Effects of fiber orientation angles of fiber-reinforced plastic on sand solid particle erosion behaviors

Solid particle erosion in industrial applications has been a serious problem in many engineering fields. Earlier studies on fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) composites were mainly focusing on the erosive wear behavior at several different impact angles. However, the effect of fiber orientation on FRP composites has not been thoroughly investigated. Since fiber orientation is one of the important factors in which causing erosive wear damages to FRP composites, in order to understand the virtue of this problem, it is important to investigate the effect of fiber orientation at different impact angles. In this research, the effect of fiber orientation of unidirectional fiber-reinforced plastic composites on erosive wear behavior was studied. Sandblasting-type erosion tests were conducted on the FRP composites with fiber orientation ranging at three impact angles to clarify the relation between fiber orientation and erosive wear behavior. The Dyneema fiber (ductile material) and the carbon fiber (brittle material) were used for the reinforcement fiber in FRP. From the result, it is confirmed that CFRP composites with higher fiber orientation angle erode faster than the composites with lower fiber orientation angle. But the erosion characteristic of DFRP was almost the same regardless of the fiber orientation angle. The damaged surfaces of the FRP composites were then analyzed using scanning electron microscopy and the possible erosion wear mechanisms were investigated.     

Facile Room‐Temperature Anion Exchange Reactions of Inorganic Perovskite Quantum Dots Enabled by a Modular Microfluidic Platform

In an effort to produce the materials of next‐generation photoelectronic devices, postsynthesis halide exchange reactions of perovskite quantum dots are explored to achieve enhanced bandgap tunability. However, comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted halide exchange reactions is inhibited by their vast relevant parameter space and complex reaction network. In this work, a facile room‐temperature strategy is presented for rapid halide exchange of inorganic perovskite quantum dots. A comprehensive understanding of the halide exchange reactions is provided by isolating reaction kinetics from precursor mixing rates utilizing a modular microfluidic platform, Quantum Dot Exchanger (QDExer). The effects of ligand composition and halide salt source on the rate and extent of the halide exchange reactions are illustrated. This fluidic platform offers a unique time‐ and material‐efficient approach for studies of solution phase‐processed colloidal nanocrystals beyond those studied here and may accelerate the discovery and optimization of next‐generation materials for energy technologies.     

Coping with poor water services and the demand for change in Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago's 1.3 million residents are provided water supply and sewerage services by a national utility whose service levels have been inadequate and deteriorating through the recent past, largely due to a lack of investment in utility infrastructure. A “willingness to pay” study assessed the degree of coverage and quality of service and the residents' willingness to accept water tariff increases for an increase in service level. Willingness to pay for change is low, below current tariffs, due to scepticism about the likelihood of change and due to the ability to cope with bad service through the pervasive use of local storage.     

An electron metallographic study of the commercial zinc-based pressure-die-cast alloy 3

The solidification structure of pressure-die-cast commercial alloy 3 was examined using scanning electron microscopy and thin foil transmission electron microscopy techniques. It was found that the rapidly cooled alloy commenced solidification by the formation of small rounded primary zinc (η) particles followed by pseudo-primary β particles and then a fine eutectic of β + η. The high temperature β phase subsequently decomposed into -aluminum and η, the phases stable at ambient temperature, but an intermediate transitional phase was found in alloys examined shortly after casting. Chemical analysis by energy-dispersive spectroscopy showed that this phase contained zinc with 11.8 wt.% Al, suggesting that it was a transitional phase since none of the stable phases in the Al---Zn system has that composition. This transitional phase had almost entirely disappeared after aging for a period of 5 years.

Precipitates had formed during or immediately after casting within the central regions of the zinc-rich primary dendrites. These were identified as the aluminium-rich solid solution with f.c.c. structure. The orientation relationship between the phases was determined as

[0001][111]

Each grain contained two families of precipitates with a common (0001)_η habit plane, each adopting one of the two non-equivalent variants of the orientation relationship.

