2D and 3D imaging of fatigue failure mechanisms of 3D woven composites

A detailed investigation of the failure mechanisms for angle-interlocked (AI) and modified layer-to-layer (MLL) three dimensional (3D) woven composites under tension–tension (T–T) fatigue loading has been conducted using surface optical microscopy, cross-sectional SEM imaging, and non-destructive X-ray computed tomography (CT). X-ray microCT has revealed how cracks including surface matrix cracks, transverse matrix cracks, fibre/matrix interfacial debonding or delamination develop, and has delineated the complex 3D morphology of these cracks in relation to fibre architecture. For both weaves examined, transverse cracks soon become uniformly distributed in the weft yarns. A higher crack density was found in the AI composite than the MLL composite. Transverse cracking initiates in the fibre rich regions of weft yarns rather than the resin rich regions. Delaminations in the failed MLL specimen were more extensive than the AI specimen. It is suggested that for the MLL composite that debonding between the binder yarns and surrounding material is the predominant damage mechanism.     

Elevation performance of 1.25D and 1.5D transducer arrays

Present 1D phased array probes have outstanding lateral and axial resolution, but their elevation performance is determined by a fixed aperture focused at a fixed range. Multi-row array transducers can provide significantly improved elevation performance in return for “modest” increases in probe and system complexity. Time domain simulations of elevation beam profiles are used to compare several types of multi-row probes. The elevation aperture of a 1.25D probe increases with range, but the elevation focusing of that aperture is static and determined principally by a mechanical lens with a fixed focus (or foci). 1.25D probes can provide substantially better near- and far-field slice thickness performance than 1D probes and require no additional system beamformer channels. 1.5D, probes use additional beamformer channels to provide dynamic focusing and apodization in elevation. 1.5D probes can provide detail resolution comparable to, and contrast resolution substantially better than, 1.25D probes, particularly in the mid- and far-field. Further increases in system channel count allow the use of 1.75D and 2D arrays for adaptive acoustics and two-dimensional beam steering. Significant improvements in clinical image quality can be expected as multi-row probes become increasingly available in the marketplace     

Development of Bioimplants with 2D, 3D,and 4D Additive Manufacturing Materials

Over the past 30 years, additive manufacturing (AM) has developed rapidly and has demonstrated great potential in biomedical applications. AM is a materials-oriented manufacturing technology, since the solidification mechanism, architecture resolution, post-treatment process, and functional application are based on the materials to be printed. However, 3D printable materials are still quite limited for the fabrication of bioimplants. In this work, 2D/3D AM materials for bioimplants are reviewed. Furthermore, inspired by Tai Chi, a simple yet novel soft/rigid hybrid 4D AM concept is advanced to develop complex and dynamic biological structures in the human body based on 4D printing hybrid ceramic precursor/ceramic materials that were previously developed by our group. With the development of multi-material printing technology, the development of bioimplants and soft/rigid hybrid biological structures with 2D/3D/4D AM materials can be anticipated.     

Smart polymers and nanocomposites for 3D and 4D printing

Smart materials, also known as intelligent materials, which are responsive to the external stimuli including heat, moisture, stress, pH, and magnetic fields, have found extensive applications in sensors, actuators, soft robots, medical devices and artificial muscles. Using three-dimensional (3D) printing techniques for fabrication of smart devices allows for complex designs and well-controlled manufacturing processes. 4D printing is attributed to the 3D printing of smart materials that can be significantly transformed over time. Herein the smart materials including hydrogels and polymeric nanocomposites used in 4D printing were reviewed and the fundamental mechanisms responsible for the functionalities were discussed in detail. In this report, 4D printing of smart systems and their applications in sensors, actuators and biomedical devices were reviewed to provide a deeper understanding of the current development and the future outlook.     

