Sharif Digital Repository

The present paper discusses the possibility of adding recycled polymer fibres to high performance concrete (HPC). Fibres used in this study were recovered from discarded car timing belts. To investigate different characteristics of the concrete specimens several destructive and non-destructive tests, such as compressive strength, modulus of rupture, flexural toughness, ultrasonic velocity and electrical resistance tests were carried out. In addition, slump flow tests were conducted on the fresh concrete. Experimental results from the study showed that the use of low percentages (up to 0.5%) of waste fibres improved the modulus of rupture and flexural toughness. Based on ultrasonic and... 

Fracture Toughness of Geopolymer Concrete Containing Blast Furnace Slag in Corrosive Environments  

In this study, standard composite laminate specimens with micro and nano sized particle additives are made to study the effect of the additives on the fracture toughness of the specimens in standard tests. The composite laminates are made from epoxy resin and unidirectional glass fibers. The mode I and mode II fracture toughness of the specimens are measured under various loadings in standard tests. The fracture surface is then, fractogaphed by microscopic instruments. In conclusion, the fracture behavior of laminated composites, toughened by micro and nano particles is discussed. The results show that using rubber particles will improve fracture toughness of neat epoxy resin and laminated... 

Zirconia toughened alumina (ZTA) Nanocomposites were prepared using nano sized Zirconia (ZrO2) powders doped with 3% mol of yttria (Y2O3) nanopowders and the sintering behavior at different temperature (1450 °C, 1550 °C and 1650 °C) were studied. The ZTA composite with different amount of partially stabilized Zirconia (PSZ)(5, 10, 15 and 20% mol) were prepared via axial pressing and then sintered to achieve maximum densification. After that phase changes of the samples were monitored. SEM was used for microstructural study and hardness and fracture toughness were determined by means of Vickers indentation. X-ray diffraction pattern showed that at constant composition, tetragonal zirconia... 

In this study in-situ Al/Al3Ti was fabricated by mechanical alloying, hot extrusion and subsequent heat treatment. First, initial pure powders of Al and Ti were mechanically alloyed with 5 weight percentages of Ti for 40 hours. The as-hot extruded samples containing 5 wt% of initial Ti particles, were exposed to heating at 600 oC for various time intervals up to 10 hours. Microstructure analysis by OM and SEM proved that in-situ Al3Ti phase was formed as a layer around Ti particles by solid reactive diffusion between Al and Ti particles. After 10 hours of heating, all the Ti particles were consumed and transformed to Al3Ti. Mechanical properties of samples were investigated by Brinell... 

Polymer blending has an important role in preparation of materials with suitable properties without synthesizing new polymers. One of these blends is polypropylene (PP)/ polyethylene (PE). PE is added for improving the impact strength and toughness of PP. For improvementof the properties, a compatibilizer is used due to incompatibility of the PP/PE blend. Improving the impact properties is usually related to the reduction in stiffness. Considering the importance of stiffness in many industrial applications, mineral fillers are employed for increasing the stiffness. In this research, the goal has been to manufacture polypropylene-based ternary composite(Polypropylene/ Polyethylene/Nanometric... 

Discontinuously reinforced aluminum matrix composites (DRA) are candidates as a substantial class of materials for improved strength, stiffness, and wear resistance. However, the low fracture resistance of DRA's has restricted the widespread use of these materials as structural components. Consequently, intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms have been considered in order to enhance the damage tolerance of composite materials based on microstructural and architectural modification, respectively. The intrinsic toughening technique has shown to elevate fracture resistance to some extent; usually at the expense of reducing several other properties such as strength. The more recent approach to... 

Hydraulic fracturing process as one of the most important ways to inhanse of production requires careful study and investigation and due to its importance has been studied for decades. The effect of this process on the production at oil and gas industry has many complexities and these complexities with the complex structure of natural gaps, would be multiplied. In this thesis effect of hydraulic fracturing operation on the production of natural fractures at naturaly fractured reservoirs from two aspects of hydraulic and geomechanics will be investigated. First we provide models for fractures network by using UDEC software after that investigate the effect of hydraulic farcture on the natural... 

In this research, a powder containing magnesium-aluminate spinel particles is prepared based on co-precipitation method and 5% , 10%, 15% and 20% zirconia-contained composites are produced as second phase from the synthesized powder. The raw materials used in the synthesis comprise hexa-hydrated magnesium nitrate, nona-hydrated aluminum nitrate, ammonium bicarbonate, 28% ammonium solution and distilled water. The properties of the powder is then investigated using STA, XRD and SEM tests. Also, XRD and SEM analyses as well as triple point flexural strength and Vickers hardness tests are carried out in order to investigate the effect of adding zirconia to the powders. The variations of the... 

Particulate ceramic reinforced aluminum matrix composites have high specific strength and stiffness; however, low fracture toughness and deformability have restricted their industrial applications. Among the methods introduced to overcome this shortcoming is fabricating the layered composites which contain alternative layers of aluminum (Al) and discontinuously reinforced aluminum (DRA). In this study, two different routes; i.e., "Powder extrusion - Casting - Rolling" and "Powder extrusion - Roll bonding" were employed to produce layered Al-DRA composites. After production of Al6061/SiCp composites via hot powder extrusion, mentioned processes were utilized to make DRA-Al-DRA laminate. In... 

