Sharif Digital Repository

The synthesis and swelling behavior of a new superabsorbent hydrogel based on natural salep grafted with polyacrylamide is described. The new biopolymer was synthesized via simultaneous crosslinking and graft copolymerization of acrylamide monomer onto a salep backbone using radiochemical methods. Various parameters such as relative contents of salep and acrylamide, as well as total dose of γ-rays were examined. The best synthesis condition is reported and a mechanism for superabsorbent hydrogel formation suggested. Factors affecting the swelling behavior of hydrogel were also studied. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved  

The impact behavior of aluminum/epoxy laminates was studied by changing the number of layers and the interface strength. It should be noted that although the overall thickness did not changed, the individual layers decreased in thickness when the number of layers increased. The results indicate that the impact resistance of the laminate increases with the number of layers, while the interface strength has a less pronounced influence (50%) on the impact resistance of the laminate. It is also deducted that if the ratio of layer thickness to plastic zone size is smaller than or equal to 1, the impact behavior of the laminates is sensitive to the interface strength. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All... 

In this research an intelligent emotional learning controller, Takagi- Sugeno- Kang (TSK) is applied to govern the dynamics of a novel Ionic-Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) actuated manipulator. Ionic-Polymer Metal Composites are active actuators that show very large deformation in existence of low applied voltage. In this research, a new IPMC actuator is considered and applied to a 2-dof miniature manipulator. This manipulator is designed for miniature tasks. The control system consists of a set of neurofuzzy controller whose parameters are adapted according to the emotional learning rules, and a critic with task to assess the present situation resulted from the applied control action in... 

In this paper, the large deformation frictional contact of powder forming process is modeled based on a new computational algorithm by imposing the contact constraints and modifying the contact properties of frictional slip. A simple and efficient numerical algorithm is presented for imposing the contact constraints and frictional contact properties based on the node-to-surface contact technique to simulate the large deformation contact problem in the compaction process of powder. The Coulomb friction law is used to simulate the friction between the rigid punch and the workpiece by the use of penalty approach. A double-surface cap plasticity model is employed together with the nonlinear... 

A critical state model is described within the framework of infinite surface bounding surface/kinematic hardening plasticity. The model can account for both initial anisotropy developing during sample preparation and subsequent evolution of anisotropy in samples along anisotropic loading paths. This model is then used to simulate the anisotropic behaviour of Hostun sand observed in series of stress probing tests conducted in a true triaxial apparatus within a single deviatoric stress plane in stress space. The selection of constitutive parameters for the model is discussed and the model evaluated. Deviatoric stress response envelopes are used to show the deviatoric strains generated in... 

In this study a novel alginate-g-poly(acrylic acid)/alumina composite was synthesized and characterized. Preparation of the composite hydrogels involved free radical polymerization of a combination of alginate, acrylic acid (AA) and distilled water, in appropriate amounts and N,N-methylene bisacrylamide (MBA) as crosslinking agent. The composite formation was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic (FTIR). The surface morphologies of the synthesized hydrogels were assessed by scanning electron microscopy. Systematically, the different variables of the graft copolymerization were optimized to achieve maximum swelling capacity. The swelling of superabsorbent hydrogels was... 

Polystyrene, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, and polypropylene are the main polymers in E-waste, existing about 31%, 16%, and 13%, respectively. In this research, the effects of the elimination of low-density materials (such as polymers and plastics) were studied using the shaking table method. Bioleaching of Cu and Ni against the original sample (Sample #1) and pre-treated sample without low-density materials (Sample #2) was compared. The amount of bioleached metals and growth characteristics (including pH, Eh, bacterial count) was investigated within 25 days. The analysis of Sample #1 showed that at pulp density of 15 g/l, 94% and 79% of Cu and Ni were recovered maximally, respectively,... 

Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP) has an unusual genotype representation which makes it more efficient than Genetic programming (GP) in digital circuit design problem. However, to the best of our knowledge, all methods used in evolutionary design of digital circuits deal with rugged, complex search space, which results in long running time to obtain successful evolution. Therefore, employing a method to guide evolution in these spaces can facilitate achieving more reasonable results. It has been claimed that a two-step evolutionary scenario caused by benefit and cost of learning called Baldwin effect can guide evolution in the biology and artificial life. Therefore, we have been motivated... 

A study was conducted to report an observation on the effect of nanoclay fillers on the α-relaxation in an epoxy resin. The observation provided useful facts about glass transition processes in nanoclay-filled epoxy composites. The investigation involved the synthesis of intercalated-exfoliated clay-epoxy compounds, by swelling an organophilic montmorillonite in an aromatic epoxy resin and polymerization. The epoxy resin used in the study was a diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA), EPON 828, with an equivalent weight of 184-190 g/eq from Hexion Specialty Chemicals. The epoxy resin was cured with piperidine, obtained from Sigma-Aldrich. Nanomer® 1.30E. An octadecyl amine treated... 

This article examines the physical and mechanical characteristics of mixtures of two different synthetic rubbers, namely styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) and nitril-butadiene rubber (NBR), with novolac type phenolicresin (PH). According to Taguchi experimental design method, it is shown that the addition of PH increases the crosslinking density of rubber phase probably due to its curative effects. Thermal analysis of the blends indicates that, contrary to NBR/PH blend, thermal stability of SBR/PH blend is dependent on sulfur content due to predominant polysulfidic crosslinks formed in SBR. Slight shift in glass-transition temperature (Tg) of pure SBR and NBR vulcanizates by the addition of PH...