Sharif Digital Repository

This work was carried out to investigate the effect of different Ti concentrations as a modifying agent on the microstructure and tensile properties of an in-situ Al-15 pctMg2Si composite. Cast, modified, homogenized small ingots were extruded at 753 K (480°C) at the extrusion ratio of 18:1 and ram speed of 1 mm/s. Various techniques including metallography, tensile testing, scanning electron microscopy were used to characterize the mechanical behavior, microstructural observations, fracture mechanisms of this composite. The results showed that 0.5 pctTi addition and homogenizing treatment were highly effective in modifying Mg2Si particles. The results also exhibited that the addition of Ti... 

This article investigates the simultaneous effect of extrusion ratio and T6 heat treatment on microstructure and mechanical properties of in-situ Al-15wt.%Mg2Si composite. his composite has already been introduced as a new class of light materials but the brittle structure of the primary Mg2Si which is formed during solidification limits its application. As-cast composite was directly extruded as rod by using three different dies. After T6 heat treatment on extruded samples, microstructure was studied by optical and scanning electron microscopy. Results demonstrated that extruded and heat treated composite possesses considerably higher strength and enhanced ductility in comparison with the... 

The role of porosity on the wear behaviour of sintered iron was investigated. Sintered iron was used in preference to steel because the various alloy additions and matrix heterogeneity in the latter might affect the microwear behaviour and the role of porosity. The wear tests were performed in a pin on disc test bed under 10-40 N loads at 0·56 m s-1 sliding speed in air. For the given tribological conditions, it was found that the wear mechanism is delamination or mechanical wear, which is basically similar to that of wrought materials according to subsurface crack generation and crack propagation processes. However, the open pores on the surface act as a site for generation and collection... 

The role of microstructure on mechanical properties of sintered ferrous materials was studied using a method based on electrical conductivity measurement. The method was accompanied by quantitative fractography to evaluate the dewaxing and sintering process in iron compacts. The effects of manufacturing parameters, such as compacting pressure in the range of 150-800 MPa, sintering temperature from 400 to 1300 °C, sintering time up to 8 h, and lubrication mode were investigated. Several mathematical models were checked to obtain the best one for prediction of electrical conductivity changes as a function of manufacturing parameters. The mechanical properties of the sintered compacts were also... 

Nanoparticulated TiO 2 fibers as one-dimensional long structures were introduced into TiO 2 P25 nanoparticle films using coelectrophoretic deposition. This prevented the usual crack formation occurring in wet coatings, and resulted in less porosity and higher roughness factor of the films that provided more favorable conditions for electron transport. The films used as the photoanode of a dye solar cell (DSC) produced 65% higher photovoltaic efficiency. TiO 2 fibers can be excellent binders in single-step, organic-free electrophoretic deposition of TiO 2 for DSC photoanode  

Titanium carbonated hydroxyapatite (Ti/CHA) nanobiocomposites have extensive biological applications due to the excellent biocompatibility and similar characteristics to the human bone. Ti/CHA nanobiocomposite has good biological properties but it suffer from diverse characteristics especially in hardness, Young's modulus, apparent porosity and relative density. This investigation is an attempt to propose the predictive models using gene expression programming (GEP) to estimate these characteristics. In this regards, GEP is used to model and compare the effect of practical variables including pressure, Ti/CHA contents and sintering temperature on their monitored properties. To achieve this... 

In this work, two-membrane distillation (MD) modes, direct contact MD, and sweeping gas MD were investigated for synthesized and real (Persian Gulf) seawater desalination. A commercial PTFE membrane with 0.22 μm pore size was characterized (using atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy) and was used for experiments. A multipurpose plate and frame MD module was used for desalination experiments. The effects of various operating conditions and MD module design, as well as feed type on the permeation flux have been studied. The feed temperature was found to be the most effective operating parameter. The flow rate in both sides of the MD module was found to be effective;... 

Fluid flow in porous media is affected by surface characteristics such as roughness and topography. In this work, to simulate the surface of natural porous structures in transparent interconnected media like micromodels, various degrees of roughness have been artificially created on flat glass substrates via different methods of laser ablation, cream etching, combination of laser ablation and cream etching, and hydrofluoric acid (HF) etching. The obtained surfaces by each method were characterized in detail via field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX/EDS), and surface profilometry. The impact of high... 

Permeability of porous materials is an important characteristic which is extensively used in various engineering disciplines. There are a number of issues that influence the permeability coefficient among which the porosity, size of particles, pore shape, tortuosity, and particle size distribution are of great importance. In this paper a C++ GPU code based on three-dimensional lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has been developed and used for investigating the effects of the above mentioned factors on the permeability coefficient of granular materials. Multirelaxation time collision scheme of the LBM equations is used in the simulator, which is capable of modeling the exact position of the... 

Anti-reflection and self-cleaning coatings on the glass substrate are used to improve the performance of solar systems. TiO2 are one of the most used semiconductors for this application. In this research meso-porous TiO2 coatings (that synthesized by the sol-gel process) with the various extent of porosity (using different concentrations of Pluronic F127, as pore-forming agent) have been investigated. The coating's thickness and porosity and anti-reflective properties were studied by FE-SEM and UV/VIS spectrometer (transmission spectra test), respectively. It was found that the use of F127 leads to the formation of pores smaller than 30 nm and increases the surface roughness from 1.5 (for... 

