An analytical method for the determination of stress and strain concentrations in textile-reinforced GF/PP composites with elliptical cutout and a finite outer boundary and its numerical verification

Stress concentrations in the vicinity of cutouts can often be regarded to be the limiting factor for a whole structure. As a further development of prior research at the Institute of Lightweight Engineering and Polymer Technology, an analytical method for the determination of the whole stress-strain fields in the vicinity of holes in multilayered textile-reinforced composites has been developed, which takes into consideration the influences of a finite outer boundary of the specimen. The analytical method is based on the classical laminate theory and the use of complex-valued potential functions. To account for the shape of the specimen, the method of conformal mappings is applied for the inner boundary, while a combination of boundary collocation and least squares method is used for the outer boundary. The method allows a layer-by-layer analysis of stress concentrations. For the verification of the developed calculation model, extensive experimental and numerical finite-element (FE) studies have been carried out on multilayered GF/PP plates with different laminate layups, notches, and specimen dimensions. The comparison of the experimentally or numerically determined results with the analytically calculated ones shows a very good correlation, of which the numerical studies are presented here for the first time. In a second step, the applicable boundary conditions on the outer boundary have been extended in such a way that varying stress and moment resultants can be applied, so that the calculation method can be used as an analytical sub-model in combination with FE techniques.     

Furazan-containing bromoarenes in the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction

The palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions of 3-[bromo(het)aryl]furazans and bromobenzofurazans with arylboronic acids afford target biaryls in good yields. 3-Bromo-4-phenylfurazan containing a bromine atom in the furazan ring undergoes decomposition under the reaction conditions.     

Calorimetric determination of the effect of additives on cement hydration process

Possibilities of a multicell isoperibolic-semiadiabatic calorimeter application for the measurement of hydration heat and maximum temperature reached in mixtures of various compositions during their setting and early stages of hardening are presented. Measurements were aimed to determine the impact of selected components?? content on the course of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) hydration. The following components were selected for the determination of the hydration behaviour in mixtures: very finely ground granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS), silica fume (microsilica, SF), finely ground quartz sand (FGQ), and calcined bauxite (CB). A commercial polycarboxylate type superplasticizer was also added to the selected mixtures. All maximum temperatures measured for selected mineral components were lower than that reached for cement. The maximum temperature increased with the decreasing amount of components in the mixture for all components except for silica fume. For all components, except for CB, the values of total released heat were higher than those for pure Portland cement samples.     

Current trends in the computational modelling of polyoxometalates

Computational chemistry applied to the study of polyoxometalates has achieved its maturity in the last years. During two decades, important advances have been made using theoretical tools in the comprehension and interpretation of many relevant issues. In the present mini-review, we want to stress that different techniques have been incorporated to the routine of computation: from the very first Hartree?CFock LCAO-SCF calculation on the decavanadate anion, followed by numerous density functional theory?Cbased studies on increasingly complex systems, also applying correlated ab initio techniques for magnetism and, more recently, using molecular dynamics to analyse properties in liquid media, the information provided by computational chemistry gets more and more relevant.     

Theoretical study of the role of solvent Stark effect in electron transitions

The possible influence of the solvent Stark effect (SSE) on the solvatochromic shift in electron transitions has been analyzed by using the ASEP/MD (averaged solvent electrostatic potential from molecular dynamics) method. With this purpose, four molecules, two polar (acrolein and formaldehyde) and two non-polar (p-difluorobenzene and trans-difluoroethene) have been studied in solvents of diverse polarity. Independently of the nature of the system we found that the contribution of SSE on the average value of the solvent shift or on the multipole moment values is negligible. In the case of centro-symmetric molecules, our results permit to discard the SSE as cause of the solvent shift found, which must be assigned to the electrostatic interaction of the solute quadrupole and higher multipoles with the solvent. As the SSE values provide also a measure of the errors introduced by the mean field approximation (MFA), these results indicate that MFA permits a very accurate determination of the solvent shift at the same time that it reduces drastically the computational cost. Finally, a new procedure suited to the ASEP/MD method has been presented that permits to estimate the inhomogeneous broadening of spectral bands, complementing the information provided by mean field theories. This procedure does not need additional quantum calculations and its computational cost is minimal.     

