Evaluation of the mechanical properties,in vitro biodegradability and cytocompatibility of natural chitosan/hydroxyapatite/nano-Fe3O4 composite

The main goal of this research was the preparation and evaluation of the mechanical properties, in vitro biodegradability and cytocompatibility, of natural chitosan/hydroxyapatite/nano magnetite (nano-Fe₃O₄) composite. Different ratios of these components were investigated, including chitosan/hydroxyapatite: 4/4 (S1), chitosan/hydroxyapatite: 4/6 (S2), and chitosan/hydroxyapatite: 6/4 (S3). Mechanical properties of fabricated composites were examined using bending and compression tests before immersion, and after 2 and 9 weeks of immersion in the Ringer's solution. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was employed for observing the bending fracture surface and analyzing the degradation morphology. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) were also cultured on the samples in order to assess the cytocompatibility. The obtained results revealed that S1 had the highest bending strength before immersion, while S3 had the highest bending strength after 9 weeks immersion. Compressive strength of S2 was greater than that of S1 and S3 not only before immersion, but also after 9 weeks immersion. Although the bio-minerals were deposited on the surface of all samples during the immersion in Ringer's solution, S2 appeared to have the highest quantity of bio-minerals. According to the weight loss percentage (ΔW(%)), the biodegradation resistance of S1 was the lowest. Finally, the cytocompatibility of S1 was greater than that of S2 and S3.     

An investigation of the hydrodynamic similarity of single-spout fluidized beds using CFD-DEM simulations

The applicability of the hydrodynamic similarity criteria (scaling law) introduced by Glicksman (1988) was investigated using fully coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics and Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM) simulations for single-spout fluidized beds. Four test cases were performed to investigate the scaling law in a pseudo-2D spouted-fluidized bed. In addition, the applicability of Glicksman’s scaling law for simulating 3D fluidized beds was studied. In all simulations, characteristic dimensionless groups, i.e. the Reynolds number (Re), Froude number (Fr), particle-to-fluid density, bed initial height to particle diameter and bed width to particle diameter were kept constant for the both base and scaled cases. Comparing the time averaged particle velocities, gas velocities and volume fractions between the base and scaled cases indicated a very good overall hydrodynamic similarity for all test cases. A minor discrepancy observed between the simulation results of the base and scaled cases was explained by a force analysis.An advantage of the scaling approach, i.e., reducing computational time, was also presented in the last four test cases, including a large-scale simulation, showing that this approach can be considered as a promising way to simulate large-scale spouted-fluidized beds.     

New permeation models for nanocomposite polymeric membranes filled with nonporous particles

In this article, permeation models for nanocomposite polymeric membranes (NCPMs) filled with nonporous particles are discussed and two new models for prediction of effective permeability of NCPMs are proposed. To derive these models, the presence of interfacial layer at the surface of the nanofiller particles as well as the impact of two important phenomena namely creating void volumes and increasing free volume at the interface layer are taken into account. The capability of the models for prediction of reliable results is checked against available experimental data on permeability of NCPMs and is also compared with other presented models for such membranes. The new proposed models show profound superiority over the well known models such as “Bruggeman model in limit” which offers fairly good prediction for NCPMs.     

Multi-criteria fuzzy decision support for conceptual evaluation in design of mechatronic systems: a quadrotor design case study

Designing mechatronic systems is known to be a very complex and tedious process due to the high number of system components, their multi-physical aspects, the couplings between the different domains involved in the product, and the interacting design objectives. This inherent complexity calls for the crucial need of a systematic and multi-objective design thinking methodology to replace the often-used sequential design approach that tends to deal with the different domains and their corresponding design objectives separately leading to functional but not necessarily optimal designs. Thus, a new approach based on a multi-criteria profile for mechatronic systems is presented in this paper for the conceptual design stage. Additionally, to facilitate fitting the intuitive requirements for decision-making in the presence of interacting criteria, three different methods are proposed and compared using a case study of designing a vision-guided quadrotor drone system. These methods benefit from three different aggregation techniques such as Choquet integral, Sugeno integral and fuzzy-based neural network. To validate the decision yielded by the results of global concept score for each aggregation methods, a computer simulation of a visual servoing system on all design alternatives for quadrotor drone has been performed. It is shown that although the Sugeno fuzzy can be a useful aggregation function for decisions under uncertainty, but the approaches using Choquet fuzzy and fuzzy integral-based neural network seem to be more precise and reliable in a multi-criteria design problem where interaction between the objectives cannot be overlooked.     