An impedimetric human papilloma virus (HPV) DNA biosensor based on gold nanotubes (AuNTs) in label free detection was materialized. The AuNTs decorated nanoporous polycarbonate (AuNTs-PC) template as biosensor electrode was fabricated by electrodeposition method. The single strand DNA (ss-DNA) probe was covalently immobilized onto the AuNTs-PC electrode. The hybridization of target sequences with the ss-DNA probe was observed by the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The biosensor showed high selectivity and could differentiate between the complementary, mismatch and non-complementary DNA sequences. The EIS measurements were matched to Randle's equivalent circuit. The... 

In this study, the heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics of a three-dimensional microchannel that is partially filled with a layer of porous medium at its bottom solid wall is investigated. The microchannel is consisted of a clear fluid flow region, solid walls and a porous layer that is attached to its solid bottom wall. A constant heat flux is applied to the bottom wall of the microchannel. Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer model is used to simulate the fluid flow inside the porous medium. The novelty of this work is to investigate thoroughly and precisely the effect of using of porous layer configuration in MCHSs on hydraulic and thermal performances. The effect of porous layer thickness,... 

Today, due to rapid development of construction of hydraulic structures like dams, the constituent material used in concrete and its durability in these kinds of structures has gained dominant interests and importance. One of the important factors of concrete durability in these structures is its resistance against abrasion due to crash of particles carried out as hydrated crystalline particulate matter. To enhance the abrasion resistance of concrete, different methods have been offered and investigated by many research3ers/ The aim of present article is to investigate the important parameter i.e. water-cement ratio on abrasive strength, porosity and the coefficient of hydraulic conductivity... 

In this study, coupled Generative Adversarial and Auto-Encoder neural networks have been used to reconstruct realizations of three-dimensional porous media. The gradient-descent-based optimization method is used for training and stabilizing the neural networks. The multi-scale reconstruction has been conducted for both sandstone and carbonate samples from an Iranian oilfield. The sandstone contains inter and intra-grain porosity. The generative adversarial network predicts the inter-grain pores and the auto-encoder provides the generative adversarial network result with intra-grain pores (micro-porosity). Different matching criteria, including porosity, permeability, auto-correlation... 

Increasing energy demands for pollution-free and renewable energy technologies have stimulated intense research on the development of inexpensive, highly efficient, and stable non-noble metal electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). In this study, a superior OER performance was achieved using a tri-metallic (Zn, Co, Ni) high-performance electrocatalyst. We successfully fabricated a peony-flower-like hierarchical ZnCo2O4 through an additive-free hydrothermal reaction followed by heat treatment. Then NiCo-LDH (layered double hydroxides) nano-flakes was electrodeposited on the ZnCo2O4/GCE surface to prepare NiCo-LDH/ZnCo2O4/GCE which was used as electrode for OER. The structure and... 

Many potential therapies are currently being studied that may promote neural regeneration and guide regenerating axons to form correct connections following injury. It has been shown that adult neurons have some limited regenerative capabilities, and the lack of connection formation between neurons is not an intrinsic inability of these cells to form axons after being damaged, but rather the inhibitory microenvironment of the injured tissue prevents regeneration. In this study, the polarization and chemotaxis of neuronal stem cells (NSC) in response to quantified gradients of nerve growth factor (NGF) was examined. To accomplish this, a microfluidic device was designed and fabricated to... 

Herein, a hybrid hydrogel/microsphere system is introduced for accelerated wound healing by sustained release of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF). The hydrogel is composed of a mixture of PVA, gelatin and chitosan. The double-emulsion-solvent-evaporation method was utilized to obtain microspheres composed of PCL, as the organic phase, and PVA, as the aqueous phase. Subsequently, various in-vitro and in-vivo assays were performed to characterize the system. BSA was used to optimize the release mechanism, and encapsulation efficiency in microspheres, where a combination of 3% (w/v) PCL and 1% (w/v) PVA was found to be the optimum microsphere sample. Incorporation of microspheres within... 

Three-dimensional porous scaffolds are essential in tissue engineering applications. One of the most conventional methods to form porosity in scaffolds is freeze-drying, which is not energy efficient and cost effective. Therefore in this work, it was experimentally investigated whether gelatin, with its unique mechanical properties and cell binding applications, could be used as a comprising polymer of scaffolds with porous structure made by the freeze-gelation method. Chitosan, gelatin and chitosan/gelatin scaffolds were fabricated by the freeze-gelation method and their behaviors, determined by analysis of scanning electron microscopy images, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy,... 

In this investigation a theoretical model based on artificial neural network (ANN) has been developed to predict porosity percent and correlate the chemical composition and cooling rate to the amount of porosity in Al-Si casting alloys. In addition, the sensivity analysis was performed to investigate the importance of the effects of different alloying elements, composition, grain refiner, modifier and cooling rate on porosity formation behavior of Al-Si casting alloys. By comparing the predicted values with the experimental data, it is demonstrated that the well-trained feed forward back propagation ANN model with eight nodes in hidden layer is a powerful tool for prediction of porosity... 

Preparation, characterization and evaluation of new generation of micro-filters based on polyacrylonitrile electrospun nanofiberous membrane (ENM) were thoroughly investigated. First, quantitative relationships between average diameter, bead area density of nano-fibers and certain electrospinning parameters, i.e., concentration, voltage, spinning distance, and feed rate, were established by empirical modeling based on a central composite design. The analysis revealed that concentration, voltage and distance are the significant parameters. Also, adequacy checking indicated the appropriateness of fit for the models. Afterwards, bead-free ENMs with diameter of 100-500 nm were prepared and...