Development of polyurethane elastomer composite materials by addition of milled fiberglass with coupling agent

Polyurethane elastomer composites were developed using milled fiberglass and their mechanical properties were studied. In particular, the organically chemical treatment of the milled fiberglass was investigated in detail. It was demonstrated that both strength and toughness of the resulting elastomer composites were improved considerably with the addition content of fiberglass. Furthermore, it was indicated that the optimal properties can be achieved by the proper addition of milled fiberglass that was chemically treated using coupling agent.     

基于显微视觉的宏/微双重驱动微动台的自动标定

提出了基于压电技术的微操作系统的自动标定方法,采用混合式步进电机直接驱动的宏动平台,实现系统大行程宏动定位,安装在宏动平台上的压电陶瓷驱动的微动平台和精密光栅,实现亚微米级的分辨率和定位精度,通过以上两部分实现定位机构的全闭环反馈控制,采用显微视觉反馈获取微动台操作器在图像中的位置信息进行标定。实验结果表明:系统的动态和稳定性能良好,自动标定运算速度快,运行速度达到11 frame/s,实现了对系统的精确标定,标定精度达到0.1μm。     

Phase transition of LCP fluids confined in nanochannels through MD simulation

Manipulation of molecular orientation alignment in MCTLCPs (main-chain thermotropic liquid crystalline polymers) by pure shear at nano scale has been investigated for the first time using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Results indicate that high planar shear induces long-range uniform orientation ordering (liquid crystalline phase) of initially randomly orientated molecules of MCTLCP fluid confined in a nanochannel, which is confirmed by analyzing the orientation order parameter and the snapshots of MCTLCP liquid in a nanochannel under different shear rates. Insights into the origin of the phase transition phenomena are given at molecular level through investigating the thermodynamic density distribution of MCTLCP molecules in the nanochannel, suggesting that the energy shift due to a radical jump of system density affects both the magnitude and the orientation of the molecular ordering. Simulation results also show that there is a critical shear rate for transforming isotropic phase into liquid crystalline phase. The critical shear rate is dependent on the temperature of the MCTLCP system. Findings in this paper may present useful information for processing TLCP molecules at nano scale and the understanding of nanoflow.     

Optimization of the magnetic circuit in the MFL inspection system for storage-tank floors

Magnetization is the key to inspection of a tank floor via the magnetic-flux-leakage (MFL) technique. In order to optimize the magnetic circuit of the MFL detector and obtain the best detection effects, the influences of the magnet size on the floor magnetization condition, the gap magnetic flux density, and the magnetic force were studied with the help of the finite element method (FEM) and the effects of some other parameters, such as the magnet pole spacing and pole-piece thickness, on the signal-to-noise ratio were analyzed. The simulation results indicate that variation of the magnet width affects the magnetization much more than variation of the magnet thickness and that the detector can reach a trade-off between the magnetization effects and the driving force when the magnet is about 30 mm thick and 40 mm wide. On condition that the floor has reached its magnetizing saturation, an increase in the magnet-pole spacing and the pole-piece thickness can improve the testing sensitivity and the signal-to-noise ratio. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

The influence of Johnson–Cook material constants on finite element simulation of machining of AISI 316L steel

In literature, five different sets of work material constants used in the Johnson–Cook's (J–C) constitutive equation are implemented in a numerical model to describe the behaviour of AISI 316L steel. The aim of this research is to study the effects of five different sets of material constants of the J–C constitutive equation in finite-element modelling of orthogonal cutting of AISI 316L on the experimental and predicted cutting forces, chip morphology, temperature distributions and residual stresses. Several experimental equipments were used to estimate the experimental results, such as piezoelectric dynamometer for cutting forces measurements, thermal imaging system for temperature measurements and X-ray diffraction technique for residual stresses determination on the machined surfaces; while an elastic–viscoplastic FEM formulation was implemented to predict the local and global variables involved in this research. It has been observed that all the considered process output and, in particular the residual stresses are very sensitive to the J–C's material constants.     

Entropy generation and thermodynamic optimization of fully developed laminar convection in a helical coil

The present paper analyses the entropy generation of the fully developed laminar convection in a helical coil with constant wall heat flux and presents the optimal design based on the minimum entropy generation principal. The important design parameters, including Reynolds number (Re), coil-to-tube radius ratio (δ) and nondimensional coil pitch (λ) are varied to investigate their influences on the entropy generation. The results presented in this paper cover Re range of 100–10,000, δ and λ range from 0.01 to 0.3. Compared with Re and δ, the coil pitch λ is found to have minor influence on the entropy generation. For a demonstrated case, the minimum entropy generation occurs in the range bounded by Re from 2271 to 4277 and δ from 0.17 to 0.3, within which the irreversibility of the system is lowest and the system performance would be optimum. The details show that there is an optimal Re for a helical coil with a fixed δ; meanwhile for a helical coil flow with a specified Re, the smaller δ should be selected when the Re is larger than 5000, and the larger δ should be selected when the Re is less than 5000. These results provide worthwhile information for heat exchanger designers to find the optimal helical coil design from the viewpoint of the thermodynamic second law.     

Effect of process parameters on impact strength of Al-7% Si alloy castings produced by VAEPC process

The castings produced by the evaporative pattern casting (EPC) process have blow holes. The blow holes in EPC castings are because of the non-escape of the gas produced as a result of burning of polystyrene pattern in the sand mold. To overcome the problem of blow holes, the EPC process is combined with the vacuum (V)- process. The vacuum applied to EPC mold draws the decomposed gases and improves the casting quality produced by the EPC process. The developed hybrid process has been termed as the vacuum assisted evaporative pattern casting (VAEPC) process. The objective of this paper to investigates the effect of process parameters, i.e, degree of vacuum, pouring temperature, grainfineness number, amplitude of vibration and time of vibration on the impact strength of Al-7% Si alloy castings in VAEPC process. In order to evaluate the effect of selected process parameters, the response surface methodology (RSM) is used to formulate a mathematical model which correlates the independent process parameters with the desired impact strength. The central composite rotatable design has been used to conduct the experiments. The results indicate that the impact strength decreases with increases in the grainfineness number and pouring temperature. Whereas, it has an inverse relationship with amplitude of vibration, time of vibration and degree of vacuum. The best value of impact strength (2.34 N/mm²) has been obtained at 400 mm Hg degree of vacuum imposed, 650°C as pouring temperature, 60 as sand grainfineness number, 460 μm as amplitude of vibration, and 70 s as time of vibration.     

Influence of temperature dependent properties on cooling behavior of cylindrical steels

Metallic materials, especially steels, are undertaken to different heat treatment processes in industry and cooling and heating times are of great importance. In this study, influence of variable physical properties of ANSI 1025 and AISI 304 steels and different boundary conditions namely forced convection, free convection and radiation on the calculation of cooling process was investigated. Governing differential equations were solved numerically for non-steady cases. It was found that variable properties should be taken into consideration for ANSI 1025, while the physical properties determined at an average temperature can be used for AISI 304. Another conclusion is that free convection can be neglected compared with radiation especially if forced convection coefficient is low.