4D Printing of Shape Memory Materials for Textiles: Mechanism,Mathematical Modeling,and Challenges

Shape memory materials (SMMs) in 3D printing (3DP) technology garnered much attention due to their ability to respond to external stimuli, which direct this technology toward an emerging area of research, “4D printing (4DP) technology.” In contrast to classical 3D printed objects, the fourth dimension, time, allows printed objects to undergo significant changes in shape, size, or color when subjected to external stimuli. Highly precise and calibrated 4D materials, which can perform together to achieve robust 4D objects, are in great demand in various fields such as military applications, space suits, robotic systems, apparel, healthcare, sports, etc. This review, for the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, focuses on recent advances in SMMs (e.g., polymers, metals, etc.) based wearable smart textiles and fashion goods. This review integrates the basic overview of 3DP technology, fabrication methods, the transition of 3DP to 4DP, the chemistry behind the fundamental working principles of 4D printed objects, materials selection for smart textiles and fashion goods. The central part summarizes the effect of major external stimuli on 4D textile materials followed by the major applications. Lastly, prospects and challenges are discussed, so that future researchers can continue the progress of this technology.     

Sol-Gel Preparation and Luminescence Properties of BaMgAl10O17∶Eu2+ Phosphors

The synthesis of BaMgAl10O17∶ Eu2 (BAM) phosphors using the sol-gel method and their luminescence properties were reported. The blue-light emitting BAM was synthesized using citric acid and ethylene glycol as chelating materials. Emission of blue-light was obtained from these phosphors. The luminescent intensity increases as the temperature of heat treatment is increased. This study investigated the effects of the molar ratio of ethylene glycol to citric acid (Φ value), with respect to the phase formation and luminescence properties of BAM. The variation of the Φ value resulted in the change of the sol-gel reaction mechanism and the microstructures of the resultant powders. An increase in Φ value leads to an increase in the rate of BAM phase formation. The photoluminescent intensity of the prepared phosphors increases with heating temperatures because of enhanced crystallization.     

Prediction of the hydraulic diffusivity from pore size distribution of concrete

A model is presented in this work through which variation of hydraulic diffusivity of concrete with relative water content can be obtained from pore size distribution as an input. The specific water capacity and hydraulic conductivity of concrete are expressed in terms of pore size characteristics, considering laminar flow due to capillary suction through tortuous elliptic tubes, oriented equally in three orthogonal directions. Hydraulic diffusivity being the ratio of hydraulic conductivity and specific water capacity is thus expressed in terms of pore size characteristics. The input pore size distributions have been determined experimentally for normal strength concrete mixes through mercury intrusion porosimetry. Using the model the variation of hydraulic diffusivity with relative water content is determined for three cases viz. 1) ideal continuous wetting, 2) ideal continuous drying and 3) random access of pores by water. These results are then compared with an experimentally obtained variation.     

Initial Deposition of Colloidal Particles on a Rough Nanofiltration Membrane

The initial rate of colloid deposition onto semi‐permeable membranes is largely controlled by the coupled influence of permeation drag and particle‐membrane colloidal interactions. Recent studies show that the particle‐membrane interactions are subject to immense local variations due to the inherent morphological heterogeneity (roughness) of reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes. This experimental investigation reports the effect of membrane roughness on the initial deposition of polystyrene latex particles on a rough NF membrane during cross flow membrane filtration under different operating pressures and solution chemistries. Atomic force microscopy was used to characterize the roughness of the membrane and observe the structure of particle deposits. At the initial stages of fouling, the AFM images show that more particles preferentially accumulate near the “peaks” than in the “valleys” of the rough NF membrane surface.     

Exploiting SSDs in operational multiversion databases

Multiversion databases store both current and historical data. Rows are typically annotated with timestamps representing the period when the row is/was valid. We develop novel techniques to reduce index maintenance in multiversion databases, so that indexes can be used effectively for analytical queries over current data without being a heavy burden on transaction throughput. To achieve this end, we re-design persistent index data structures in the storage hierarchy to employ an extra level of indirection. The indirection level is stored on solid-state disks that can support very fast random I/Os, so that traversing the extra level of indirection incurs a relatively small overhead. The extra level of indirection dramatically reduces the number of magnetic disk I/Os that are needed for index updates and localizes maintenance to indexes on updated attributes. Additionally, we batch insertions within the indirection layer in order to reduce physical disk I/Os for indexing new records. In this work, we further exploit SSDs by introducing novel DeltaBlock techniques for storing the recent changes to data on SSDs. Using our DeltaBlock, we propose an efficient method to periodically flush the recently changed data from SSDs to HDDs such that, on the one hand, we keep track of every change (or delta) for every record, and, on the other hand, we avoid redundantly storing the unchanged portion of updated records. By reducing the index maintenance overhead on transactions, we enable operational data stores to create more indexes to support queries. We have developed a prototype of our indirection proposal by extending the widely used generalized search tree open-source project, which is also employed in PostgreSQL. Our working implementation demonstrates that we can significantly reduce index maintenance and/or query processing cost by a factor of 3. For the insertion of new records, our novel batching technique can save up to 90 % of the insertion time. For updates, our prototype demonstrates that we can significantly reduce the database size by up to 80 % even with a modest space allocated for DeltaBlocks on SSDs.     

