Efficient tunability and circuit model of nested-U nanoresonators in optical metasurfaces

Tunable metasurfaces can be employed to physically or mechanically engineer and control electromagnetic wave properties like reflection and transmission and their associated spectral characteristics like resonance frequency. Here, we propose highly tunable and sensitive metasurfaces composed of an array of a nested double U-shaped (NDU) nanoresonators on elastic polydimethylsiloxane substrate, operating in infrared region. The mechanical deformation varies the spaces between the coupled resonator elements which in turn leads to corresponding variations in the equivalent capacitance and inductance between the U-shaped elements causing efficient tunability. In addition to the higher signal strengths, it is also reported that the resonant frequency of the proposed metasurface exhibits substantial spectral shift. The observed remarkable trends are adequately verified by the developed equivalent circuit model for the proposed NDU-structure.     

Removal of Acid Orange 7 and Remazol Black 5 reactive dyes from aqueous solutions using a novel biosorbent

This study utilizes canola stalks (CS), an agro-residue, as a biosorbent to remove two different dyes, namely Acid Orange 7 (AO7) and Remozol Black 5 (RB5) from aqueous solutions. The effects of operational parameters on the efficiency of dye removal including pH, adsorbent mass, initial dye concentration and contact time have been investigated. For both tested dyes, the maximum absorption capacity was reached at initial pH 2.5 and 120 min contact time. The results showed that the absorption of both dyes depended on the pH of milieu, temperature, dye and CS concentrations. Freundlich and Langmuir models were used to analyze the obtained experimental data. The isotherms are found to be linear over the entire concentration range for both dyes. The highest value of linear correlation coefficients for AO7 (0.9926) and RB5 (0.9882) showed that the Langmuir is the best model to fit the experimental data. Kinetic study of absorption was done applying the pseudo first-order and the pseudo second-order equations. Absorption of both dyes could be well predicted by the pseudo second-order equation. The obtained results are very promising since: (i) high levels of dye removal (> 90%) were achieved with low contact times biosorbent/dye (less than 20 min contact); and (ii) the whole CS can be successfully used as biosorbent of AO7 and RB5 dyes in aqueous solution without needing any chemical modifications.     

Inspection interval optimization for complex equipment in automotive manufacturing under dependent failures

Forschung im Ingenieurwesen - Inspection activities in automotive manufacturing play a crucial role in diagnosing and preventing unexpected failures by adopting the well-planned intervals....     

Dynamic bake hardening of interstitial-free steels

Two types of dynamic strain aging (DSA) strengthening methods were investigated to determine their potentials for industrial use. They are referred to here as dynamic-static bake hardening (DSBH) and dynamic bake hardening (DBH). For this purpose, a 0.06 pct Ti interstitial-free (IF) steel was reheated to 900 °C and cooled at 12 °C/s to room temperature. It was then dynamically bake hardened in the temperature range 100 °C to 250 °C to strains of 2 to 8 pct at a strain rate of 10⁻³ s⁻¹. The tensile properties were determined before and after these treatments. It was found that the occurrence of DSA during dynamic baking led to significant increases in work-hardening rate as well as in the final strength. The results indicate that, for a given solute carbon level, the dynamically and then statically aged samples have higher strengths than those that are bake hardened in the conventional way.     

Effects of hot water pre-extraction on surface properties of bagasse soda pulp

In this work, the effects of hot water pre-extraction of depithed bagasse on the soda pulping and surface properties were studied. The conditions of hot water pre-extraction were: maximum temperature 170 °C, heat-up time 90 min, time at maximum temperature 10 min, and solid to liquor ratio (S:L) 1:8. Consequently, the pre-extracted and un-extracted bagasse chips were subjected to soda pulping at 160 °C for 1 h with 11, 14 and 17% active alkali charge and an S:L of 1:5. The results showed that the hot water pre-extraction increased bagasse surface texture porosity by hemicellulose degradation. Therefore, the delignification was faster for pulping of pre-extracted samples. At a certain charge of alkali, pre-extracted samples showed higher screened yield and lower Kappa number. For instance, at 17% alkali charge, pre-extracted bagasse gave 11.3% higher pulp yield compared with the un-extracted ones. Inverse gas chromatography (IGC) results showed that the hot water pre-extraction changed the active sites on the bagasse surface, decreasing the dispersive energy and the basicity character, and affected the particle morphology. The pulping process decreased the hydrophobicity and the basicity of the bagasse surface. The surfaces of un-extracted and pre-extracted bagasse pulps had similar properties but different morphology. The pulps present higher surface area and permeability with more reactive capacity.     

Modeling the thermomechanical effects on baking behavior of low carbon steels using response surface methodology

Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to study and optimize the effect of thermomechanical treatment on the bake hardening process of low carbon (LC) steels. RSM is a unique modeling approach to replace the costly and time-consuming laboratory simulations to predict the optimal condition for industrial processes. In this study, the RSM based on central composite design (CCD) was used to predict the baking response of low carbon steels. Two models were developed to predict the effects of thermomechanical treatments on the bake hardenability (BH) and final yield stress (FYS) of baked LC steels.     

Controlled release of drugs from gradient hydrogels for high-throughput analysis of cell-drug interactions

In this paper, we report a method to fabricate microengineered hydrogels that contain a concentration gradient of a drug for high-throughput analysis of cell-drug interactions. A microfluidic gradient generator was used to create a concentration gradient of okadaic acid (OA) as a model drug within poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate hydrogels. These hydrogels were then incubated with MC3T3-E1 cell seeded glass slides to investigate the cell viability through the spatially controlled release of OA. The drug was released from the hydrogel in a gradient manner and induced a gradient of the cell viability. The drug concentration gradient containing hydrogels developed in this study have the potential to be used for drug discovery and diagnostics applications due to their ability to simultaneously test the effects of different concentrations of various chemicals.