Covalent 2D and 3D networks from 1D nanostructures: designing new materials

We show extensive theoretical studies related to the generation and characterization of 2D and 3D ordered networks using 1D units that are connected covalently. We experimentally created multi-terminal junctions containing 1D carbon blocks in order to study the most common morphologies and branched structures that could be used in the theoretical design of network models. We found that the mechanical and electronic characteristics of ordered networks based on carbon nanotubes (ON-CNTs) are dominated by their specific super-architecture (hexagonal, cubic, square, and diamond-type). We show that charges follow specific paths through the nodes of the multi-terminal systems, which could result in complex integrated nanoelectronic circuits. The 3D architectures reveal their ability to support extremely high unidirectional stress when their mechanical properties are studied. In addition, these networks are shown to perform better than standard carbon aerogels because of their low mass densities, continuous porosities, and high surface areas.     

Designing with Light: Advanced 2D, 3D,and 4D Materials

Recent achievements and future opportunities for the design of 2D, 3D, and 4D materials using photochemical reactions are summarized. Light is an attractive stimulus for material design due to its outstanding spatiotemporal control, and its ability to mediate rapid polymerization under moderate reaction temperatures. These features have been significantly enhanced by major advances in light generation/manipulation with light-emitting diodes and optical fiber technologies which now allows for a broad range of cost-effective fabrication protocols. This combination is driving the preparation of sophisticated 2D, 3D, and 4D materials at the nano-, micro-, and macrosize scales. Looking ahead, future challenges and opportunities that will significantly impact the field and help shape the future of light as a versatile and tunable design tool are highlighted.     

Nonintrusive coupling of 3D and 2D laminated composite models based on finite element 3D recovery

In order to simulate the mechanical behavior of large structures assembled from thin composite panels, we propose a coupling technique, which substitutes local 3D models for the global plate model in the critical zones where plate modeling is inadequate. The transition from 3D to 2D is based on stress and displacement distributions associated with Saint‐Venant problems, which are precalculated automatically for a simple 3D cell. The hybrid plate/3D model is obtained after convergence of a series of iterations between a global plate model of the structure and localized 3D models of the critical zones. This technique is nonintrusive because the global calculations can be carried out using commercial software. Evaluation tests show that convergence is fast and that the resulting hybrid model is very close to a full 3D model. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Removal of hexavalent chromium from aqueous solutions by D301, D314 and D354 anion-exchange resins

Removal of hexavalent chromium from electroplating industry wastewater is obligatory in order to avoid pollution. Batch shaking experiments were carried out to evaluate the adsorption capacity of resins (D301, D314 and D354) in the removal of chromium from aqueous solutions. Varying experimental conditions were studied, including Cr(6+) concentrations, resin amounts, initial pH, contact time and temperatures. The ion-exchange process, which is pH-dependent, indicated the maximum removal of Cr(6+) in the pH range of 1-5 for an initial concentration 100 ppm of Cr(6+). It was found that more than 99.4% of the removal was achieved under optimal conditions. High adsorption rates of chromium for the three resins were observed at the onset, and then plateau values were gradually reached within 30 min. The experimental results obtained at various concentrations (27+/-1 degrees C) showed that the adsorption pattern on the resins have followed Langmuir isotherms and the calculated maximum sorption capacities of D301, D314 and D354 were 152.52, 120.48 and 156.25mg/g, respectively. The thermodynamic parameters (free energy change DeltaG, enthalpy change DeltaS and entropy change DeltaH) for the sorption have been evaluated. It was also found that the adsorption of chromium on these anion-exchange resins follows first-order reversible kinetics.     

Boundary-only element solutions of 2D and 3D nonlinear and nonhomogeneous elastic problems

This paper presents a robust boundary element method (BEM) that can be used to solve elastic problems with nonlinearly varying material parameters, such as the functionally graded material (FGM) and damage mechanics problems. The main feature of this method is that no internal cells are required to evaluate domain integrals appearing in the conventional integral equations derived for these problems, and very few internal points are needed to improve the computational accuracy. In addition, one of the basic field quantities used in the boundary integral equations is normalized by the material parameter. As a result, no gradients of the field quantities are involved in the integral equations. Another advantage of using the normalized quantities is that no material parameters are included in the boundary integrals, so that a unified equation form can be established for multi-region problems which have different material parameters. This is very efficient for solving composite structural problems.     

