Sharif Digital Repository

Functionally graded aluminum matrix composites (FGAMC) are new advanced materials with promising applications due to their unique characteristics in which composite nature is combined with graded structure. Different architectures of Al6061/SiCp composite laminates were fabricated by successive hot roll-bonding. For FGAMCs, two composite layers as outer strips and a layer of Al1050 as interlayer were applied. To investigate laminate toughness, the quasi-static three-point bending test was conducted in the crack divider orientation. Genetic programming as a soft computing technique was implemented to find mathematical correlations between architectural parameters and experimentally obtained... 

Researchers have examined different approaches to improve damage tolerance of discontinuously reinforced aluminum (DRA). In this study, three-layer DRA laminates containing two exterior layers of Al6061-15 vol.% SiCp and an interlayer of Al1050 were fabricated by hot roll bonding. Interfacial adhesion between the layers was controlled by means of rolling stain. The results of shear test revealed that, the bonding strength of laminates was influenced by number of rolling passes. Considering this effect, the role of interfacial bonding on the toughness of laminates was studied under three-point bending in the crack divider orientation. The quasi-static toughness of the laminates was greater... 

In this work, silicon carbide (SiC) was utilized as a binding agent to fuse carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into highly tough dense CNT bulk nanocomposites through spark plasma sintering (SPS) method. Phase studies were performed using x-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and obtained results were verified by the microstructural evolution. Also, the optimum processing temperature was determined as 1600 °C at which the undesired allotropic phase transformation of SiC (β) → SiC (α) was avoided and single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) were structurally preserved. Fracture toughness of the nanocomposite synthesized at optimum processing conditions was... 

Following Moore's law, the number of transistors on chip has grown exponentially for decades. This growing transistor count, coupled with recent architecture and compiler advances, has resulted in an unprecedented exponential performance increase of computers. With the end of Dennard scaling, however, the power required to operate all transistors at the full performance level simultaneously grows across the technology generations. Consequently, chips will keep an increasing fraction of transistors power gated or dark to remain within the power envelope. The power-gated part of the chip, known as dark silicon, is expected to comprise a significant portion of the die real estate in new... 

In the present research, the influence of nanodiamond (ND) and a physical hybrid of ND and fumed nano-SiO2 were investigated on the performance of a typical tire tread compound. The styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) and cis-butadiene rubber (BR) blend filled with a commercial grade highly dispersive silica at 70 phr loading were used as typical tire tread compound. ND was substituted partially with silica at two different concentrations of 5 and 10phr. Meanwhile, 5 phr of ND/nano-SiO2 hybrids with the weight ratio of 2.5/2.5 and 1/4 were substituted with silica. ND-Filled compounds exhibit increased scorch and cure time compared to controls. Improvement in different characteristics of the... 

The conventional solar cell architectures include a p-n junction of c-Si sandwiched by rear and front contacts. The conventional approach features a complex as well as expensive procedure. Here, we propose a new architecture for p-n heterojunction solar cells prepared by a simple and cost-effective procedure. In this regard, (1) a silicon wafer underwent surface treatment through electrochemical anodization. To prepare a stick junction, (2) photoactive TiO2 nanoparticles were deposited over the porous layer by electrophoretic technique. Finally, (3) indium tin oxide (ITO) was sputtered. During the fabrication steps, we examined various anodization times ranging from 6 to 12 min to study the... 

Heat generation from very large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuits increases with the advent of high-density integrated circuit technology. One of the promising techniques is liquid cooling by using microchannel heat sink. Numerical works on the microchannel heat sink in the literature are mostly two dimensional. The purpose of the present study is to develop a three-dimensional analysis procedure to investigate flow and conjugate heat transfer in the microchannel-based heat sink for electronic packaging applications. The micro-heat sink model consists of a 10 mm long silicon substrate, with rectangular microchannels, 57 μm wide and 180 μm deep, fabricated along the entire length. A finite... 

Thermal stability of Ag layer on Ti coated Si substrate for different thicknesses of the Ag layer have been studied. To do this, after sputter-deposition of a 10 nm Ti buffer layer on the Si(1 0 0) substrate, an Ag layer with different thicknesses (150-5 nm) was sputtered on the buffer layer. Post annealing process of the samples was performed in an N 2 ambient at a flow rate of 200 ml/min in a temperature range from 500 to 700 °C for 30 min. The electrical property of the heat-treated multilayer with the different thicknesses of Ag layer was examined by four-point-probe sheet resistance measurement at the room temperature. Phase formation and crystallographic orientation of the silver... 

The treatment of refractory wastewater and energy utilization are challenging environmental issues. Carbonate as the most common anion abounds in the aquatic environment. Here, we proposed a novel method to degrade carbonate-containing wastewater and simultaneous electricity generation via the combined oxidation of CO3[rad]− and O2[rad]− radicals. The CO3[rad]− radical was produced by the photoelectrode of TiO2/Si photovoltaic cell with the rear Si photovoltaic cell providing external bias, and the O2[rad]− radical was produced from the generation of H2O2 on a gas diffusion electrode (GDE), and they were both further enhanced from the activation reaction of H2O2 with HCO3− electrolyte. The... 

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... 

Nowadays networks-on-chip are emerging as a hot topic in IC designs with high integration. In addition to popular mesh and torus topologies, other structures can also be considered especially in 3D VLSI design. The shuffle-exchange topology is one of the popular interconnection architectures for multiprocessors due to its scalability and self-routing capability. By vertically stacking two or more silicon wafers, connected with a high-density and high-speed interconnect, it is now possible to combine multiple active device layers within a single IC. In this paper we propose an efficient three dimensional layout for a novel 2D mesh structure based on the shuffle-exchange topology. Simulation... 

