ADVANCED MATERIALS IN ENGINEERING (ESTEGHLAL)
Year:2013 | Volume:32 | Issue:2|Papers Count:11

The particles of ferrite Ni0.6-xCuxZn0.4Fe2O4, (0-0.5 in step with 0.1) were prepared by the sol-gel method. Sintering process of powders was carried out at 600, 800 and 1000oC. The effect of the sintering temperature and chemical composition on the structural and magnetic properties of the Cu substituted NiZn ferrite was investigated. EDS analysis and X-ray diffraction patterns confirmed a well defined of single crystal phase with spinel structure. The thermal behavior process and particle size of samples were investigated by thermal analysis TG, DTA techniques and scanning electron microscope, respectively. VSM curves reveal that the sintering temperature and copper content affect saturation magnetization. Mossbauer spectra displays that the copper cations occupy the octahedral sites. With increasing of copper cations, the iron cations immigrate to tetrahedral site, consequently the saturation magnetization decrease.

Refractory carbides are becoming a group of promising material due to their unique properties, such as high hardness, high wear and corrosion resistance, high thermal conductivity, high melting point, high strength even at high temperatures, and a high degree of chemical stability. Among these carbides, titanium carbide (TiC) is one of the most important engineering material, based on its promising properties. This paper presents a novel approach to preparing ultrafine TiC by sol-gel processing. This novel process would minimize kinetic barriers because carbon (coming from sucrose) was homogeneous dispersed in the precursor of TiO2 by sol-gel process. As a result, the increased contact area between reactants should make the reaction to complete at lower temperatures.

In this project, we prepared biomimetic nanocomposite scaffolds from gelatin and chitosan and hydroxyapatite and subsequently the scaffolds were evaluated by common used bulk technique. For this purpose, the nanocomposite hydrogel/apatite engineering scaffolds were fabricated using applied biomimetic method accompanied with freeze drying technique. The apatite was precipitated using double diffusion mechanism within gelatin hydrogel in similar pH and temperature to the human body. Chitosan initial percentage (20, 30 and 40%) was set as variables. Nanocomposites were soaked in glutaraldehyde solution in order to enhance mechanical properties and make them insoluble in water. Diffusion of calcium and phosphate from lateral hydrogel into the middle hydrogel caused formation of parallel white layer-formed precipitate. Analysis of precipitates formed within middle hydrogel for the samples, showed that detected materials are composed of carbonated hydroxyapatite and dicalcium phosphate dihydrate (DCPD, brushite). Also, mechanical behavior obtained for the scaffolds were comparable with spongy bone. With increasing chitosan in the composite scaffold, the water up-take was increased from 379 to 661%. Phase composition, microstructure and structural groups in the composite samples were also characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) analyses. Eventually, the obtained results showed that the composite contains 20% chitosan had appropriate properties for fabricating bone scaffold.

In the present work, molecular dynamics simulation method was used for determining Young's modulus, Shear modulus and Poisson’s ratio of Al-SiC nanocomposites, with different volume fractions of the reinforcements. For simulation, the open source package, LAMMPS, was used. After putting Aluminum and Silicon Carbide atoms in their initial positions, interatomic potentials between them were defined. EAM potential was used for Aluminum atoms, Morse potential was used for Al-C and Al-Si, and for C-C, Si-C, and Si-Si Tersoff potential was used. According to the elastic bounding principal, and the comparison between the simulations results and Voigt, Ruess and Halpin-Tsai micromechanical models showed that the results were close to the upper bound Voigt model.

Application of ceramic reinforcements is one of the effective and well-known ways to refine the microstructure of brittle metals such as magnesium. In this research, the influence of nano/micro particles of zirconia on the microstructure of cast AZ91 alloy was studied. At the first stage, nano and micro ZrO2 powders were blended through mechanical alloying procedure. In five specimens, the total amount of nano and micro reinforcements in the final mixture was fixed at 5wt%, whereas their ratio was varied. Two other composites were also produced using 5wt% of nano or micro particles of zirconia. These powder mixtures were then stirred in the molten AZ91 at 650oC by vortex method and finally cast in a sand mold at 615oC. For comparison, two monolithic castings including a conventionally cast specimen and a super heat-treated sample were also cast. The average grain sizes for all composites were decreased with respect to both monolithic castings. The best results in terms of grain size and microstructure improvement were obtained for AZ91.5wt% nano ZrO2 composite with remarkable improvement in comparison with monolithic castings.