GVSEE: a new global model to estimate software services development effort

As software services have become a main part of companies in recent years, accurate and efficient estimates of required effort for their development has turned into a major concern. Furthermore, the high diversity, complexity, non-normality, and inconsistency of software services have made an estimation of the needed development effort a very difficult task. In spite of the numerous studies conducted, and improvements made, in the past, no single model has yet been introduced that can reliably estimate the required effort. Therefore, apparently, it is impossible to introduce a global and efficient model for all types of services. This article proposes a new model called Global Village Service Effort Estimator that emphasizes the idea ‘Think locally, act globally.’ Unlike previous studies, this model does not rely on a specific method and, in addition to combining methods, takes a local look at each software service with the help of fuzzy clustering. The model was evaluated on a real data-set International Software Benchmarking Standard Group and on two artificial data-sets, and obtained results indicated its tangible efficiency and the lack of accuracy of other models. Besides its greater accuracy, other advantages of the proposed model over the other models are its adaptability and flexibility in confronting complexities and uncertainties.     

Isothermal aging effects on flex cracking of multilayer ceramic capacitors with standard and flexible terminations

Multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) are known to experience flex cracking when subjected to bending stresses. An experimental study was conducted to determine the susceptibility to flex cracking of flexible- and standard-termination surface mount MLCCs assembled with lead-free or tin–lead solders and aged at two different temperatures for 200 h. Experimental results showed that MLCCs mounted on printed circuit boards with lead-free solder are less susceptible to flex cracking compared with MLCCs mounted on boards with eutectic tin–lead solder. Two factors which make capacitors assembled with lead-free solder less susceptible to flex cracking were discussed: the lower tensile stresses inside the capacitor body which are a result of the differing elastic–plastic mechanical properties of the solder, and the higher residual compressive stresses after solder reflow assembly which are a result of the higher solidification temperature for the Sn3.0Ag0.5Cu lead-free solder. Flexible-termination MLCCs showed much more resistance to flex cracking in comparison to standard-termination MLCCs assembled with both lead-free and tin–lead solders. Aging at elevated temperatures had little effect on flex cracking susceptibility of MLCCs assembled with tin–lead solder. For MLCCs assembled with lead-free solder, aging at 150 °C increased the susceptibility to flex cracking in comparison with un-aged MLCCs.     

Configurable three-way model merging

Software development is a collaborative activity that requires teams of software engineers to cooperate and work in parallel on versions of models. However, model management techniques such as model differencing, merging, and versioning have turned out to be difficult challenges, due to the complexity of operations and graph-like nature of models. Therefore, a well-developed support for model merging process, as well as conflict management, is highly desired. This paper presents a novel process for model merging, called the Epsilon-based Three-way Merging Process (E3MP) process. Model merging is a significant problem where there are different versions of a system model amongst modeler teams. E3MP includes three components implemented into the Epsilon framework. First, modelers can define domain-specific rules that customize the merging process. Second, E3MP enables an automated method for syntactic and semantic conflict detection amongst different versions of the system model. Third, E3MP puts forward a pattern-based approach for conflict resolution. We applied two generic benchmarks to assess conflict detection and resolution capabilities of our approach and carried out an initial scalability evaluation for the model merge with large models and large change sets. The results of our experiments revealed that the proposed process allows generating consistent and semantically correct merged models.