Flexible poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) hybrid nanofibers for bioengineering and water filtration applications

Among the thermoplastic elastomers that play important roles in the polymer industry due to their superior properties, styrene-based species and polyurethane block copolymers are of great interest. Poly(styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene) (SEBS) as a triblock copolymer seems to have the potential to meet many demands in different applications due to various industrial requirements where durability, biocompatibility, breaking elongation, and interfacial adhesion are important. In this study, the SEBS triblock copolymer was functionalized with natural (Satureja hortensis, SH) and synthetic (nanopowder, TiO₂) agents to obtain composite nanofibers by electrospinning and electrospraying methods for use in biomedical and water filtration applications. The results were compared with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) composite nanofibers, which are commonly used in these fields. Here, functionalized SEBS nanofibers exhibited antibacterial effect while at the same time improving cell viability. In addition, because of successful water filtration by using the SEBS composite nanofibers, the material may have a good potential to be used comparably to TPU for the application.     

The effect of fibre orientation of the dry sliding wear of borsic-reinforced 2014 aluminium alloy

The effect of fibre orientation on the dry sliding wear of continuous B(SiC) fibre reinforced aluminium alloy composites was investigated using a pin-on-disc wear testing machine. The metal-matrix composites (MMC) samples were tested in the normal (N), parallel (P) and antiparallel (AP) orientations sliding against a steel counter disc at a fixed speed of 1 m s^–1 under loads of from 12 to 60 N.The results showed that for the matrix alloy and MMCs, the average wear increased linearly with load. Wear of the MMCs was insensitive to fibre content but for composites with fibre contents at or above the minimum of 16 vol% used for this work, the wear rate was about 18% of that of the unreinforced matrix. Fibre orientation had a minor effect on wear rate; the N orientation gave the lowest wear rate with the AP orientation slightly higher and the P orientation significantly higher.The average coefficients of friction of the MMCs in N and AP orientations decreased linearly with increased wear rate and non-linearly with increased load, but the P orientation was insensitive to either variable.It was concluded from these results and a metallographic examination that the mechanism of wear of MMCs was essentially oxidative wear of the matrix. The hard fibres modified this to slightly different degrees depending on their orientation relative to the wear surface and sliding direction.     

Photoelectrocatalytic humic acid degradation kinetics and effect of pH,applied potential and inorganic ions

This study addresses the removal of humic acid (HA) dissolved in an aqueous medium by a photoelectrocatalytic process. UV₂₅₄ removal and the degradation of color (Vis₄₀₀) followed pseudo‐first order kinetics. Rate constants were 1.1 × 10^?1 min^?1, 8.3 × 10^?2 min^?1 and 2.49 × 10^?2 min^?1 (R² > 0.97) for UV₂₅₄ degradation and 1.7 × 10^?1 min^?1, 6.5 × 10^?2 min^?1 and 2.0 × 10^?2 min^?1 for color removal from 5 mg dm^?3, 10 mg dm^?3 and 25 mg dm^?3 HA respectively. Following a 2 h irradiation time, 96% of the color, 98% of the humic acid and 85% of the total organic carbon (TOC) was removed from an initial 25 mg dm^?3 HA solution in the photoanode cell. Photocatalytic removal on the same photoanode was also studied in order to compare the two methods of degradation. Results showed that the photoelectrocatalytic method was much more effective than the photocatalytic method especially at high pH values and with respect to UV₂₅₄ removal. The effect of other important reaction variables, eg pH, external potential and electrolyte concentration, on the photoelectrocatalytic HA degradation was also studied. Copyright © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Thermodynamic analysis of solar photovoltaic cell systems

The thermodynamic characteristics of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells are investigated from a perspective based on exergy. A new efficiency is developed that is useful in studying PV performance and possible improvements. Exergy analysis is applied to a PV system and its components, and exergy flows, losses and efficiencies are evaluated. Energy efficiency is seen to vary between 7% and 12% during the day. In contrast, exergy efficiencies, which incorporate the second law of thermodynamics and account for solar irradiation exergy values, are lower for electricity generation using the considered PV system, ranging from 2% to 8%. Values of “fill factors” are determined for the system and observed to be similar to values of exergy efficiency.     

