Mechanical,flow, and morphological properties of talc‐ and kaolin‐filled polypropylene hybrid composites

Polypropylene (PP) hybrid composites have been produced by compounding two types of mineral fillers, viz., talc and kaolin with PP copolymer using a twin screw extruder. The PP hybrid composite was injection‐molded into dumbbell specimen for tensile, flexural, and impact properties characterizations. MFI and SEM studies were used to characterize the flow and morphological properties of the PP hybrid composites. The result shows that most of the hybrid composites showed a significant decrease in flow, tensile, flexural, and impact properties compared with the single filler‐filled PP composites. However, a hybridization effect was seen for the PPT20K10 hybrid composites, through the synergistic coalescence of positive characteristics from 20 wt % of talc and 10 wt % of kaolin. This hybrid formulation have given an economically advantageous material with the mechanical properties (tensile, flexural, and impact) comparable to those of the talc‐filled PP composites. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 104: 434–441, 2007     

Effects of hygrothermally decomposed polyurethane on the curing and mechanical properties of carbon black‐filled epoxidized natural rubber vulcanizates

Hygrothermally decomposed polyurethane (HD‐PUR) was mixed up to 20 phr in epoxidized natural rubber (with 50 mol % epoxidation; ENR50) recipes, and the curing and mechanical behaviors were studied. Mechanical testing of the ENR50/HD‐PUR vulcanizates determined the tensile, tear, compression‐set, hardness, abrasion, hysteresis, and resilience properties. No significant changes were observed in the tensile properties with the incorporation of HD‐PUR. The ENR50 compounds showed an increase in compression set with increasing HD‐PUR content. Rubbers cured by a semi‐efficient vulcanization system gave the best overall performance. A further improvement in curing and mechanical properties was achieved by the carbon black grade N330 being replaced with a more active grade (N375). © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 84: 2265–2276, 2002     

Covering photo-realistic properties of outdoor components with the effects of sky color in mixed reality

Outdoor rendering is an attractive topic in computer graphics. In this paper our main concern is to reveal the interaction between sky color and virtual objects in Mixed Reality environments. Although registration and tracking are two of the main issues in building effective Augmented Reality (AR) systems the creation of more realistic virtual objects indistinguishable from their real-world counterparts is our target which is currently the ultimate goal in AR. Two classes of sky color generation are employed to reveal the outdoor-element interaction. Virtual Sky Modelling (VSM) based on the Perez Model is capable of generating the sky color in a specific location, date and time. The second technique is to generate a virtual model based on the real image of the sky which is called in this paper Real Sky Modelling (RSM). Subsequently, preprocessing of the sky color bleeding is based on the radiosity technique to give the sky color effect to the virtual objects as well as the real ones. Through designing a test AR set-up and applying software and hardware the goal of a robust generation of realistic virtual objects with effect of sky color is achieved.     

A quadratic spline approximation using detail multi-layer for soft shadow generation in augmented reality

Implementation of shadows is crucial to enhancement of images in AR environments. Without shadows, virtual objects would look floating over the scene resulting in unrealistic rendering of AR environments. Casting hard shadows would provide only spatial information while soft shadows help improve realism of AR environments. Several algorithms have been proposed to render realistic shadows which often incurred high computational costs. Little attention has been directed towards the balanced trade-off between shadow quality and computational costs. In this study, two approaches are proposed: Quadratic Spline Interpolation (QSI) to soften the outline of the shadow and Detail Multi-Layer (DML) technique to optimize the volume of computations for the generation of soft shadows based on real light sources. QSI estimates boarder hard shadow samples while DML involves three main phases: real light sources estimation, soft shadow production and reduction of the complexity of 3-Dimensional objects’ shadows. To be more precise, a reflective hemisphere is used to capture real light and to create an environment map. The Median Cut algorithm is implemented to locate the direction of real light sources on the environment map. Subsequently, the original hard shadows are retrieved and a sample of multilayer hard shadows is produced where each layer has its unique size and colour. These layers overlap to produce soft shadows based on the real light sources’ directions. Finally, the Level of Details (LOD) algorithm is implemented to increase the efficiency of soft shadows by decreasing the complexity of vertex transformations. The proposed technique is tested using three samples of multilayer hard shadows with varying numbers of light sources generated from the Median Cut algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed technique successfully produces realistic soft shadows at low computational costs.     

