A new processing route for making thermosetting materials and products containing high loading solid fillers including waste solid scraps and natural mineral fillers was investigated. Traditionally, solid fillers are incorporated into thermosetting polymers by liquid-state mixing. However, due to the high viscosity in mixing, high loading above 50% by weight is difficult to achieve. The new process overcomes this hurdle by a two-step processing strategy. First, solid fillers are placed in the mold and compacted to conform to the mold shape. Next, with the mold closed, a thermosetting resin is infused by vacuum into the particulate preform and after curing to form the desired product. In the exploratory study, epoxy and mineral particles including sand were chosen as material systems for feasibility demonstration. Thermal analysis and rheology were performed to assist in understanding of the fluid flow in heated porous media to achieve an optimized process window for rapid infusion. The results indicated that epoxy matrix composites with extremely high solid filler loading exceeding 70% by weight, as well as with complex external geometry, can be successfully produced. The resulting material is structurally uniform and its mechanical properties can be adjusted by changing the composition and makeup of the filler materials.
The characteristics of fluid flows confined within microscale space are of theoretical and practical interest [1]. Such flow includes the thin lubrication films, the liquid flow between biological cells, and the flow of polymer melts in a micro-injection molding machines, etc. A pressure-driven radial flow microrheometry (PDRFM) is used to characterize high-shear microscale fluids. The shear-dependent viscosity of the pressure-driven radial flow is modeled to investigate the possible size effect on the fluid viscosity. In the modeling, the surface shear rate and surface shear stress at the edge of the radial flow are expressed in terms of three measurable parameters, i.e. the flow rate, the loading force, and the fluid film thickness. By decreasing the fluid film thickness to microscale level, this model can be used to study the microscale effect of any homogeneous fluids. The analysis has been verified by using CFD simulations as digital testing platforms. Furthermore, the preliminary experimental results of Newtonian and non-Newtonian flows also proved the rheological modeling.
Abstract Injection-molding part designers are frequently faced with multiple quality and cost issues. These issues are usually in conflict with each other; thus, a trade-off needs to be made to reach a final compromised solution. Because evaluation of part quality and cost via injection-molding simulation is very time-consuming, implementation of a conventional multicriteria optimization procedure for injection-molding problems is economically unfavorable. However, many injection-molding problems dealing with multiple quality and cost issues can be modeled as constrained problems, with the total cost as the objective function and quality quantities as the constraints. By introducing a concept of penalized total cost, such constrained problems are further simplified into bounded single-criterion problems. The bounded single-criterion problems are then optimized using a direct search-based optimization procedure. Strategies of modeling, transformation, and optimization for these problems are discussed in this article. A case study is provided. Key Words: Injection moldingOptimizationMultiple criteriaConstrained problemPenalized cost.
By synergistically combining distinct physical and chemical properties of different components, co-continuous polymer blending has become an important route to improve the performance of polymeric materials. Shear thickening fluid is a type of non-Newtonian fluid which has unique shear rate dependence and good damping properties. In this work, the authors combined the shear thickening fluid and a commodity polymer into a single system by forming a co-continuous blend via a melt processing technique. The processing window of such co-continuous blend was determined by referring to the thermal and rheological properties of raw materials and experimentally exploring various blending conditions. An increase of tanδ under dynamic mechanical analyzing testing was observed in the co-continuous blend compared with neat polymer as control, which indicated the enhancement of damping capabilities.
Co-continuous phase structures of immiscible polymers can be developed under appropriate melt-blending conditions. Because of the presence of interfacial tension, such co-continuous structures start to coarsen when heated to a temperature higher than the melting/softening temperature of both phases. In this article, a systemic study of controllable growth of gradient porous structures utilizing variable coarsening rates in either a gradient temperature field or a gradient shear field is presented. Based on experimental results, the gradient of shear viscosity is identified as the mechanism for generating variable coarsening rates inside a co-continuous blend. By controllable variation of the shear viscosity distribution in a blend, a spatially varied and controllable gradient in phase structure is created. After dissolution of one of the two phases, the desired porous structure of the remaining polymer is obtained. A poly (lactic acid) (PLA)/polystyrene (PS) 50/50 wt% blend was used as a model system. By designing proper thermal and/or dynamic boundary conditions and introducing different thermal/shear rate gradients during annealing, several gradient porous structures of PLA were created.
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are an ideal source for chondrogenic progenitors for the repair of damaged cartilage tissue. It is currently difficult to induce uniform and scalable ESC differentiation in vitro, a process required for stem cell therapy. This is partly because stem cell fate is determined by complex interactions with the native microenvironment and mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix. Mechanical signaling is considered to be one of the major factors regulating the proliferation and differentiation of chondrogenic cells both in vitro and in vivo. We used biocompatible and elastic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) scaffolds, capable of transducing mechanical signals, including compressive stress in vitro. ESCs seeded into the PDMS scaffolds and subjected to mechanical loading resulted in induction of differentiation. Differentiated ESC derivatives in three-dimensional (3-D) PDMS scaffolds exhibited elongated single cell rather than round clonal ESC morphology. They expressed chondrogenic marker, Col2, with concomitant reduction in the expression of pluripotent marker, Oct4. Immunocytochemical analysis also showed that the expression of COL2 protein was significantly higher in ESCs in 3-D scaffolds subjected to compressive stress. Further analysis showed that compressive stress also resulted in expression of early chondrogenic makers, Sox9 and Acan, but not hypertrophic chondrogenic markers, Runx2, Col10, and Mmp13. Compressive stress induced differentiation caused a reduction in the expression of β-Catenin and an increase in the expression of genes, Rhoa, Yap, and Taz, which are known to be affected by mechanosignaling. The chondroinductive role of RhoA was confirmed by its downregulation with simultaneous decrease in the transcriptional and translational expression of early chondrogenic markers, SOX9, COL2, and ACAN, when ESCs in PDMS scaffolds were subjected to compressive stress and treated with RhoA inhibitor, CCG-1432. Based on these observations, a model for compression induced chondrogenic differentiation of ESCs in 3-D scaffolds was proposed.
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