Sharif Digital Repository

As one of the most important additive manufacturing (AM) techniques, laser metal deposition (LMD) has been extensively studied specially during the last few years. Similar to other AM techniques, the quality of LMD parts is highly dependent on the processing parameters that need to be optimized so as to obtain geometrically accurate parts as well as favorable microstructures and, thus, mechanical properties. The present review paper therefore aims to present a critical analysis and overview of the relationship between processing parameters, microstructure, and mechanical properties of LMD components made from the Ti–6Al–4V alloy. Moreover, we discuss the applications of LMD parts in the... 

In the last decade, the friction stir welding of polymers has been increasingly investigated by the means of more and more sophisticated approaches. Since the early studies, which were aimed at proving the feasibility of the process for polymers and identifying suitable processing windows, great improvements have been achieved. This owes to the increasing care of academic researchers and industrial demands. These improvements have their roots in the promising results from pioneer studies; however, they are also the fruits of the adoption of more comprehensive approaches and the multidisciplinary analyses of results. The introduction of instrumented machines has enabled the online measurement... 

Effects of graphene, tool rotational speed and pass number were studied on the reliability and electrical resistance of the aluminum to copper friction stir welds. Addition of graphene was an effective solution to overcome the increase in the electrical resistance of the aluminum/copper joints. Indeed, presence of graphene decreased the electrical resistance of the joints to the values comparable with that of the copper base metal. However, joint tensile strength was not affected significantly by graphene. Decrease in the tool rotational speed improved the dispersion of the graphene particles and tensile strength, while reduced the electrical resistance. Tensile strength of the joint reached... 

This study aimed to investigate the influence of processing parameters on the mechanical properties of auxetic polyurethane foams including Poisson’s ratio and Young’s modulus. 12 different processing scenarios were considered using the method of Plackett–Burman in the design of experiments with three replicates for each one. Eventually, 36 foams were prepared with different densities and initial thicknesses, heating temperatures and times, applied compression ratios, and the rest times between two heating steps. The microstructures of the conventional and auxetic samples were observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). All samples were subjected to tensile loading in one direction with... 

Leakage power has already become the major contributor to the total on-chip power consumption, rendering its estimation a necessary step in the IC design flow. The problem is further exacerbated with the increasing uncertainty in the manufacturing process known as process variability. We develop a method to estimate the variation of leakage power in the presence of both intra-die and inter-die process variability. Various complicating issues of leakage prediction such as spatial correlation of process parameters, the effect of different input states of gates on the leakage, and DIBL and stack effects are taken into account while we model the simultaneous variability of the two most critical... 

Radial forging is an open die forging process used for reducing the diameters of shafts, tubes, stepped shafts and axles, and for creating internal profiles in tubes. Due to very large forging loads, the tool should withstand high stress and wear. Therefore, the success of the forging process depends upon recognition of the die failure factors and optimization of the tool working conditions that enhance tool life. In this study, the effect of process parameters on tool life in the cold radial forging process is investigated using nonlinear three dimensional finite element modeling. Wear and mechanical fatigue are considered as the main modes of tool failure, and a parametric study on the... 

Micro Arc Oxidation (MAO) process was utilized to fabricate nano bioceramic TiO 2-hydroxyapatite coatings on titanium substrates. Samples were produced in electrolytes contained 1 g/l β-glycerophosphate and 5, 10 and 15 g/l calcium acetate for 3, 6 and 10 min at 350 V. The techniques including XRD, XPS, SEM, FESEM and EDX were employed to study the effect of processing parameters. Hydroxyapatite, anatase, α-tri calcium phosphate and calcium titanate phases as well as 30-60 nm-size crystals were detected in the coating layer. It was also observed that the pore volume would increase by increasing the electrolyte concentration. The growth time was also found to influence the total pore volume.... 

The morphological manipulation and structural characterisation of TiO 2-MgO binary system by an aqueous particulate sol-gel route were reported. Different crystal structures including pure MgTiO 3, mixtures of MgTiO 3 and TiO 2 and mixtures of MgTiO 3 and Mg 2TiO 4 were tailored by controlling Mg:Ti molar ratio and annealing temperatures as the processing parameters. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) revealed that all compounds crystallised at the low temperature of 500 °C. Furthermore, it was found that the average crystallite size of the compounds depends upon the Mg:Ti molar ratio as well as the annealing temperature, being in the range 3-5 nm at... 

Ultrafine particles of paracetamol were produced by Rapid Expansion of Supercritical Solution (RESS). The experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of extraction temperature (313353K), extraction pressure (1018MPa), preexpansion temperature (363403K), and postexpansion temperature (273323 K) on particles size and morphology of paracetamol particles. The characterization of the particles was determined by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), and Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis. The average particle size of the original paracetamol was 20.8m, while the average particle size of paracetamol after nanonization via the... 

A numerical approach has been developed based on the stream function technique and the finite element analysis to predict required power and temperature rise in wire drawing processes. An admissible velocity field is first proposed using a stream function and then power consumption in the wire drawing is optimized to achieve sensible and unique deformation geometry. In addition, the finite element method together with axi-symmetric Petrov-Galerkin algorithm is coupled with the deformation model to assess the temperature distribution in both the deforming wire and the die during the process. The work hardening effects are also considered in the model both in the deformation zone and on the... 