The effect of Planar Flow Casting (PFC) parameters on dimensional specifications of amorphous soft magnetic Co68.15Fe4.35Si12.5B15 foils was investigated. PFC experiments were carried out under an argon atmosphere and the relationship between the main processing parameters, such as linear wheel velocity, nozzle-wheel gap distance and ejection pressure, with the resulting foil thickness was studied. It was found that there are linear relationships between the foil thickness and reciprocal of wheel speed, fourth root of nozzle-wheel gap and square root of ejection pressure. It was also shown that obtained results are in good agreement with the equation proposed by Fiedler.

A powder mixtures of 18.72% wt, 17.67% wt Al2O3 and 63.6% wt zircon were prepared and milled in a planetary ball milled for one up to 10 hours in presence of air. After removal Iron impurity from as-milled samples, they were isothermally heated in temperature range of 1300-14500C for one hour in an air atmosphere. After cooling the samples, they were studied using XRD analyses. The XRD and PSA analyses were showed that the size of particles in the mixtures decreased with increasing of milling time and the mixtures became amorphous nature. The isothermal runs observed that pre-milling on the mixtures has great effect, wherever the zircon decomposition temperature and mullite formation temperature decreased to about 13000C in a one-hour-milled sample. The amount of tetragonal zirconia increased with increasing in milling time at 13000C, however the amount of tetragonal zirconia decreased with increasing of temperature up to 14500C. The amount of tetragonal zirconia at 13000C in the three hours milled samples was the highest value among all samples.

In this study, effect of potential on composition and depth profiles of passive films formed on 316L stainless steel in 0.05 M sulfuric acid has been examined using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). For passive film formation within the passive region, four potentials - 0.2, 0.2, 0.5, and 0.8 VSCE were chosen and films were gown at each potential for 60 min. XPS analysis results showed that atomic concentration of Cr and Fe initially increase (E<0.5 VSCE) and then decrease with potential. This decrease is due to surface dissolution of the Fe and Cr oxides. For both alloying elements, Ni and Mo, no obvious change in atomic concentration was showed. Results indicated that at higher potentials, before entering transpassive region, oxidation of Cr3+ to Cr6+is happened.

In plasma sprayed nanostructured composite coatings with ceramic matrix, the feedstock must consist of nanoparticles of appropriate specifications. In this research, the procedure for production of Cr2O3-Ag agglomerated nanostructured composite powder to produce comosite coatings has been investigated. Nanopowders of Cr2O3 with 0, 2, 5, and 10 volume percentages of silver were dispersed to obtain a homogeneous aqueous dispersion appropriate for spray drying process. In the second stage, Cr2O3-Ag composite powders were produced by agglomeration process. The nanostructured composite powders were, then, used in the atmospheric plasma spray (APS) process to deposit a series of composite coatings for evaluation. The composite powders, with a granulated morphology, had uniform distribution of silver in a ceramic matrix and the coatings were composed of nanoparticles and particles of nano-sized crystallites. Experimental results indicated that presence of nanoparticle zones within the microstructure led to non-uniform porosities formed between splats and these zones. Furthermore, use of nanopowders in the feedstock caused a reduction in lamellae thickness of plasma sprayed coatings.

Mechanical alloying technique is used for production of nanostructured soft magnetic alloys. In this work the back propagation (BP) artificial neural adopted to model the effect of various mechanical alloying parameters i.e. milling time and chemical composition, on the properties of Fe-Ni powders. Lattice parameter, grain size, lattice strain, coersivity and saturation intrinsic flux density are considered as the output of five BP neural networks. The results obtained show the efficiency of designed networks for the prediction of the properties of Fe-Ni powders.