Polyamide6 has many engineering applications due to its physical, mechanical and processability properties. However, its low impact resistance limits the use of polyamide6. One of the common ways to overcome this problem and extend the range of polyamide6 application is its elasticity with elastomeric materials, which reduces the strength and modulus (tensile and flexure) in comparision with neat polyamide6. To overcome this limitation, various reinforcements, often fiber or particle-shaped, are used. Today, with the development of nanoparticles, this effort is being made to use nanoparticles, especially carbon nanoparticles with unique properties. Recent research has shown that the addition... 

Epoxy resins have good mechanical and thermal properties, high chemical resistance and low shrinkage during cure but in spite of these good properties,they are brittle and this limits the usage of them. Adding a second, soft or rigid, phase has been always an effective strategy to improve the toughness of epoxy. Rigid phase used in resins are divided into organic and inorganic. The aim of this study is to increase epoxy toughness, maintaining mechanical properties and study effect of silica and polycarbonate on fracture toughness simultaneously. Mechanical properties including yield strength and elastic modulus are evaluated by pressure test. Additionally fracture toughness and three... 

Alumina as an engineering ceramic has special characteristics such as hardness, high abrasive, fatigue and corrosion resistance but suffers from low toughness. One effective method in improving toughness is adding second phases such as tetragonal zirconia and carbon nanotubes.
In this research, alumina- zirconia nanopowders has been prepared by solution combustion method and carbon nanotubes was added to it by two different ways: 1) in situ synthesis of CNTs by CVD 2) dispersion of CNTs by heterocoagulation method. In the case of in situ synthesis of CNTs in AZ matrix, the synthesis temperature and flow ratio of N2/C2H2 gases was investigated and optimum conditions were 800̊C and 300/30,... 

The most failures caused by wear, fatigue and corrosion are very sensitive to surface of material. Since the most failures starts or occurs at the surface of material, so control and improvement of the surface properties can have a significant effect on increasing the service life and improve the overall behavior of the material. Reforming of the structure and grain size is one of the methods to improve elastic properties, hardness, softness, toughness, etc. Also the macroscopic residual stresses in fracture toughness test specimens, can have tremendous effect on fracture toughness measurements. Many methods are used to modify the surface structure and to create a compressive residual stress... 

The aim of this research was to fabricate an in-situ Al-Al3Ti nanocomposite from pure microsized aluminum and titanium powders by mechanical alloying and hot extrusion without any usage of nanometric particles or applying secondary heat treatments. The focus of the present research was fabricating a nanocomposite material with high strength, modulus and hardness accompanied with high fracture toughness that could be comparable with aluminum alloys in terms of fracture toughness. Mechanical alloying and hot extrusion techniques were employed to produce in-situ fully dense Al-Ti composites. Platenary and high energy vibratiory mill was used to produce composites with different percent of... 

Epoxy resins are used for a wide number of application due to good stiffness, chemical resistant and dimensional stability. This is the reason of their use as matrix in composite material. The incorporation of a small amount of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in epoxy increases mechanical properties if nanocomposite have strong interfacial interaction between epoxy and CNTs, fine dispersion of CNTs and high final aspect ratio CNTs. In Noncovalent functionalization by polymer surfactant, CNTs are dispersed in a solvent/surfactant solution by ultra-sonication and then added to epoxy. In this thesis a novel study of toughening and mechanical properties of epoxy/ rubber/ CNT nanocomposite is presented.... 

Repair welding is one of the important maintenance processes that include build-up welding and surfacing.In this study, investigation of repair welding parameters has been conducted to achieve desired microstructure with the appropriate toughness and minimum residual stress.In this research, local post-weld heat treatment has been performed by Tungsten electrode arc on weld zone. Performing this process with optimum parameters leads to the best heat cycle with the tempered Martensite microstructure. Residual stress of the sample will be reduced. HAZ coarse grains will be refined to finer grains which result in to improved toughness and reduced hardness to the acceptable limit.
Results... 

Low tensile strength and also low strain capacity make plain concrete a ‘brittle’ material. To overcome this shortcoming, the addition of fibre as a reinforcing material has proved to be a reasonable solution. One of the crucial factors in deciding to make this type of concrete is the cost of fibre, which varies depending on its type. In this project a special type of fibre which does not cost a lot and at the same time has a high strength has been used. To investigate the effect of the fibre on the tensile strength of concrete, splitting tensile test (Brazilian test) was adopted. Altogether, 30 standard cylindrical specimens with dimensions of 15 × 30 cm2 were made (3 of each type) which... 

Epoxy resins are relatively brittle and have low resistance to crack propagation. It is common to add rubber particles to improve crack resistance in epoxies, although these particles may deteriorate the strength of the matrix. Different nanomaterials are used to overcome the inherent brittleness of epoxies and to keep the mechanical properties. Among them, carbon nanotubes has been attracted many attentions. Fractue behavior and mechanical properties of two kind of novel nanocomposites, i.e, epoxy/carbon nanotube and epoxy/rubber/carbon nanotube are investigated in current study. Electron microscopy investigations were done to assure the CNTs distribution and fracture mechanisms as well.... 

Nowadays, composites have wide applications in different industries especially in aerospace industry because of their high strength to weight ratio. Epoxy 5052 for its relatively good mechanical properties and high thermal resistance has vaidly use for manufacturing of large composite components. However; fracture toghness of epoxy resins is not good in comparison to their other exceptional properties. Therefore, researchers have endeavored to improve this characteristic with different approaches. One of these methods is nanotechnology. Since the components in aerospace industry are often under impact loads and impact strength of these materials has been less studied, effect of carbon...