Oxidation behavior of single-crystal Al2O3-fiber-reinforced Ni3Al-based composites

A series of single-crystal Al₂O₃-fiber-reinforced Ni3Al-based intermetallic matrix composites were fabricated by pressure casting. The matrices employed were binary Ni₃Al, Ni₃Al-0.5 at. pct Cr, and Ni₃Al-0.34 at. pct Zr. The development of microstructure upon oxidation in air at either 1100 °C or 1200 °C was investigated by optical, scanning, and transmission electron microscopy. In air-oxidized binary Ni₃Al, some of the fibers were fully or partially covered with a layer of oxide. A weak fiber/matrix bond in this system, which led to fiber debonding during composite processing, is believed to be responsible for the ingress of O into the composite and oxidation of the matrix in the debonded regions at the fiber/matrix interface. Addition of Cr to Ni₃Al resulted in an almost threefold increase in fiber/matrix bond strength. No oxidation of the interface was observed. A thick layer of oxide was formed around all the fibers when the composite was thermally cycled prior to isothermal annealing. Addition of Zr to Ni₃Al resulted in the formation of a layer of ZrO₂ on the surface of the fibers during composite processing. The ZrO₂ layer provided a fast path for the diffusion of O, which led to the formation of a rootlike oxide structure around the fibers. The rootlike structure consisted of a network of Al₂O₃-covered ZrO₂.     

The IFR/DFR property of the forward recurrence-time distribution

When a failure or replacement process is modeled as a renewal process, the residual life of the unit in use at a given time is generally referred to as the forward recurrence time (RT). Distributional properties of this random variable are critically important in many applications. This paper investigates the extent to which the failure-rate function monotonicity of a life distribution is inherited by the forward RT distribution at time s of its renewal process. For DFR life distributions, the forward RT distribution is also DFR for every s⩾0. However, the corresponding property does not necessarily hold for IFR life distributions. The forward RT distribution is IFR in the limit as s→0 and as s→∞. For IFR Weibull life distributions, we demonstrate numerically that the forward RT distribution is IFR for small s. As s is increased, it alternates between being IFR and non-IFR in an interesting cyclical pattern, and remains IFR beyond a large enough s     

Film morphology and reaction rate for the CVD of tungsten by the WF6—SiH4 reaction

Journal of Electronic Materials - Low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) of tungsten (W) by SiH4 reduction of WF6 on Si(100) surfaces was studied in a single-wafer, cold-wall reactor over a...     

Using heuristic algorithms for capacity leasing and task allocation issues in telecommunication networks under fuzzy quality of service constraints

Nowadays, every firm uses telecommunication networks in different amounts and ways in order to complete their daily operations. In this article, we investigate an optimisation problem that a firm faces when acquiring network capacity from a market in which there exist several network providers offering different pricing and quality of service (QoS) schemes. The QoS level guaranteed by network providers and the minimum quality level of service, which is needed for accomplishing the operations are denoted as fuzzy numbers in order to handle the non-deterministic nature of the telecommunication network environment. Interestingly, the mathematical formulation of the aforementioned problem leads to the special case of a well-known two-dimensional bin packing problem, which is famous for its computational complexity. We propose two different heuristic solution procedures that have the capability of solving the resulting nonlinear mixed integer programming model with fuzzy constraints. In conclusion, the efficiency of each algorithm is tested in several test instances to demonstrate the applicability of the methodology.     

Salt and pepper noise filtering with fuzzy-cellular automata

A new image denoising algorithm is proposed to restore digital images corrupted by impulse noise. It is based on two dimensional cellular automata (CA) with the help of fuzzy logic theory. The algorithm describes a local fuzzy transition rule which gives a membership value to the corrupted pixel neighborhood and assigns next state value as a central pixel value. The proposed method removes the noise effectively even at noise level as high as 90%. Extensive simulations show that the proposed algorithm provides better performance than many of the existing filters in terms of noise suppression and detail preservation. Also, qualitative and quantitative measures of the image produce better results on different images compared with the other algorithms.