JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL RESEARCH AND APPLICATION (JMRA)
Year:2012 | Volume:4 | Issue:2|Papers Count:8

The goal of this research is the derivation of method for evaluation of efficiency improvement potential for district heating systems with focus on variable speed centrifugal pump. The effectiveness of the usage of the proportional pressure control is compared with the constant pressure control. This is why, energy calculation analyses have been realized for variable speed centrifugal pumps, and the theoretical tool of estimation of the effectiveness improvement potential has been derived using the correlation research method. The conclusions are: the 11.2 GWh in total or 58.3% of the annually consumed electrical energy by variable speed centrifugal pumps can be saved up in low scale district heating systems in Latvia, if proportional pressure control is used with the deviation of 80%.

The rheological behavior of feedstocks used in powder injection molding technology influences strongly on the final properties of the products. Powder loading is one of the important factors that have a great distribution on rheological behaviors. By using the gas atomized spherical 316L stainless steel powder and the binder of 55% paraffin wax+ 40% polyethylen+ 5% stearic acid, four kinds of feedstocks were prepared at the powder loading of 60, 64, 68 and 72%. To find the proper feedstock and molding temperature, the applied shear rate on the samples has been increased from 100 to 1000 l/s in three different temperatures. The investigations demonstrate that 68% powder loading is the optimal one. This sample shows the minimum sensitivity to shear rate and temperature and in a wide range of temperature has a nearly steady viscosity, consequently demonstrate the best behavior during injection molding.

One of the most common methods for production of ultra fine grained materials is severe plastic deformation (SPD). In this study, constrained groove pressing (CGP) and high pressure torsion (HPT) processes as effective methods of severe plastic deformation for the strain imposed on the pure copper were used. This paper presents the results of an experimental research, to review the influence of CGP and HPT processes of the mechanical properties such as hardness and tensile on copper samples has been done. The results of tensile and hardness tests represented that due to applying CGP process, strength and hardness of samples were increased significantly. The results of HPT process showed that hardness in the radial direction is variable and away from disk center in the radial direction continuously increases. Of course, in higher pressing steps the slight decrease in strength and hardness is observed, more explanation is given in this paper. Finally, comparison results of the two methods, their advantages and limitations of them are studied.

In this study, displacement field around v-notches of a poly methyl metha crylate (PMMA) specimen with tip cracks will be analyzed using digital image correlation technique. First intensity factor in combination with in-plane rigid body translations and rotation components will be determined by linear least squares fitting of the displacement field data to the corresponding relations among stress intensity factor and displacement field. The effect of v-notch angle on the results would be investigated. Experimental results will be compared with those obtained from finite element analysis. Good consistency is shown to exist between the results of two methods. The existence and a measure of a small region (corresponding to the plastic deformation zone in front of the crack tip) is demonstrated which should be excluded in data extraction for digital image correlation post-processing using linear elastic fracture mechanics relations.

The aim of this work is to evaluate the influence of fabrication methods on the compressive properties of sandwich composites using both experimental work and numerical simulations. Two types of sandwich composites with E-glass/Kevlar/polyester resin facings and End-grain balsa wood as core have been produced by vacuum infusion processing (VIP) and hand-lay up (HL) method. Compression tests on sandwich composites showed that the mean values of compressive strength of HL and VIP composites are 15.02 MPa and 28.27 MPa, respectively. The performance of sandwich composites manufactured by VIP are presented and compared to the sandwich composites manufactured by HL method. Based on the experimental tests, VIP appears to produce higher results of sandwich composite compressive properties compared to the HL method. Consequently, in this work, the compressive properties of sandwich composites were characterized by finite element analysis (FEA) and a comparison of the compressive properties in various fabrication methods was then presented. The correspondence between the predicted numerical results and the experiments proves the accuracy of this model.

With the expanding demand on application of magnesium alloys in automotive and aerospace industries, robust methods in fatigue characterization of commercially available magnesium alloys with high specific strength is anticipated. In this paper, rotating bending load controlled tests has been studied on specimens machined from an extrusion piece of AZ31B. Due to asymmetric and anisotropic behavior of AZ31B, methods of transferring the load controlled results into stress-life results are lacking. Using the approach of variable material property (VMP), the load-stress relation in fully reversed test is derived. To apply the proposed method to AZ31B, the cyclic behavior of the material is required. Fully reversed step-loading of AZ31B over a wide range of strain amplitude was carried out on a servo hydraulic fatigue rig and was reported in the literature. The stabilized cyclic behavior at half-life was obtained for different load levels. Also, the cyclic tension and the cyclic compression curves were obtained. Using the proposed load-stress model and the actual cyclic behavior of AZ31B, an elastic-plastic solution over the whole domain of cross section was obtained. An energy based fatigue model was then employed to predict the life. The predicted and experimental lives agree well. The proposed method is recommended for correlating the load controlled test with stress and/or strain controlled tests.

Cracked and un-cracked Brazilian disc specimens subjected to diametral compression were used for conducting fracture toughness and tensile strength experiments on a polymer concrete (PC) material. The value of mode I fracture toughness (KIc) was determined from the center- cracked Brazilian disc and the indirect tensile strength (st) was obtained from the un-cracked Brazilian disc specimen. The experiments showed the practical applicability of both cracked and un-cracked specimens for using as suitable techniques for measuring KIc and st in PC materials. The average values of KIc and st of tested PC were about 1.5 MPa Öm and 8 MPa, respectively which are significantly greater than the corresponding values of KIc and st obtained for conventional cement concrete tested with the same Brazilian disc specimens. Hence, for those structural applications that the risk of tensile rupture and crack growth is high, polymer concretes are more suitable candidates in comparison with the conventional cement concretes.

Plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) is the new, environmentally and cost-effective method for coating the metals. This method vastly has been studied for coating Aluminum, Titanium and Magnesium and their alloys and recently for steel. In present study, Ck45 steel samples were coated by PEO method in order to improve corrosion resistance. During this process specimens were immerged in carbonate solution contains sodium dehydrogen phosphate (NaH2PO4) and sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) with PH equaled 8.3. Composition and microstructure of the coating were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The electrochemical corrosion behavior of coated and uncoated species was verified in 3.5% NaCl solution by potentiodynamic polarization technique. The result of XRD and SEM test showed that nanocrystale particles of Fe3O4 were successfully formed on the surface of samples while the average size of particles and phase were less than 800nm. Grain size was estimated about less than 80 nm. Corrosion test exhibited the remarkable improvement (about three times) in corrosion resistance of coated samples (16023 W) compared with those without coating (5200.4 W).