A study on the characteristics of glass fibre reinforced thermoplastics by transfer moulding

Lately, the use of fibre reinforced thermoplastics (FRTP) has increased due to its increased mouldability compared to thermosetting FRP material.

FRTP includes stampable sheet, short and long fibre reinforced thermoplastic pellets, continuous fibre reinforced thermoplastics sheets, etc. The long fibre reinforced thermoplastic (LFRTP) pellet has better mechanical properties than short fibre reinforced pellets and better mouldability than stampable sheet. At present, injection moulding method is mainly used for moulding LFRTP pellets because of its high productivity.

However, the long fibre of LFRTP pellets, whose length is the same as pellet length, is degraded during processing if conventional injection moulding machines are used, and as a result, the mechanical properties are not improved as expected in many cases. Therefore, a new moulding process is required to make good use of LFRTP pellets.

For this study, a transfer moulding apparatus was designed and built to minimize fibre degradation of the moulded parts.

Firstly, the LFRTP pellets with fibre lengths of 3, 6, 9, 12.7 and 17 mm were prepared in order to clarify the difference of mechanical properties due to fibre length. The fibre ratio was 30% in weight for all cases and the same polypropylene was used. They were moulded to the shape of the test specimens. Tensile, bending and Izod impact strengths were measured by using these test specimens. Secondly, LFRTP pellets were moulded to the shape of test specimens by the transfer moulding apparatus and conventional injection moulding machine, and then mechanical properties were measured. At the same time, short fibre pellets were moulded to the smae shape of test specimens by the injection moulding machine, and mechanical properties were compared with those of LFRTP pellets.

With the long glass fibre reinforced polypropylene, good results of fibre preservation and mechanical properties were obtained by the transfer moulding apparatus which was built for this study. The impact strength was increased remarkably as the fibre length increased, and consequently the preservation of fibre length in the moulded parts was especially effective in improving the impact strength.     

Effect of impurity on dissolution behavior of simulated molybdenum cermet fuels

The effects of impurity Zr on dissolution behavior into nitric acid of sintered Mo pellets were investigated using simulated fuels to accumulate basic data and knowledge concerning the matrix of Mo-cermet fuels. Mo pellets containing 1– 10 mol% Zr were prepared by conventional powder metallurgical route. After characterization tests using optical microscopy (OM), X-ray diffraction and secondary electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX), the sintered pellets were subjected to dissolution tests by nitric acid. The apparent dissolution rate of Mo pellets containing impurity Zr was found to be followed by the first-order chemical reaction form, which is generally known as a simple chemical reaction. The rate of dissolution of sintered Mo-cermet fuels by nitric acid was found to decrease with the increase of the amount of impurity Zr.     

Evaluation of temperature characteristics of high-efficiency InGaP/InGaAs/Ge triple-junction solar cells under concentration

Temperature characteristics of the open-circuit voltage (V_oc) were investigated in the temperature range from 30°C to 240°C for the InGaP/InGaAs/Ge triple-junction cells. Also, single-junction cells that had the similar structure to the subcells in the triple-junction cells were studied. In the high-temperature range (from 170°C to 240°C), the temperature coefficients of V_oc of the InGaP/InGaAs/Ge triple-junction solar cell (dV_oc/dT) were different from those in the low-temperature range (from 30°C to 100°C). This is because photo-voltage from the Ge subcell becomes almost 0 V in the high-temperature range. It was found that the open-circuit voltage of a Ge single-junction cell reduced to almost 0 V temperatures over 120°C under 1 sun condition.     

Thermal boundary resistance between the end of an individual carbon nanotube and a Au surface

The thermal boundary resistance between an individual carbon nanotube and a Au surface was measured using a microfabricated hot-film sensor. We used both closed and open-ended multi-walled carbon nanotubes and obtained thermal boundary resistance values of 0.947-1.22 × 10(7) K W(-1) and 1.43-1.76 × 10(7) K W(-1), respectively. Considering all uncertainties, including the contact area, the thermal boundary conductances per unit area were calculated to be 8.6 × 10(7)-2.2 × 10(8) W m(-2) K(-1) for c-axis orientation and 4.2 × 10(8)-1.2 × 10(9) W m(-2) K(-1) for the a-axis. The trend in these values agrees with the predicted conductance dependence on the interface orientation of anisotropic carbon-based materials. However, the measured thermal boundary conductances are found to be much larger than the reported results.     

Synthesis of non-equilibrium phases in immiscible metals mechanically mixed by high pressure torsion

The structural changes in mechanically mixed metals of immiscible combinations of elements caused by bulk mechanical alloying (MA) through the use of high pressure torsion (HPT) were investigated in Ag–Ni and Nb–Zr systems. There was no alloying between Ag and Ni on atomic scale even after 100 rotations of HPT. On the other hand, the β-Zr phase started to appear after HPT 2 rotations in the Nb–Zr system, even though β-Zr is a high temperature phase. Further, Nb and Zr were completely mixed to form a bcc structured single phase after HPT 100 rotations. The sequence of alloying in the Nb–Zr system during HPT was discussed. These results clearly suggest that non-equilibrium phases can form in the Nb–Zr system by bulk MA by the use of HPT.     

Plasma treatment on electrode surfaces of bifacial silicon solar cells

To lower the fabrication cost of silicon solar cells, a surface treatment using a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) instead of a wet cleaning technique was examined on electrode surfaces on silicon solar cells. The fill factor obtained through measuring current–voltage characteristics was evaluated, and the treated surface state was characterized by energy-dispersive X-ray. It was found that the DBD effectively activated the electrode surface and the surface treatment on finger electrodes contributed greatly to improve the fill factor.     

Improvement of Selectivity for Partial Hydrogenation of Benzene by Rare Earth Nitride Upon NH3 Treatment

For the liquid-phase partial hydrogenation of benzene at 483 K, the selectivity toward cyclohexene was greatly improved upon treating rare earth nitride with ammonia. For YbN obtained by thermal decomposition of Yb(NH₂)₂ at 1173 K, the selectivity of the NH₃-treated YbN was 75%, in contrast to nil for the untreated YbN.     

Switching of H∞ controller under constraints and decision of controller state at instance of the controller switching

In real control systems, certain constraints are placed on the input, state, and output values. If such constraints are violated, the system may become unstable, in a worst‐case scenario. One of the promising approaches to solving this problem is to switch the controller according to the state of the closed‐loop system. No useful design strategy for each controller, however, has yet been developed. In addition, the determination of the controller state at the instant of controller switching has not been investigated. First, this paper presents a new design methodology which merges the switching control and H_∞ controller design into one design algorithm. Second, this paper presents a way of determining the controller state at the instant of controller switching. Finally, the proposed method is applied to force control of a one‐DOF manipulator in order to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 142(2): 68–75, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.10082