOP. The addition of NOP did not impact the morphology of the VE foam polymer matrix, which appears to retain a low degree of hard and soft segment domain separation. Overall, the results demonstrate a feasibility that the NOP can be used to partially replace the polyether polyols in VE polyurethane foams without significant impact on the functional performance.     

Urethane‐forming reaction kinetics and catalysis of model palm olein polyols: Quantified impact of primary and secondary hydroxyls

Model palm olein natural oil polyols (NOPs) with varying ratios of primary to secondary hydroxyls were synthesized, characterized, and evaluated in reaction kinetics study with isocyanate in formation of polyurethanes. Reaction rate constants and activation energies associated with primary and secondary hydroxyls of NOPs were quantified. The kinetic study in toluene shows that the NOP containing primary hydroxyls have three times higher reaction rate constants in noncatalyzed reaction with 4,4′‐diphenylmethane diisocyanate (4,4′‐MDI) compared to the model NOP containing only secondary hydroxyls, which is associated with higher activation energy of secondary hydroxyls. However, the difference in reaction rate constants of primary and secondary hydroxyls in NOPs diminished in the reactions catalyzed with dibutyltin dilaurate. Bulk polymerization reaction confirms the kinetics results in toluene, showing that the model NOP containing primary hydroxyls reached gel time at a faster rate. Evaluation of elastomers from bulk polymerization shows low degree of phase separation of hard and soft segments for elastomers based on the model NOPs. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 42955.     

Application of Gurson Model for Evaluation of Density‐Dependent Mechanical Behavior of Polyurethane Foam: Comparative Study on Explicit and Implicit Method

Recently, liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a focus of interest around the world for several reasons, and LNG cargo containment systems (CCS) increase in quality to prevent loss of LNG during shipping. For insulation of CCS, polyurethane foam (PUF), an outstanding insulation material, is commonly used. However, until now, although its mechanical properties are relatively good, the material is not considered as a structural member under compressive loading, principal load direction in CCS. Moreover, as PUF is a porous material by mixing and foaming, its mechanical properties depend on voids, which is a dominant parameter for density. Therefore, in the present study, nonlinear behavior of PUF is described using Gurson model with a novel technique, i.e., an acceleration factor. The model expresses the behavior through the volume fraction of voids with consideration of the density effect to evaluate structural performance using user‐defined material subroutine with explicit and implicit methods.

     

Structural size effects of intermetallic compounds on the mechanical properties of Mo-Si-B alloy: An experimental investigation

In general, size, shape and dispersion of phases in alloys significantly affect mechanical properties. In this study, the mechanical properties of Mo-Si-B alloys were experimentally investigated with regards to the refinement of intermetallic compound. To confirm the size effect of the intermetallic compound phases on mechanical properties, two differently sized intermetallic compound powders consisting Mo₅SiB₂ and Mo₃Si were fabricated by mechano-chemical process and high-energy ball milling. A modified powder metallurgy method was used with core-shell intermetallic powders where the intermetallic compound particles were the core and nano-sized Mo particles which formed by the hydrogen reduction of Mo oxide were the shells, leading to the microstructures with uniformly distributed intermetallic compound phases within a continuous α-Mo matrix phase. Vickers hardness and fracture toughness were measured to examine the mechanical properties of sintered bodies. Vickers hardness was 472 Hv for the fine intermetallic compound powder and 415 Hv for the coarse intermetallic compound powder. The fracture toughness was 12.4 MPa·√m for the fine IMC powders and 13.5 MPa·√m for the coarse intermetallic compound powder.