Since this work had shown that aluminium precipitation from η was completed rapidly, the long-term dimensional changes found in zinc alloy castings on aging are considered to be due to the gradual replacement of the zinc-rich metastable phase by equilibrium and η.     

Artificial Chemist: An Autonomous Quantum Dot Synthesis Bot

The optimal synthesis of advanced nanomaterials with numerous reaction parameters, stages, and routes, poses one of the most complex challenges of modern colloidal science, and current strategies often fail to meet the demands of these combinatorially large systems. In response, an Artificial Chemist is presented: the integration of machine-learning-based experiment selection and high-efficiency autonomous flow chemistry. With the self-driving Artificial Chemist, made-to-measure inorganic perovskite quantum dots (QDs) in flow are autonomously synthesized, and their quantum yield and composition polydispersity at target bandgaps, spanning 1.9 to 2.9 eV, are simultaneously tuned. Utilizing the Artificial Chemist, eleven precision-tailored QD synthesis compositions are obtained without any prior knowledge, within 30 h, using less than 210 mL of total starting QD solutions, and without user selection of experiments. Using the knowledge generated from these studies, the Artificial Chemist is pre-trained to use a new batch of precursors and further accelerate the synthetic path discovery of QD compositions, by at least twofold. The knowledge-transfer strategy further enhances the optoelectronic properties of the in-flow synthesized QDs (within the same resources as the no-prior-knowledge experiments) and mitigates the issues of batch-to-batch precursor variability, resulting in QDs averaging within 1 meV from their target peak emission energy.     

Characterization of a Human Platelet Lysate-Loaded Keratin Hydrogel for Wound Healing Applications In Vitro

One of the promising approaches to facilitate healing and regenerative capacity includes the application of growth-factor-loaded biomaterials. Human platelet lysate (hPL) derived from platelet-rich plasma through a freeze-thaw process has been used as a growth factor rich therapeutic in many regenerative applications. To provide sustained local delivery of the hPL-derived growth factors such as epidermal growth factor (EGF), the hPL can be loaded into biomaterials that do not degrade rapidly in vivo. Keratin (KSO), a strong filamentous protein found in human hair, when formulated as a hydrogel, is shown to sustain the release of drugs and promote wound healing. In the current study, we created a KSO biomaterial that spontaneously forms a hydrogel when rehydrated with hPL that is capable of controlled and sustained release of pro-regenerative molecules. Our study demonstrates that the release of hPL is controlled by changing the KSO hydrogel and hPL-loading concentrations, with hPL loading concentrations having a greater effect in changing release profiles. In addition, the 15% KSO concentration proved to form a stable hydrogel, and supported cell proliferation over 3 days without cytotoxic effects in vitro. The hPL-loaded keratin hydrogels show promise in potential applications for wound healing with the sustained release of pro-regenerative growth factors with easy tailoring of hydrogel properties.     

Thermo-pneumatic pumping in centrifugal microfluidic platforms

The pumping of fluids in microfluidic discs by centrifugal forces has several advantages, however, centrifugal pumping only permits unidirectional fluid flow, restricting the number of processing steps that can be integrated before fluids reach the edge of the disc. As a solution to this critical limitation, we present a novel pumping technique for the centrifugal microfluidic disc platform, termed the thermo-pneumatic pump (TPP), that enables fluids to be transferred the center of a rotating disc by the thermal expansion of air. The TPP is easy to fabricate as it is a structural feature with no moving components and thermal energy is delivered to the pump via peripheral infrared (IR) equipment, enabling pumping while the disc is in rotation. In this report, an analytical model for the operation of the TPP is presented and experimentally validated. We demonstrate that the experimental behavior of the pump agrees well with theory and that flow rates can be controlled by changing how well the pump absorbs IR energy. Overall, the TPP enables for fluids to be stored near the edge of the disc and transferred to the center on demand, offering significant advantages to the microfluidic disc platform in terms of the handling and storage of liquids.