Gardnerpeterson4232

The growing demand for wood-based panels for buildings and furniture and the increasing worldwide concern for reducing the pressure on forest resources require alternatives to wood raw materials. The agricultural industry not only can provide raw materials from non-wood plants but also numerous residues and side streams. This review supplies an overview of the availability, chemical composition, and fiber characteristics of non-wood lignocellulosic materials and agricultural residues, i.e., grow care residues, harvest residues, and process residues, and their relevance for use in wood panel manufacturing. During the crop harvest, there are millions of tons of residues in the form of stalks, among other things. Usually, these are only available seasonally without using storage capacity. Process residues, on the other hand, can be taken from ongoing production and processed further. Fiber characteristics and chemical composition affect the panel properties. Alternatives to wood with long fibers and high cellulose content offer sufficient mechanical strength in different panel types. In general, the addition of wood substitutes up to approximately 30% provides panels with the required strength properties. However, other parameters must be considered, such as pressing temperature, adhesive type, press levels, and pretreatments of the raw material. The search for new raw materials for wood panels should focus on availability throughout the year, the corresponding chemical requirements and market competition. Panel type and production process can be adapted to different raw materials to fit niche products.Packaging for fresh fruits and vegetables with additional properties such as inhibition of pathogens grown can reduce food waste. With its biodegradability, poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) is a good candidate for packaging material, especially in the form of an electrospun membrane. The preparation of nonwoven fabric of PCL loaded with food additive, antimicrobial nisin makes them an active packaging with antispoilage properties. During the investigation of the nonwoven fabric mats, different concentrations of nisin were obtained from the solution of PCL via the electrospinning technique. The obtained active porous PCL loaded with varying concentrations of nisin inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. Packages made of PCL and PCL/nisin fibrous mats demonstrated a prolongation of the fruits' freshness, improving their shelf life and, consequently, their safety.Steel double-beam floor systems reinforced with concrete panels can improve the structural and environmental performance of buildings by reducing moment demands and embodied CO2 emissions. However, for steel double-beam floor systems, a time-consuming iterative analysis is required to derive an optimal design proposal owing to the rotational constraints in the composite joints between the concrete panel and steel beams. In this study, a non-iterative optimal design method using the LM index is proposed to minimize the embodied CO2 emissions of steel double-beam floor systems. The LM index is a measure that can be used to select the optimal cross-section of the steel beams considering the decreased moment capacity according to the unbraced length. The structural feasibility of the proposed design method was verified by investigating whether safety-related constraints were satisfied by the LM index with respect to the design variables under various gravity loads. The applicability of the proposed optimal design method is verified by comparing the embodied CO2 emissions derived from the proposed and code-based design methods. Applicable design conditions were presented based on the LM index to aid engineers. The proposed design method can provide environmentally-optimized design proposals to ensure structural safety by directly selecting the LM index of steel beams.In this study, a thick hollow axisymmetric functionally graded (FG) cylinder is investigated for steady-state elastic stresses using an iteration technique and the finite element method. Here, we have considered a functionally graded cylinder tailored with the material property, namely, Young's modulus, varying in an exponential form from the inner to outer radius of the cylinder. A mathematical formulation for stress analysis of functionally graded cylinder under internal and external pressure conditions is developed using constitutive relations for stress-strain, strain-displacement relations and the equation of equilibrium. The effect of the in-homogeneity parameter on radial displacement, radial and tangential stresses in a functionally graded cylinder made up of a High Carbon Steel (HCS) metal matrix, reinforced with Magnesium Oxide (MgO) ceramic is analyzed. The iterative method implemented is fast and converges to the solution which can be further improved by considering a higher number of iterations. This is depicted graphically by using radial displacement and stresses in a pressurized functionally graded cylinder obtained for the first two iterations. An iterative solution for non-FGM (or homogeneous material) is validated using the finite element method. The mechanical responses of the functionally graded cylinder obtained from the iterative method and the finite element method are then compared and found to be in good agreement. Results are presented in graphical and tabular form along with their interpretations.Concrete technology is adopted worldwide in construction due to its effectiveness, performance, and price benefits. Subsequently, it needs to be an eco-friendly, sustainable, and energy-efficient material. This is achieved by replacing or adding energy-efficient concrete materials from industries, such as ground granulated blast furnace slag, steel slag, fly ash, bottom ash, rice husk ash, etc. Likewise, copper slag is a waste material produced as molten slag from the copper industry, which can be used in concrete production. Copper slag can perform roles similar to pozzolans in the hydration process. This paper extends the comparative study of