Long‐term hygrothermal response of perforated GFRP plates with/without application of constant external loading

The use of glass fiber‐reinforced polymer (GFRP) composites is increasingly being considered in various applications where the composite is subjected to harsh hot and humid conditions. Although information on the performance of GFRP under hot and humid conditions is available, the characteristics and the response of perforated GFRP under such conditions have not been fully explored. In this article, the response of perforated GFRP plates subject to hot and humid environment is examined. The applicability and accuracy of Fick's model for establishing the amount of moisture absorption by such composites is examined, and an improved model is proposed. The article also demonstrates the influence of constant external loading on such perforated GFRP while undergoing conditioning in a hot and humid environment. Moreover, since the strength and stiffness of composites can be significantly affected by harsh environments, the degradation in the strength and stiffness of the perforated GFRP as a function of time is established. A new model is proposed wherein degradation of the strength of such perforated composites may be established as a function of time and geometric entities. The model can also account for the influence of the applied loading. POLYM. COMPOS. 2012. © 2012 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Orthogonal array design method for optimization experiments of sodium azide microencapsulation with stearic acid

In this study, an orthogonal array design (OAD), OA₉, was employed as a statistical experimental method for mircoencapsulation of sodium azide with stearic acid through a solvent/non-solvent procedure which is based on the coacervation principle. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to examine the coating morphology. The effect of stearic acid coating on sodium azide decomposition has been studied by means of differential thermal analysis (DTA), thermogravimetry (TG) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Our findings revealed that stearic acid can provide an effective coating shell around sodium azide microparticle and the coating quality is affected by some parameters, such as percent of stabilizer, addition time of non-solvent, volume of non-solvent and stirring speed of the mixture (revolutions per minute, rpm). The effects of these factors on the thermal decomposition temperature of microencapsulated sample were quantitatively evaluated by the analysis of variance (ANOVA). The statistical results showed that sodium azide powder can optimally be coated and stabilized by controlling of stabilizer percent, addition time of non-solvent, and volume of non-solvent. The OAD evaluation of initial experimental data provide optimized amount of the parameters to obtain the most stabilized sample, at which the thermal decomposition temperature of sodium azide is predicted at 436 °C. The prediction is in excellent agreement with experimental result obtained at the same conditions that is 435 °C. These data could be compared to that of the pure stearic acid and sodium azide in which decomposition temperature ranges are 160–300 and 382–397 °C, respectively. Also, the kinetic parameters such as activation energy and frequency factor of the decomposition processes of pure components and microencapsulated sodium azide at optimum condition were obtained from the DSC data by non-isothermal methods proposed by ASTM E696. Our finding showed that the treated NaN₃ has much lower decomposition rate as compared to the pure one.     

Estimating most productive scale size with imprecise-chance constrained input–output orientation model in data envelopment analysis

Varieties of data envelopment analysis (DEA) models have been formulated to assess performance of decision making units (DMUs) in various fields with different data such as: deterministic, interval, fuzzy, etc. Classic DEA requires that values of all inputs and outputs are known exactly. However, this assumption may not be true, since in practice, data can not be precisely measured. Furthermore, a realistic situation is no longer realistic when imprecise and uncertain information are neglected to analyze efficiency of DMUs and measurement errors and data entry errors, etc.     

Understanding Humidity-Enhanced Adhesion of Geckos: Deep Neural Network-Assisted Multi-Scale Molecular Modeling

A higher relative humidity leads to an increased sticking power of gecko feet to surfaces. The molecular mechanism responsible for this increase, however, is not clear. Capillary forces, water mediating keratin-surface contacts and water-induced softening of the keratin are proposed as candidates. In previous work, strong evidence for water mediation is found but indirect effects via increased flexibility are not completely ruled out. This article studies the latter hypothesis by a bottom-up coarse-grained mesoscale model of an entire gecko spatula designed without explicit water particles, so that capillary action and water-mediation are excluded. The elasticity of this model is adjusted with a deep neural network to atomistic elastic constants, including water at different concentrations. Our results show clearly that on nanoscopic flat surfaces, the softening of keratin by water uptake cannot nearly account for the experimentally observed increase in gecko sticking power. Here, the dominant mechanism is the mediation of keratin-surface contacts by intervening water molecules. This mechanism remains important on nanostructured surfaces. Here, however, a water-induced increase of the keratin flexibility may enable the spatula to follow surface features smaller than itself and thereby increase the number of contacts with the surface. This leads to an appreciable but not dominant contribution to the humidity-increased adhesion. Recently, by atomistic grand-canonical molecular dynamics simulation, the room-temperature isotherm is obtained for the sorption of water into gecko keratin, to the authors’ knowledge, the first such relation for any beta-keratin. In this work, it relates the equilibrium water content of the keratin to the ambient relative humidity.     

A generic construction to build simple oblivious transfer protocols from homomorphic encryption schemes

The Journal of Supercomputing - Oblivious transfer is a fundamental problem in cryptography where it is required that a sender transfers one of potentially many pieces of information to a receiver...     

Cryptanalysis and improvement of a group RFID authentication protocol

Wireless Networks - In recent years, radio frequency identification (RFID) systems have become popular for identification. The key technology to protect the security of RFID systems is mutual...     

Scattering of Harmonic Waves by a Circular Cavity in a Porous Medium: Complex Functions Theory Approach

An analytical solution for the evaluation of scattering of waves by a circular cavity in infinite isotropic elastic porous media is presented. Two groups of complex functions for solid skeleton and pore fluid in a two-dimensional complex plane are introduced in order to solve the Biot equations. Stress, displacement, and pore pressure fields induced by incident and scattered waves in the medium and especially in the vicinity of the cavity are evaluated in this complex plane. The validation of the proposed solution is shown by various numerical examples. A parametric study including the effects of fluid compressibility changes, shear modulus, and permeability variations, several wave numbers, and wave types (fast, slow, and shear waves) is performed.     

THERMOELASTIC STABILITY OF ORTHOTROPIC CIRCULAR PLATES

In this article the thermoelastic buckling of a circular orthotropic composite plate is discussed. The plate is assumed to be geometrically perfect. The equilibrium and stability equations, derived via variational formulations, are used to determine the prebuckling forces and the buckling temperatures. The equations are based on the Love-Kirchhoff hypothesis and Sanders' nonlinear strain-displacement relation. Critical buckling temperatures associated with the uniform temperature rise, gradient through-the-thickness temperature, and linear temperature variation along the radius are obtained. The results are validated for the first type of loading with the known data in literature.