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The moisture absorption behavior of flax fiber-reinforced epoxy composites is deliberated to be a serious issue. This property restricts their usage as outdoor engineering structures. Therefore, this study provides an investigation of moisture in flax fibers on the performance of the flax/epoxy composite materials based on their shear responses. The ±45° aligned flax fibers exposed to different relative humidities (RH) and the vacuum infusion process was used to manufacture the composite specimens. The optimum shear strength (40.25 ± 0.75 MPa) was found for the composites manufactured with 35% RH-conditioned flax fibers, but the shear modulus was reduced consistently with increasing RH values. Although shear strength was increased because of fiber swelling with increased moisture absorption rate until 35% RH environments with good microstructures, nonetheless, strength and modulus both started to decrease after this range. A very poor microstructure has been affirmed by the SEM images of the composite samples conditioned at 90% RH environments.
Development of environment-friendly natural fiber composites has been a recent trend. However, due to the fact that natural fibers permit high level of moisture absorption from the surroundings, it can lead to weak bindings and degradation of composite properties. This paper presents an experimental study on the dynamic performance of flax fiber composite beams manufactured at different relative humidity (RH) levels. Five types of flax fiber-reinforced composite materials were made under different RH values, i.e., dry, 35%, 50%, 70%, and 95% RH, and beam samples were prepared using the composite. Impact hammer testing was conducted to measure the natural frequencies and damping of the beams. It was found that for the first three modes, while the resonant frequencies are very close for most samples, there is a clear drop of frequencies for the composite fabricated at 95% RH. Along with an increase of the RH level, the damping ratios for all the three modes have reported a slight increase, but the variation is not significant.
The characteristics and atomic mechanisms (physics) of processes of thermal desorption of deuterium from isotropic graphite at temperatures 700–1700 K are considered.
The aim of the current work was to illustrate the effect of the fibre area correction factor on the results of modelling natural fibre-reinforced composites. A mesoscopic approach is adopted to represent the stochastic heterogeneity of the composite, i.e. a meso-structural numerical model was prototyped using the finite element method including quasi-unidirectional discrete fibre elements embedded in a matrix. The model was verified by the experimental results from previous work on jute fibres but is extendable to every natural fibre with cross-sectional non-uniformity. A correction factor was suggested to fine-tune both the analytical and numerical models. Moreover, a model updating technique for considering the size-effect of fibres is introduced and its implementation was automated by means of FORTRAN subroutines and Python scripts. It was shown that correcting and updating the fibre strength is critical to obtain accurate macroscopic response of the composite when discrete modelling of fibres is intended. Based on the current study, it is found that consideration of the effect of flaws on the strength of natural fibres and inclusion of the fibre area correction factor are crucial to obtain realistic results.
The methodology of the approximation and interpretation of thermal desorption spectra (TDS) of hydrogen in some carbon nanostructures and graphite has been developed and applied for such materials.
The methodology is based on a definite approximation by the symmetrical Gaussians of the hydrogen thermal desorption spectra, obtained by using one single heating rate, for carbon materials and nanomaterials, and a definite processing of the Gaussians, in the approximation of the first-order reactions and the second-order ones. It results in determining (with a satisfactory accuracy, for the further physical analysis), from TDS data of one single heating rate, the activation energies and pre-exponential factors of the rate constants of desorption processes corresponding to the main TDS peaks with different temperatures of the maximum desorption rate. The developed methodology contains several successive steps of its implementation, including the use of several “criterions of truth” and the final verification and/or modification of the results, with the help of numerical modeling methods. This technique is not less informative, but much less time-consuming in experimental terms compared to the generally accepted classical Kissinger method, which demands using of several heating rates, and has strict limits of applicability. Furthermore, the methodology allows one to reveal physics and atomic mechanisms of the main desorption processes through thermodynamic analysis of the obtained peak characteristics and comparison with the corresponding independent experimental and theoretical data.
The purpose of such a methodology is to further reveal the weakly studied physics of the main states of hydrogen in carbon materials and nanomaterials, and not the thorough detailed mathematical description of the spectra. For this case, both the large difference and the large spread of the known experimental and theoretical values of the thermodynamic characteristics of the main desorption processes, important for hydrogen storage problems, are also taken into account.
In our present paper, we approach the mixed problem with initial and boundary conditions, in the context of thermoelasticity without energy dissipation of bodies with a dipolar structure. Our first result is a reciprocal relation for the mixed problem which is reformulated by including the initial data into the field equations. Then, we deduce a generalization of Gurtin’s variational principle, which covers our generalized theory for bodies with a dipolar structure. It is important to emphasize that both results are obtained in a very general context, namely that of anisotropic and inhomogeneous environments, having a center of symmetry at each point.