A phenomenological model for bake hardening in minimal carbon steels

The essence of bake hardening is to exploit the classical strain ageing in a positive way to increase the strength of the formed steel sheets used in outer body panel of a passenger car during the paint-baking operation. A new model that takes into account the strengthening contributions from Cottrell atmosphere and precipitate formation has been developed in the present work. The model predicts the increase in strength as a function of the amount of free solute C (calculated as a function of the annealing temperature), the amount of deformation, ageing temperature and time. The model predictions have been found to agree quite well with the experimental results; the individual contributions of Cottrell atmosphere and precipitation strengthening have been quantified.     

A new high order compact off-step discretization for the system of 3D quasi-linear elliptic partial differential equations

We present a new fourth order compact finite difference scheme based on off-step discretization for the solution of the system of 3D quasi-linear elliptic partial differential equations subject to appropriate Dirichlet boundary conditions. We also develop new fourth order methods to obtain the numerical solution of first order normal derivatives of the solution. In all the cases, we use only 19-grid points of a single computational cell to compute the problem. The proposed methods are directly applicable to singular problems and the problems in polar coordinates, without any modification required unlike the previously developed high order schemes of [14] and [30]. We discuss the convergence analysis of the proposed method in details. Many physical problems are solved and comparative results are given to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed methods.     

Synthesis and characterization of novel functional poly(vinyl alcohol-co-styrene sulfonic acid) copolymers

This paper first time reports the preparation of random anionic copolymers from vinyl acetate (VAc) bearing electro-donating substituent and sodium 4-vinylbenzenesulfonate (SSA) having electro-withdrawing substituent. Copolymers (PVA-co-SSA) of different composition have been successfully prepared by a simple free radical solution polymerization technique. Resulting final copolymer contained neutral hydrophilic as well as ionizable ion exchange sites. Evaluation of spectral data obtained from Fourier transform Infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and ¹H Nuclear magnetic resonance helped in identifying and confirming the chemical structure of copolymers. Characterization of copolymers by gel permeation chromatography revealed high molecular weight with moderate polydispersity index. Analysis of thermal stability and glass transition temperature of copolymers by thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry were found in between corresponding homopolymers. Physicochemical properties of PVA-co-SSA can be beneficial for prospective advanced application in the niche area of smart membrane technology for energy and environment.     

An Unexpected Role of Hyaluronic Acid in Trafficking siRNA Across the Cellular Barrier: The First Biomimetic,Anionic, Non‐Viral Transfection Method

Circulating nucleic acids, such as short interfering RNA (siRNA), regulate many biological processes; however, the mechanism by which these molecules enter the cell is poorly understood. The role of extracellular‐matrix‐derived polymers in binding siRNAs and trafficking them across the plasma membrane is reported. Thermal melting, dynamic light scattering, scanning electron microscopy, and computational analysis indicate that hyaluronic acid can stabilize siRNA via hydrogen bonding and Van der Waals interactions. This stabilization facilitated HA size‐ and concentration‐dependent gene silencing in a CD44‐positive human osteosarcoma cell line (MG‐63) and in human mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSCs). This native HA‐based siRNA transfection represents the first report on an anionic, non‐viral delivery method that resulted in approximately 60 % gene knockdown in both cell types tested, which correlated with a reduction in translation levels.     

Organization of microscale objects using a microfabricated optical fiber

We demonstrate the use of a single fiber-optic axicon device for organization of microscopic objects using longitudinal optical binding. Further, by manipulating the shape of the fiber tip, part of the emanating light was made to undergo total internal reflection in the conical tip region, enabling near-field trapping. Near-field trapping resulted in trapping and self-organization of long chains of particles along azimuthal directions (in contrast to the axial direction, observed in the case of large tip cone angle far-field trapping).     

