Surface modification of CP-Ti to improve the fretting-corrosion resistance: Thermal oxidation vs. anodizing

Fretting corrosion is one of the important reasons for the failure of prosthesis made of titanium and titanium alloys under in vivo condition. The fretting-corrosion behaviour of untreated, anodized and thermally oxidized commercially pure titanium (CP-Ti) in Ringer's solution was evaluated based on the change in free corrosion potential (FCP) measured as a function of time. A comparison of the performance of untreated, anodized and thermally oxidized CP-Ti under fretting-corrosion conditions is reported for the first time in this paper. The study reveals that surface modification of CP-Ti by both anodizing and thermal oxidation improved the fretting-corrosion resistance of CP-Ti and among them the performance of thermally oxidized CP-Ti is superior to that of the anodized one. Adhesive galling is the predominant wear mechanism for untreated CP-Ti, adhesive wear and delamination are found to be operative for anodized CP-Ti whereas an abrasive wear mechanism is operative for thermally oxidized CP-Ti when they are fretted against an alumina ball.     

Study of the Effect of Nano-silica Particles on Resin-Bonded Moulding Sand Properties and Quality of Casting

The cast quality in chemical bonded sand mould system is influenced primarily by sand mould properties such as, compression strength, permeability, gas evolution, and collapsibility. Amount of resin and hardener, curing time and number of strokes influence the sand mould properties. The experiments are conducted with the above mentioned input output, as per Taguchi’s L₉ orthogonal array. Pareto analysis of variance is conducted to determine the percent contribution of inputs on output, individually. The optimal factor level is determined for each output separately. The conflicting requirements in foundry sand mould properties can be solved by multiple objective optimization. Principal component analysis is applied to determine the relative importance of individual output. Grey relational analysis is used to convert multiple objective functions to a single objective function for optimization task. Pareto analysis is utilized to determine the optimal input factor combination and their relative percent contribution towards moulding sand properties. The nano-silica particles are used as additive to enhance the moulding sand properties. The results have shown that, the nano-silica particles pose a remarkable improvement in sand mould properties and casting quality.     

Microstructure and Dielectric Characteristics of (PbxBa0.5−xSr0.5)TiO3 Ceramics

Microstructural and dielectric properties of the Pb _x Ba _0.5__x —Sr_0.5TiO₃ system have been studied. It is found that this system forms a solid solution in the entire composition range (0.0≤ x ≤0.5) and is cubic for the x = 0, 0.1, and 0.2 compositions and tetragonal for other compositions. Measurements of the dielectric constant as a function of temperature reveal that this material is ferroelectric at room temperature for the x > 0.2 compositions and has a broad paraelectric-ferroelectric transition region. No shift in the dielectric maxima was noted; however, there is a slight spread in the dielectric constant with frequency for the x = 0.4 composition. A quantitative model to mathematically analyze the effect of composition fluctuations on the dielectric broadening for a ternary system is presented. Transmission electron microscopic studies reveal the presence of 90° ferroelectric domains oriented along the {01     } planes for the x = 0.3 and 0.4 compositions.     

Synthetic Applications of Carbohydrate-derived Donor-Acceptor Cyclopropanes

In this account, we elaborate our group's contribution towards understanding the chemistry of carbohydrate-derived donor-acceptor (DA) cyclopropanes. Our work was mainly focused on the ring opening of these versatile chiral synthons under the influence of Lewis acid promoters like electrophilic halogen species, TMSOTf, BF₃.OEt₂, etc. We studied various modes of ring opening on these DA cyclopropanes, envisaging the access to intriguing molecular architectures. These modes of reaction of the DA cyclopropanes can be controlled by strategically introducing an electron-withdrawing group (EWG) onto the cyclopropane ring, which could direct the ring cleavage by polarizing the cyclopropane C−C bond. Our studies also revealed that the ring opening is sluggish in the absence of an EWG. Using this concept, we demonstrated the synthesis of various biologically interesting molecular skeletons, viz., glycoamino acids (GAA), GAA nucleotides, α-levoglucosan amino acid, and septano-oligosaccharides, with high selectivity. We also applied our understanding to the first stereoselective synthesis of (S)-(−)-longianone and confirmed its absolute configuration. Apart from the inherently activated DA cyclopropanes, we introduced the in situ generation of DA cyclopropanes, starting from vinylcyclopropanes (VCPs). The ring-opening and ring-expansion chemistry of these easily accessible synthons was studied. The chemistry developed for carbohydrate-fused cyclopropanes was also applied for carbohydrate-derived spiro-cyclopropanes. The Lewis-acid-mediated ring opening of spiro-DA-cyclopropanes enabled easy access to fused furopyrans and spirolactones.     