Modification of oil palm empty fruit bunches with maleic anhydride: The effect on the tensile and dimensional stability properties of empty fruit bunch/polypropylene composites

Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB)‐filled polypropylene (PP) composites were produced. The EFB filler was chemically modified with maleic anhydride (MAH). The effects of the filler size and chemical modification of EFBs on the tensile and dimensional stability properties of EFB–PP composites were studied. The composites with MAH‐treated EFBs showed higher tensile strengths than those with untreated EFBs. This was attributed to the enhanced compatibility between the MAH‐treated EFBs and PP matrix, as shown in a scanning electron microscopy study. Fourier transform infrared analysis showed evidence of C?C and C?O bonds from MAH at 1630 and 1730 cm^?1, respectively. The MAH‐treated PP composites showed lower water absorption and thickness swelling than those with untreated EFBs. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 87: 827–835, 2003     

Rheological properties of poly(vinyl chloride) / epoxidized natural rubber blends. Part II: The effect of processing variables

The effect of processing variables on the rheological properties of PVC/ENR blends was investigated. The role of crosslinking in determining the flow behavior of blends was also examined by means of dynamically cured blends. It was found that PVC/ENR blends yield melts that are power law fluids. The flow of the melts improves with an increase in temperature and shear rate. However, the introduction of crosslinks reverses this trend, although under more rigorous conditions, the influence of crosslinks is superseded, and subsequently, flow becomes shear rate and temperature dependent. PVC/ENR systems also manifested elastic phenomena. The dependence of the elastic phenomena such as die swell and melt fracture on L/D ratio of the die was demonstrated.     

On the in‐situ polymerization of cyclic butylene terephthalate oligomers: DSC and rheological studies

The thermal and rheological behaviors of cyclic butylene terephthalate (CBT) were studied with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and plate–plate rheometry, respectively. DSC scans were taken at different heating rates. The related first‐heat thermograms indicated crystallization and melting of the resulting poly (butylene terephthalate) (PBT) only at very low heating rate (0.5°C/min). As the crystallization and melting enthalpies were closely matched, one could conclude that the polymerization is essentially athermic. The polymerization was accompanied by a steep increase of the melt viscosity in isothermal rheological tests performed in the temperature range T = 145–210°C. Changes in the viscoelasticity of the polymerizing CBT and crystallizing PBT could be best followed by considering the changes in the phase angle. Viscosity increased with the conversion exponentially in the first approximation. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 46:743–750, 2006. © 2006 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Biomathematical study of time-dependent flow of a Carreau nanofluid through inclined catheterized arteries with overlapping stenosis

Journal of Central South University - This work is concerned with the analysis of blood flow through inclined catheterized arteries having a balloon (angioplasty) with time-variant overlapping...     

Optimized unequal error protection of embedded video bitstream using adaptive-hierarchical QAM

In this paper, a reliable video communication system using adaptive Hierarchical QAM (HQAM) is designed to provide optimized unequal error protection (UEP) to embedded video bitstreams. Based on the relative importance of bits, video bitstream is partitioned into two priorities, namely High Priority (HP) and Low Priority (LP) substreams. Then, the optimal value of modulation (or hierarchical) parameter (α) of HQAM, which controls the relative error protection of these substreams, is selected from a pre-designed look-up table. The proposed system adapts itself by adapting the optimal α according to the varying channel condition, without changing the modulation level. This is in contrast to conventional WiMAX and LTE systems, in which dynamic switching among multiple modulations is used to adapt the varying channel conditions. This paper proposes HQAM with adaptive α as an alternative to the multiple modulation schemes. Moreover, for fixed average transmission power, receiver demodulates symbols without the knowledge of α. In order to further improve the video quality and to reduce the effects of erroneously received LP bits, the proposed system uses another level of adaptation, in which received LP bits are adaptively considered or discarded, before decoding the video, depending on the channel conditions (or optimized α). Simulation results show that proposed system can achieve significant improvement in the video quality compared to QAM based EEP scheme and non-adaptive HQAM.