Structural ordering and phase behavior of charged microgels

Recent theoretical phase diagrams for loosely cross-linked ionic microgels with a low monomer volume fraction (Gottwald; et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2004, 92 , 068301 ) have predicted a re-entrant order-disorder transition (i.e., fluid-FCC-BCC-fluid) as a function of concentration and so far there has been no experimental verifications of these theoretical predictions. Here, we present experimental results on phase behavior of loosely cross-linked charged poly(N-isopropylacrylamide co acrylic acid) (PNIPAm-co-AAc) microgesls with a low monomer volume fraction (approximately 0.003) for a wide range of concentrations (0.02-0.6 wt %) using static and dynamic light scattering methods. These microgel dispersions exhibit a short-range liquid order at low concentration (<0.03 wt %), a FCC crystalline order at intermediate concentrations (0.03- 0.3 wt %). In addition, we suggested a possible coexistence of BCC and FCC phases at higher concentration crystalline suspension (approximately 0.34 wt %). These results clearly demonstrate the experimental verification of above theoretical prediction below the overlap concentration and also reveal that the interaction potential between the microgel particles is of screened Coulomb repulsive type within these concentration ranges. At further higher concentration (approximately 0.57 wt %), we once again observed a disordered state and this disordered state from dynamic light scattering was confirmed to be a glass. These initial results are discussed in the light of previously reported results on the phase behavior of ionic microgel colloidal dispersions.     

Parametric analysis of surfactant-aided imbibition in fractured carbonates

Many carbonate oil reservoirs are oil-wet and fractured; waterflood recovery is very low. Dilute surfactant solution injection into the fractures can improve oil production from the matrix by altering the wettability of the rock to a water-wetting state. A 2D, two-phase, multicomponent, finite-volume, fully-implicit numerical simulator calibrated with our laboratory results is used to assess the sensitivity of the process to wettability alteration, IFT reduction, oil viscosity, surfactant diffusivity, matrix block dimensions, and permeability heterogeneity. Capillarity drives the oil production at the early stage, but gravity is the major driving force afterwards. Surfactants which alter the wettability to a water-wet regime give higher recovery rates for higher IFT systems. Surfactants which cannot alter wettability give higher recovery for lower IFT systems. As the wettability alteration increases the rate of oil recovery increases. Recovery rate decreases with permeability significantly for a low tension system, but only mildly for high tension systems. Increasing the block dimensions and increasing oil viscosity decreases the rate of oil recovery and is in accordance with the scaling group for a gravity driven process. Heterogeneous layers in a porous medium can increase or decrease the rate of oil recovery depending on the permeability and the aspect ratio of the matrix block.     

Facile synthesis methodology and characterization studies of silica-decorated hybridized anisotropic nanotubes and nanosheets

Carbonaceous nanomaterials and their derivatives have been inspired tremendous enthusiasm in the scientific community. They have been excogitated as the encouraging attributes and the qualified dispersed phase to develop multi-functional composites. Particularly, graphene and carbon nanotube (anisotropic fillers) have gained substantial research interest owing to their promising characteristics. This highlights an innovative technique to synthesize hybridized nanotube and nanosheet. Initially, parent materials have been synthesized: The pristine CNT has been modified by acid mixture solution, and reduced graphene oxide has been prepared by chemical reduction method. Henceforth, the self-assembly in situ sol–gel technique has been endorsed here. The synthesized nanohybrids have been characterized by different spectroscopic techniques: FTIR, Raman, UV, and XPS to confirm the attachment of multifunctionalities; meanwhile, the composition and stability have been investigated from XRD and TGA plots. The magnitude of surface charge and particle size distribution have been evaluated for the parent and hybridized products; further, morphology of all the samples has been authenticated from FESEM and TEM.     

Inverse acoustical characterization of natural jute sound absorbing material by the particle swarm optimization method

For modeling of jute as acoustic material, knowledge of its non-acoustical parameters like porosity, tortuosity, air flow resistivity, thermal and viscous characteristic lengths is a prime requisite. Measurement of these non-acoustical parameters is not straightforward and involves a dedicated measurement setup. So in order to overcome this issue, the inverse acoustical characterization can be used. In this paper, the particle swarm optimization method (PSO) is used as an optimization method. This method estimates the non-acoustical parameters of jute material in felt form by minimizing the error between experimental and theoretical sound absorption data. In this work, the impedance prediction models for fibrous materials like Johnson–Champoux–Allard model with rigid and limp frame and Garai–Pompoli model is used for sound absorption coefficient calculation by the transfer matrix method along with the PSO. The inverse estimated non-acoustical parameters for jute material are then compared with estimated and experimentally measured parameters for jute felts. Using these inversely predicted parameters, sound absorption of multilayer sound absorbers is also studied.