Thermal techniques to study complex elastomer/filler systems

The transfer of heat through an elastomeric matrix is important for both the processing of the material and its subsequent lifetime. Thermal conductivity can be used to evaluate the influence of different polymers and fillers on heat transfer. Additionally, the dispersion of the filler has an effect on heat transfer and thermal conductivity measurements can be used to provide semi-quantitative estimations of filler dispersion. The degradation of sulfur-crosslinked elastomer systems has been studied for many years. The degradation of the crosslinks (changes in sulfur rank) and degradation of the polymer backbone by thermal and/or oxidative processes have been studied extensively using many techniques including thermal analysis (references). However, the degradation of the crosslinked-polymer 'network' is less well understood. The relationship of the crosslink network to this degradation process is a key to both the long term and higher temperature performance of the sulfur-crosslinked elastomer. The changes in physical properties observed upon exposure of sulfur-crosslinked elastomers can be monitored using dynamic mechanical analysis. Subsequently, other thermal techniques can be used to monitor the chemistry that is occurring during these degradations. Thermal desorption/mass spectroscopy and dynamic scanning calorimetry are used to complete the picture of the degradation processes taking place. Examples of these techniques will be provided to illustrate the utility of the analytical approach, the chemistry involved in these degradation processes and the effect of changes in the polymer, cure package and other ingredients. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A new approach for the derivation of bounds for the Jensen difference

There are many useful applications of Jensen's inequality in several fields of science, and due to this reason, a lot of results are devoted to this inequality in the literature. The main theme of this article is to present a new method of finding estimates of the Jensen difference for differentiable functions. By applying definition of convex function, and integral Jensen's inequality for concave function in the identity pertaining the Jensen difference, we derive bounds for the Jensen difference. We present integral version of the bounds in Riemann sense as well. The sharpness of the proposed bounds through examples are discussed, and we conclude that the proposed bounds are better than some existing bounds even with weaker conditions. Also, we present some new variants of the Hermite–Hadamard and Hölder inequalities and some new inequalities for geometric, quasi-arithmetic, and power means. Finally, we give some applications in information theory.     

Decay rates of energy of the 1D damped original nonlinear wave equation

We consider the decay rate of energy of the 1D damped original nonlinear wave equation. We first construct a new energy function. Then, employing the perturbed energy method and the generalized Young’s inequality, we prove that, with a general growth assumption on the nonlinear damping force near the origin, the decay rate of energy is governed by a dissipative ordinary differential equation. This allows us to recover the classical exponential, polynomial, or logarithmic decay rate for the linear, polynomial or exponentially degenerating damping force near the origin, respectively. Unlike the linear wave equation, the exponential decay rate constant depends on the initial data, due to the nonlinearity.     

Minimax principles for elliptic mixed hemivariational–variational inequalities

In this paper, minimax principles are explored for elliptic mixed hemivariational–variational inequalities. Under certain conditions, a saddle-point formulation is shown to be equivalent to a mixed hemivariational–variational inequality. While the minimax principle is of independent interest, it is employed in this paper to provide an elementary proof of the solution existence of the mixed hemivariational–variational inequality. Theoretical results are illustrated in the applications of two contact problems.     

Leray–Hopf solutions to a viscoelastoplastic fluid model with nonsmooth stress–strain relation

We consider a fluid model including viscoelastic and viscoplastic effects. The state is given by the fluid velocity and an internal stress tensor that is transported along the flow with the Zaremba–Jaumann derivative. Moreover, the stress tensor obeys a nonlinear and nonsmooth dissipation law as well as stress diffusion. We prove the existence of global-in-time weak solutions satisfying an energy inequality under general Dirichlet conditions for the velocity field and Neumann conditions for the stress tensor.     

Rearrangement Free Method for Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev Inequalities on $\mathbb{S}^n$

For conformal Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev(HLS) inequalities [22] and reversed conformal HLS inequalities [8] on $\mathbb{S}^n,$ a new proof is given for the attainability of their sharp constants. Classical methods used in [22] and [8] depends on rearrangement inequalities. Here, we use the subcritical approach to construct the extremal sequence and circumvent the blow-up phenomenon by renormalization method. The merit of the method is that it does not rely on rearrangement inequalities.     

Regularity of Viscosity Solutions of the Biased Infinity Laplacian Equation

In this paper, we are interested in the regularity estimates of the nonnegative viscosity super solution of the $β$−biased infinity Laplacian equation $$∆^β_∞u = 0,$$ where $β ∈ \mathbb{R}$ is a fixed constant and $∆^β_∞u := ∆^N_∞u + β|Du|,$ which arises from the random game named biased tug-of-war. By studying directly the $β$−biased infinity Laplacian equation, we construct the appropriate exponential cones as barrier functions to establish a key estimate. Based on this estimate, we obtain the Harnack inequality, Hopf boundary point lemma, Lipschitz estimate and the Liouville property etc.     

Molecular dynamics of cyclic and linear poly(dimethylsiloxanes)

Dielectric spectroscopy (10^–1 Hz to 10⁷ Hz) has been employed to study the molecular dynamics of a series of cyclic and linear polydimethylsiloxanes (PDMS) of various molecular weights ranging from 300 to 10 000 g/mol in the temperature range above the glass transition (from 130 K to 190 K). The observed -relaxation depends strongly on both molecular weight and structure of the samples. For linear PDMS oligomers, the -relaxation shifts towards lower temperatures with decreasing molecular weight in good accordance with the Fox-Flory-model. Cyclic PDMS reveals a qualitatively different molecular weight dependence: for a given temperature the -relaxation time increases with decreasing ring length, but has a maximum for small oligomers (degree of polymerizationn6). The shape of relaxation curves and, with it, the relaxation time distribution is independent from length and architecture of the chains The observed experimental findings are in qualitative agreement with dynamic Monte-Carlo simulations.Dedicated to Prof. E.W. Fischer on the occasion of his 65th birthday Fast macht' das WLF ihn krank, jetzt raucht er wieder, Gott sei Dank! (frei nach Wilhelm Busch)     

Dynamic structure factor in a random diffusion model

Let {X _t:0} denote random walk in the random waiting time model, i.e., simple random walk with jump ratew ^–1(X _t), where {w(x):x^d} is an i.i.d. random field. We show that (under some mild conditions) theintermediate scattering function F(q,t)=E ₀ (q^d) is completely monotonic int (E ₀ denotes double expectation w.r.t. walk and field). We also show that thedynamic structure factor S(q, w)=2 ₀ cos(t)F(q, t) exists for 0 and is strictly positive. Ind=1, 2 it diverges as 1/||^1/2, resp. –ln(||), in the limit 0; ind3 its limit value is strictly larger than expected from hydrodynamics. This and further results support the conclusion that the hydrodynamic region is limited to smallq and small such that ||D |q|², whereD is the diffusion constant.