A Characterization of L-orthogonal Polynomials from?Three Term Recurrence Relations

We consider the sequence of polynomials {Q _n } satisfying the L-orthogonality ?[z ^?n+m Q _n (z)]=0, 0??m??n?1, with respect to a linear functional ? for which the moments ?[t ⁿ ]=?? _n are all complex. Under certain restriction on the moment functional these polynomials also satisfy a three term recurrence relation. We consider three special classes of such moment functionals and characterize them in terms of the coefficients of the associated three term recurrence relations. Relations between the polynomials {Q _n } associated with two of these special classes of moment functionals are also given. Examples are provided to justify this characterization.     

Pore Characterization Methodology by Means of Capillary Sorption Tests

In this study, a methodology is proposed for obtaining information about the porous structure of materials by analysing data supplied by a hydric absorption test. A model of vertical cylindrical pores is used for studying the variation of absorbed mass versus time. The proposed methodology requires an estimation of the numerical interval in which the radius distribution must be calculated and a minimum amount of experimental data. The experimental tests are developed with a system, designed and built in our laboratory, that allows capture the amount of data necessary to use the calculus methodology proposed. This methodology is based on the derivative of normalized mass in relation to the square root of time of the capillary absorption tests. The simplicity and low cost, in many cases, of the capillary absorption tests compared to other experimental techniques such as mercury porosimetry or SEM, make it feasible to design a simple methodology to obtain valuable information about the structure of a porous material, pore size distribution, and tortuosity factor.     

Kinetics and dynamics study of the H + CCl4?��?HCl(v��, j��)?+?CCl3 reaction

Based on a previous potential energy surface describing the H?+?CCl₄ reaction, a new analytical surface named PES-2010 was developed modifying both the functional form to give it more flexibility, and the calibration process in which exclusively theoretical information was used. Thus, the surface is completely symmetric with respect to the permutation of the four methane chlorine atoms, and no experimental information is used in the process. For the kinetics, the thermal rate constants were calculated using variational transition-state theory with semiclassical transmission coefficients over a wide temperature range, 300?C2,500?K. The theoretical results reproduce the experimental variation with temperature. The influence of the tunneling factor is small, since the abstraction reaction involves the motion of a heavy particle (a chlorine atom) that cannot easily tunnel through the reaction barrier. The coupling between the reaction coordinate and the vibrational modes shows qualitatively that the HCl stretching mode in the products appears vibrationally excited. The dynamics study was performed using quasi-classical trajectory calculations, including corrections to avoid the zero-point energy problem. First, we found that the HCl(????, j??) product mostly appears with small rotational energy and vibrational population inversion. Second, the state-specific scattering distributions show backward scattering, which becomes more noticeable as the HCl(????) vibrational state increases. Unfortunately, no experimental dynamics data are available for the title reaction, but the comparison with the kinematically similar and well-studied H?+?Cl₂ reaction shows good agreement, indicative of similar mechanisms. These kinetics and dynamics results seem to indicate that the potential energy surface is adequate to describe this reaction, and the reasonable agreement with experiment lends further confidence to this new surface.     

Uniform Estimates for the Fourier Transform of Surface Carried Measures in ?3 and an Application to Fourier Restriction

Let S be a hypersurface in \BbbR³{\Bbb{R}}^{3} which is the graph of a smooth, finite type function φ, and let μ=ρ  dσ be a surface carried measure on S, where dσ denotes the surface element on S and ρ a smooth density with sufficiently small support. We derive uniform estimates for the Fourier transform [^(m)]\hat{\mu} of μ, which are sharp except for the case where the principal face of the Newton polyhedron of φ, when expressed in adapted coordinates, is unbounded. As an application, we prove a sharp L ^p -L ² Fourier restriction theorem for S in the case where the original coordinates are adapted to φ. This improves on earlier joint work with M. Kempe.