We present a new dandelion-like TiO2 spheres by a modified hydrothermal method for manufacture of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). This construct is composed of numerous nanowires for employment as the scattering layer of DSSCs. Such morphology is produced by nucleation-growth-assembly mechanism. The size of the dandelion-like spheres and their morphology can be tailored by controlling the processing parameters of the modified hydrothermal process. TiO2 nanoparticles with narrow size distribution are also synthesized by hydrothermal route for the active layer of DSSCs. The nanoparticles show pure anatase phase with average size of 40 nm, whereas the dandelion-like TiO2 spheres are pure... 

A new facile strategy for preparation of mesoporous anatase-TiO2 films by a combination of sol–gel and evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA) processes aided by tri-block Pluronic F127 is reported. Two major parameters, sol preparation and EISA processing parameters, are identified for preparation of mesoporous crack-free films with desired thickness. The mesoporous crack-free films with thickness of 650 nm can be obtained with low water: precursor molar ratio (e.g., 2.5:1) under aging in 10 % relative humidity for 72 h at the low temperature of 5 °C. Although template: precursor molar ratio and annealing temperature show little influence on preparation of crack-free films the optimum... 

In the last few years, an increasing attention has been paid to the issues of saving energy and reducing the manufacturing costs in the transport industry which necessitates further efforts to replace traditional materials like steel with lightweight materials such as plastics, aluminum, magnesium, and composites. Metal matrix nanocomposites have turned into an established material in today's industry with an ongoing expansion in their field of applications. In this study, the formation of nanoparticle-aluminum metal matrix composites is described by compocast processing from nanoparticle Al2O3 and the A356 aluminum alloy. In order to optimize the processing parameters, a novel approach is... 

This paper presents a study of the Taguchi design method to optimise the rate of electrophoretic deposition (EPD) of Bioglass® particles from aqueous suspensions. The effect of Bioglass® concentration, pH and electric field was investigated. An orthogonal array of L16 type with mixed levels of the control factors was utilized. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and regression analysis based on the partial least-square method were used to identify the significant factors affecting the deposition rate and its stability during constant-voltage EPD. It was found that the pH of the suspension significantly influences the deposition rate whereas the applied electric field has the smallest... 

The present research work aims to employ plasma focus in order to deposit molybdenum (Mo) on the 304 stainless steel substrate. The processing parameters were shot numbers as well as the distance of substrate from the anode tip. Stereo, atom force microscopy (AFM) and field emission-scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) were used to study the deposited coatings. Microhardness measurements were also performed on the coatings. Results indicated that the plasma focus can be successfully applied to deposit Mo anode on the stainless steel substrate. The coatings contained discrete pores with sizes varying by processing parameters. The... 

In precipitation hardenable materials, it is desirable to determine the precipitate dissolution temperature for homogenizing the microstructure by controlling the size and distribution of the precipitates. In this research, the influence of various heat treatment and hot deformation conditions on the kinetics of γ ′ dissolution and its morphological evolution in Nimonic 115 was studied. In addition, hot deformation behavior of the material was investigated using hot compression experiments at varying temperature (between 1,050°C and 1,175°C) and strain rates (between 0.01 and 1 s-1) up to a true strain of 0.8. The values obtained for the solvus temperature of γ ′ precipitates by two methods... 

Simulation of large-scale nonlinear dynamical systems on hardware with a high resemblance to their mathematical equivalents has been always a challenge in engineering. This paper presents a novel current-input current-output circuit supporting a systematic synthesis procedure of log-domain circuits capable of computing bilateral dynamical systems with considerably low power consumption and acceptable precision. Here, the application of the method is demonstrated by synthesizing four different case studies: 1) a relatively complex 2-D nonlinear neuron model; 2) a chaotic 3-D nonlinear dynamical system Lorenz attractor having arbitrary solutions for certain parameters; 3) a 2-D nonlinear Hopf... 

Iron-borosilicate soft magnetic composites are suitable magnetic materials for high temperature and high frequency applications. In this research two different techniques have been applied to fabricate these composites: uniaxial pressing following by sintering and spark plasma sintering. Different processing parameters including the content of borosilicate, the amount of compaction pressure and the size of iron particles have been evaluated through the study of microstructure and magnetic properties. The microstructural observations showed that the borosilicate is distributed on the iron grain boundaries enhancing the resistivity and causing the loss of eddy currents. Increasing the... 

Controlled growth of atomic monolayers of IV-VII transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) has provided unprecedented opportunities to fabricate modern optoelectronic nanodevices. However, synthesis of large-area and high quality two-dimensional TMDs is still challenging. We have synthesized WS2 and MoS2 nanosheets by atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (APCVD) at wide-range of processing conditions. The nanostructures were analyzed by optical and confocal microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction to determine the thickness, lateral size and structure of the deposits. Through designing and performing of a set of controlled experiments as well as...