copper slag concrete with polypropylene fiber (PPF) subjected to destructive and non-destructive testing. Under destructive testing, compressive strength of concrete cubes, compressive strength of mortar cubes, splitting tensile tests on cylindrical specimens, and flexural tests on plain cement concrete were conducted and analysed. Ultrasonic pulse velocity and reboundshows better prediction among dependent and independent values. It is concluded that copper slag has a pozzolanic composition, and is compatible with PPF, resulting in good mechanical characteristics.Coatings with a thickness from 27 to 62 µm on electron beam melted Ti-6Al-4V have been formed by micro-arc oxidation (MAO) in a silicate-hypophosphite electrolyte. MAO tests in the anode-cathode mode (50 Hz) with an anode-to-cathode current ratio of 11 and sum current densities 10 and 20 A/dm2 were carried out. The duration of the MAO treatment was 30 and 60 min. The effect of the processing parameters on the structural properties of the MAO treated coatings was studied. The current density and treatment time significantly affect the coating thickness and surface roughness. The values of these characteristics increase as the current density increases. Selleckchem GDC-6036 The effect of thermal cycling tests on surface morphology, thickness and roughness, and elemental and phase composition of MAO coatings was analyzed. After 50 cycles of thermal cycling from +200 °C to -50 °C, no cracking or delamination of coatings was observed. Coatings formed in 30 min at a current density of 20 A/dm2 turned out to be the best in terms of such indicators as surface morphology, thickness, and roughness.The microstructure of molten marks changes according to ambient temperatures, when a short circuit occurs. Investigation of microstructural changes is important for understanding the properties of copper and examining the cause of a fire. In this study, the boundary characteristics and grain-size distribution of molten marks-primary-arc beads (PABs), which short-circuited at room temperature (25 °C), and secondary-arc beads (SABs), which short-circuited at high temperatures (600 °C, 900 °C)-were compared using electron backscatter diffraction. The distribution of Σ3 boundaries was compared, and it was found that SABs have a higher fraction of Σ3 boundaries than PABs. Moreover, it was confirmed that the ratio of maximum grain size (area) to the total area of the molten mark in SABs is larger than that in PABs. Thus, reliable discriminant factors were suggested, such as the fraction of Σ3 boundaries and normalized maximum grain size, which can distinguish PABs and SABs. The four discriminant factors, such as the (001)//LD, GAR, fraction of Σ3 boundaries, and fraction of maximum grain size to the total molten-mark area, were verified using the machine learning of t-SNE and Pearson correlation analyses.The aim of this study was to tackle the topic of appropriate recommendations for artificial-saliva and mouthwash usage. The contact angle, pH, and conductivity of two artificial saliva solutions, four mouthwashes, and their mixtures on enamel, glass-ionomer, and composite dental materials were measured. The measurements were conducted with a MATLAB algorithm to minimize human error. The obtained values for the contact angle were in the range from 7.98° to 52.6°, and they showed completely nonlinear and nonuniform behavior for all investigated liquids and on all investigated substrates. Results reveal statistically significant differences among all tested liquids on all investigated substrates (p < 0.05). pH values ranged from 1.54 to 7.01. A wide range of conductivity values were observed, from 1205µS/cm in the saliva-stimulating solution to 6679 mS/cm in the artificial saliva. Spearman's test showed a moderate positive correlation between the pH and conductivity of the tested fluids (R = 0.7108). A comparison of the data obtained using Image J software and the MATLAB algorithm showed consistency, not exceeding 5% error. When an experiment uses human material and bioactive materials THAT are used in biomedicine as substrates, an additional definition of protocols is highly recommended for future research on this topic.In this work, a new two-stage approach to the deposition of high-entropy alloy coatings is proposed. At the first stage, a composite precursor coating is formed by detonation spraying of the metal powder mixtures. At the second stage, the precursor coating is re-melted by a laser, and the formation of multi-component solid solution phases can be expected upon solidification. The feasibility of the proposed approach was validated using three different mixtures of Fe, Ni, Cu, Co and Al powders. It was shown that detonation spraying allows forming composite coatings with a uniform distribution of the lamellae of different metals. The results of the structural analysis of the laser-treated coatings suggest that complete alloying occurred in the melt and face-centered cubic solid solutions formed in the coatings upon cooling.The incorporation of superelastic shape memory alloy (SMA) fibers into engineered cementitious composite (ECC) materials can provide high seismic energy dissipation and deformation self-centering capabilities for ECC materials. Whether the SMA fibers can be sufficiently bonded or anchored in the ECC matrix and whether the mechanical properties of the SMA fibers in the ECC matrix can be effectively utilized are the key scientific issues that urgently need to be studied. In order to study the mechanical behavior of SMA fiber embedded in ECC matrix, four groups of semi-dog-bone pullout specimens were fabricated, and the cyclic pullout tests were conducted in this paper. The pullout stress, displacement, and self-centering capability were analyzed, and different influencing factors were discussed. The results show that the knotted ends can provide sufficient anchorage force for SMA fibers, and the maximum pullout stress of SMA fiber can reach 1100 MPa, thus the superelasticity can be effectively stimulated. The SMA fibers show excellent self-centering capability in the test.