There are many engineering applications in which composite materials are required to satisfy two or more criteria regarding physical and mechanical properties. In this article, Al-matrix nanocomposites reinforced with different volume fractions of SiC nanoparticles (~ 50 nm; up to 6%) were processed by powder metallurgy (P/M) routes through mechanical milling and hot consolidation techniques. Microstructural studies showed that nano-metric Al2O3 particles with a size of ~ 20 nm and volume fraction of ~ 2% were formed and distributed in the metal matrix, owing to the surface oxides breaking. Microstructural analysis also revealed that the size of cellular structure and the density of... 

Cast aluminium-silicon alloy, A356.0, is widely used in automotive and aerospace industries because of its outstanding mechanical, physical, and casting properties. Thermal barrier coatings can be applied to combustion chamber to reduce fuel consumption and pollutions and also improve fatigue life of components. The purpose of the present work is to simulate stress distribution of A356.0 under thermo-mechanical cyclic loadings, using a two-layer elastic-visco-plastic model of ABAQUS. The results of stress-strain hysteresis loop are validated by an out of phase thermo-mechanical fatigue test. Different thicknesses from 300 to 800. μm of top coat and also roughness of the interfaces are... 

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to propose a mathematical model to estimate required energy and temperature distribution during cold extrusion process. Design/methodology/approach - An admissible velocity field is generated based on stream function technique. Then, the required energy and the temperature distributions in the metal and the extrusion die are determined by a coupled upper bound-finite element analysis. Findings - To examine the proposed model, cold extrusion of AA6061-10%SiCp is considered and the predicted extrusion force-displacement diagrams in different reductions are compared with the experimental ones and reasonable agreement is observed. Furthermore, it... 

The use of hybrid filler is a promising strategy for development of thermally conductive polymer composites. This paper reported the measurement of thermal conductivity of the epoxy composite filled with a hybrid filler of graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) and silicon carbide (SiC) microparticles. For this hybrid filler, the effect of the average size of SiC on composite thermal conductivity was examined. The results showed that the thermal synergistic effect was highly affected by the average size of the SiC. By using a hybrid filler of 11% vol. GNP and 9% vol. 1 µm-size SiC micro-particles thermal conductivity has reached 3.44 W m−1 K−1. This value is 42% higher than the thermal conductivity of... 

In this research, 1050 aluminum sheets in the conditions of annealed and severely deformed by 2 passes of constrained groove pressing (CGP) process were used. Two passes of friction stir processing (FSP) were applied on the specimens. Also, another CGPed specimen was processed by 2 passes of FSP using SiC nanoparticles. The samples were then heat treated to study thermal stability of base metal, heat affected zone (HAZ), thermo-mechanically affected zone (TMAZ), and stir zone (SZ). Microstructure examinations revealed that the annealed base metal was relatively stable upon heating even up to 400. °C and a little grain growth was evident. On the other hand, the CGPed base metal was fairly... 

In manufacturing amorphous silicon solar cells, thin films are deposited at high temperatures (200-400 °C) on a thick substrate using sputtering and plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) methods. Since the thin films and substrate have different thermal expansion coefficients, cooling the system from deposition temperature to room temperature induces thermal residual stresses in both the films and substrate. In addition, these stresses, especially those having been induced in the amorphous silicon layer can change the carrier mobility and band gap energy of the silicon and consequently affect the solar cell efficiency. In this paper, a 2D finite element model is proposed to... 

The mechanism of oxide desorption from the surface of Si(111) is studied. Oxide layers formed by different chemical treatments were thermally removed in a UHV chamber and the removal process was probed by Auger electron spectroscopy. Results show that the oxide formed by HCl desorbs very fast and the desorption rate is initially almost linear in time, while for oxides formed by HNO3, H2SO4 and NH4OH the rate is initially slow, becoming faster at later times. Similarity in AES spectra of different oxides indicates that the difference in the desorption rates of different oxides cannot be attributed to the difference in chemical environment. Linear increase of void coverage with the square of... 

One of emerging advanced fuel materials for the next generations of the nuclear reactors is Fully Ceramic Microencapsulated (FCM) fuel. FCM fuel structure is comprised of TRISO particles dispersed randomly in a SiC matrix. In the present study, the thermal hydraulic performance of a SMART reactor is investigated and the results are compared with the case that conventional UO2 fuel is loaded into the core. At the beginning of the cycle, the reactor is simulated in normal operational and transient conditions. MCNPX 2.6 stochastic code is utilised to calculate neutronic parameters. COMSOL and RELAP5 codes are used for thermal hydraulic analysis. The reactor dynamics is simulated based on... 

Theoretical study of nitrogen monoxide adsorption on small Six (x = 3-5) clusters has been carried out using the advanced hybrid meta-density functional method of Truhlar (MPW1B95). MG3 semi-diffuse basis sets were employed to improve the results. The geometry, adsorption energy, natural bond orbital charge, natural population analysis (NPA)-derived spin density and vibrational frequency of NO adsorption on all optimized nanoclusters were investigated. Also using the NPA, we have investigated the change of bond orders through adsorption. It has been found that NO is capable of making n-centre bonds (n = 1-4) from the nitrogen side but bonds to one site from the oxygen end. In the later case...