An Experimental and Theoretical Study of the Flow of Xerographic Developer Powders from Small Hoppers

An experimental and theoretical study is presented which characterizes the flow of xerographic developer powders out of small hoppers. A small hopper in this reference is defined as one having a maximum height of 12 in. Two walls of the hopper converge at the gate and the remaining two walls are parallel to each other. The flow is studied as a function of the gate opening, hopper angle, particle size, the total height of the particulate material in the hopper, and the angle of repose. Experimental results are presented for particle diameters between 100 ? and 600 ?. A theory is presented to predict flow rates. The predicted functional dependence agrees very well with the observations. The predicted flow rates are about 3.75 times higher than the observed ones. It is suggested that this is due to a resistive force originating in particle interactions. Inclusion of this correction factor in the theory results in very good agreement between theoretical predictions and experimental observations.     

Immobilization of proteolytic enzyme on highly porous activated carbon derived from rice bran

Highly porous activated carbon (HPAC) was used as carrier matrix for immobilization of acid protease (AP). Immobilization of acid protease on mesoporous activated carbon (AP-HPAC) performs as best enzyme carrier. At pH 6.0, 250 mg acid protease g⁻¹ HPAC was immobilized. The optimum temperature for both free and immobilized AP activities were 50 °C. After incubation at 50 °C, the immobilized AP maintained about 50% of its initial activity, while the free enzyme was completely inactivated. When testing the reusability of AP-HPAC combination immobilized system, a significant catalytic efficiency was maintained along more than five consecutive reaction cycles. The highly porous nature of the carbon permits significant higher loadings of enzyme, which results in a higher enzyme-support strength and increased stability. The changes in the AP, HPAC and AP-HPAC were confirmed by Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) allowed us to observe that the morphology of the surface of HPAC and the AP-HPAC.     

Modeling Evaporation-Seepage Losses for Reservoir Water Balance in Semi-arid Regions

In the water balance of reservoir system, evaporation plays a crucial role particularly so for the reservoir systems of smaller size located in the semi-arid or arid regions. Such regions are most often characterized by significant seepage losses from reservoirs, besides evaporation losses. Usually, in the optimization of a reservoir system, it is a common practice to assume evaporation loss either as some constant value or as negligible. Such assumptions, however, may affect the results of reservoir optimization. This is demonstrated in this study by a case study in the optimal scheduling of Pilavakkal reservoir system in Vaipar basin of Tamilnadu, India. For modeling reservoir losses, many models are available, of which, Penman combination model is most commonly used. In this study, an alternative approach based on Genetic Programming (GP) is proposed. The results of GP and Penman model for both evaporation loss estimation and reservoir scheduling are compared. It is found that while GP and Penman combination model performs equally well for estimating evaporation losses, GP is also able to model seepage losses (or other losses from reservoir) to a much better degree. It is also shown the reservoir scheduling does get influenced based on how the reservoir losses are modeled in the reservoir water balance equation.     

A Sensitivity Model for Predicting Photonic Crystal Biosensor Performance

We present a model for predicting photonic crystal label-free biosensor performance based primarily on the spatial distribution of electromagnetic near fields at device resonance. To achieve maximum device sensitivity, the resonant fields can be shaped by careful choice of material and geometrical parameters. The effect of each property on the resonant mode profile, and consequently on sensor performance, is illustrated. A comparison of device sensitivity calculated by both the proposed model and direct rigorous coupled wave analysis simulation supports the validity of our model.