Collaborative jamming and collaborative defense in cognitive radio networks

In cognitive radio networks, cognitive nodes operate on a common pool of spectrum where they opportunistically access and use parts of the spectrum not being used by others. Though cooperation among nodes is desirable for efficient network operations and performance, there might be some malicious nodes whose objective could be to hinder communications and disrupt network operations. The absence of a central authority or any policy enforcement mechanism makes these kinds of open-access network more vulnerable and susceptible to attacks.In this paper, we analyze a common form of denial-of-service attack, i.e., collaborative jamming. We consider a network in which a group of jammers tries to jam the channels being used by legitimate users who in turn try to evade the jammed channels. First, we compute the distribution of the jamming signal that a node experiences by considering a random deployment of jammers. Then, we propose different jamming and defending schemes that are employed by the jammers and legitimate users, respectively. In particular, we model and analyze the channel availability when the legitimate users randomly choose available channels and the jammers jam different channels randomly. We propose a multi-tier proxy-based cooperative defense strategy to exploit the temporal and spatial diversity for the legitimate secondary users in an infrastructure-based centralized cognitive radio network. Illustrative results on spectrum availability rates show how to improve resiliency in cognitive radio networks in the presence of jammers.     

A general framework for efficient geographic routing in wireless networks

We propose a new link metric called normalized advance (NADV) for geographic routing in multihop wireless networks. NADV selects neighbors with the optimal trade-off between proximity and link cost. Coupled with the local next hop decision in geographic routing, NADV enables an adaptive and efficient cost-aware routing strategy. Depending on the objective or message priority, applications can use the NADV framework to minimize various types of link cost.We present efficient methods for link cost estimation and perform detailed experiments in simulated environments. Our results show that NADV outperforms current schemes in many aspects: for example, in high noise environments with frequent packet losses, the use of NADV leads to 81% higher delivery ratio. When compared to centralized routing under certain settings, geographic routing using NADV finds paths whose cost is close to the optimum. We also conducted experiments in Emulab testbed and the results demonstrate that our proposed approach performs well in practice.     

Application of evolutionary optimization techniques for finding the optimal set of concentric circular antenna array

In this paper the maximum sidelobe level (SLL) reductions, optimal beam patterns and optimal beam widths of various designs of three-ring planar concentric circular antenna arrays (PCCAA) are examined using three different classes of evolutionary optimization techniques to finally determine the global optimal three-ring PCCAA design and then establish some sort of ranking among the techniques. Apart from physical construction of a PCCAA, one may broadly classify its design into two major categories: uniformly excited arrays and non-uniformly excited arrays. The present paper assumes non-uniform excitations and uniform spacing of excitation elements in each three-ring PCCAA design and a design goal of maximizing SLL reduction associated with optimal beam patterns and beam widths. The design problem is modeled as an optimization problem for each PCCAA design and solved using different evolutionary optimization techniques to determine an optimum set of normalized excitation weights for PCCAA elements, which, when incorporated, results in a radiation pattern with optimal (maximum) SLL reduction. Among the various PCCAA designs, one which yields the global minimum SLL with global minimum first null beamwidth is the global optimal design. In this work the three-ring PCCAA containing (N₁ = 4, N₂ = 6, N₃ = 8) elements proves to be such global optimal design. The optimization techniques employed are real coded GA (RGA), canonical PSO (CPSO), craziness based PSO (CRPSO), evolutionary programming (BEP), hybrid evolutionary programming (HEP). While ranking the techniques after 30 total runs for each design, HEP, CRPSO, RGA, CPSO, BGA hold the first five ranks in order of optimization capability. HEP yields global minimum SLL (?32.86 dB) and global minimum BWFN (77.0°) for the optimal design. BEP often changes the rank from second to fifth depending on the design set. Further, when compared to a uniformly excited PCCAA having equal number of elements and same radii a reduction of major lobe beamwidth is also observed in the optimal non-uniformly excited case.