Lignosulfonate and lignosulfonate hydrolyzed under alkaline conditions were used as the polyol components in polyurethane foam formulations. Although the treatment increased hydroxyl group abundance, it did not improve the applicability of hydrolyzed lignosulfonate in polyurethane foam. Thus, the use of original lignosulfonate yielded foams of thermal stability and mechanical properties compara...

The mechanical behaviour of a new type of open-cell foam made by a thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) process was investigated. Foams made by the TIPS process are characterized by cell sizes which are 10-100 times smaller than conventional foam materials. In this work, the linear elastic modulus of these foams in dynamic tension/compression was measured. A comparison was made with the th...

Although trachea! tube cuffs are well known to injure the trachea, attempts to design safer cuff systems have been only partially successful. In 14 dogs, we compared three models of high residual volume, low pressure cuffs, which are considered to be among the safest. Two were air-filled cuffs —a maintained pressure cuff and a balloon reser voir cuff —and the third was foam-filled. Trachea!...

The paper presents the required parameters in the evaluation of the technical state for the High Voltage (HV) circuit breakers. It details some aspects regarding the influence of the kinematics characteristics to the circuit breakers performances. Also, it presents a possibility to use the artificial neural networks (ANN) in the analysis of the circuit breakers kinematics characteristics, in or...

3D printing of polymeric foams by direct-ink-write is a recent technological breakthrough that enables the creation of versatile compressible solids with programmable microstructure, customizable shapes, and tunable mechanical response including negative elastic modulus. However, in many applications the success of these 3D printed materials as a viable replacement for traditional stochastic fo...

Evaluating periodontal tissue condition is an important diagnostic parameter in periodontal disease. Noncontact electromagnetic vibration device (NEVD) was previously developed to monitor this condition using mechanical parameters. However, this system requires accelerometer on the target tooth. This study assessed application of laser displacement sensor (LDS) to NEVD without accelerometer usi...

The design, application and evaluation of a specialized, personal computer-based manufacturing system for contouring foam cushions is presented. The topics discussed include both the hardware configuration and the software design. The target applications of this device are local or centralized fabrication of custom-contoured seat cushions. Although the technologies used for the development and ...

Metals foams are attracting great interest in aerospace, automotive and military fields. Particularly, the closed-cells aluminum characterized by peculiar properties, such as low specific weight coupled with high energy absorption capacity, stiffness strength reduced thermal electrical conductivity. For above reasons, can be effectively used core of sandwich structures, replacing traditional ho...