Spin diffusion in 2D and 3D quantum solids

A moment method is used to compute the anisotropic spin diffusion constant in two-dimensional (2D) adsorbed and bulk (3D) quantum solids in which the spin motion is induced by an exchange Hamiltonian. Computations are carried out in 2D for the square and triangular lattices and in 3D for the hcp lattice. It is assumed that there are pair and three-particle exchange processes only. Since, in hcp³He, exchange processes out of the basal planeJ may occur at a different rate from processes in the planeJ, comparison with experimental results on single crystals should allow the determination ofJ andJ. Our results are given as functions of the ratioy=J/J and of the angle betweenc axis and field gradient. The 2D triangular lattice is shown to correspond to the special casey=0 of the hcp lattice. Our square-lattice result compares well with that of Morita (who used a different technique), supporting the validity of our method.     

Real-time pedestrian classification exploiting 2D and 3D information

A new approach for standing and walking pedestrian detection using pattern matching and exploiting both 2D image information and 3D dense stereo information is proposed. Because 3D information accuracy does not allow the direct classification of the 3D shape, a combined 3D-2D method is proposed. The 3D data are used in an innovative way for pedestrian hypotheses generation, scale and depth estimation and 2D models selection. Also the 3D hypotheses allow the corresponding 2D image region of interest selection and the 2D hypothesis generation. The 2D hypothesis consists of the object-s external edges obtained by an edge extraction and a depth coherency-based filtering out process. The scaled models are matched against the selected hypothesis using an elastic high-speed matching based on the Chamfer distance. The method has been tested on synthetic and real-world scenarios.     

Rapid fabrication of 2D and 3D photonic crystals and their inversed structures

In this paper a new technique is proposed for the fabrication of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals using monodisperse polystyrene microspheres as the templates. In addition, the approaches toward the creation of their corresponding inversed structures are described. The inversed structures were prepared by subjecting an introduced silica source to a sol-gel process; programmed heating was then performed to remove the template without spoiling the inversed structures. Utilizing these approaches, 2D and 3D photonic crystals and their highly ordered inversed hexagonal multilayer or monolayer structures were obtained on the substrate.     

Grain growth modelling: 3D and 2D correlation

One of the significant challenges in the modelling of grain growth is the link between 3D models and their 2D simplifications.

In the present study a 3D model of grain growth has been investigated which takes into account change in volume of individual grains randomly sampled from a population of a given initial size distribution. For different kinetics of growth, changes in the size of grain sections are studied. The fictitious effect of the generation of new grains in a 2D approximation of 3D growth (due to the growing grains hitting the observation plane) has been studied in detail. The influence of different types of initial grain size distributions on the grain growth has been investigated.     

Tunneling into 1D and Quasi-1D Conductors and Luttinger-Liquid Behavior

The paper addresses the problem whether and how it is possible to detect the Luttinger-liquid behavior from the IV curves for tunneling to 1D or quasi-1D conductors. The power-law non-ohmic IV curve, which is usually considered as a manifestation of the Luttinger-liquid behavior, can be also deduced from the theory of the Coulomb blockaded junction between 3D conductors affected by the environment effect. In both approaches the power-law exponents are determined by the ratio of the impedance of an effective electric circuit to the quantum resistance. Though two approaches predict different power-law exponents (because of a different choice of effective circuits), the difference becomes negligible for a large number of conductance channels.     

Numerical analysis of dynamic debonding under 2D in-plane and 3D loading

We present a numerical scheme specially developed for 2D and 3D dynamic debonding problems. The method, referred to as spectral scheme, allows for a precise modeling of stationary and/or spontaneously expanding interfacial cracks of arbitrary shapes and subjected to an arbitrary combination of time- and space-dependent loading conditions. It is based on a spectral representation of the elastodynamic relations existing between the displacement components along the interface plane and the corresponding dynamic stresses. A general stress-based cohesive failure model is introduced to model the spontaneous progressive failure of the interface. The numerical scheme also allows for the introduction of a wide range of contact relations to model the possible interactions between the fracture surfaces. Simple 2D problems are used to investigate the accuracy and stability of the proposed scheme. Then, the spectral method is used in various 2D and 3D interfacial fracture problems, with special emphasis on the issue of the limiting speed for a spontaneously propagating debonding crack in the presence of frictional contact. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.