A solvent-free method for the fabrication of thermally conductive epoxy-boron nitride (BN) nanoplatelet composite material is developed in this study. By this method, polymer composites with nearly any filler fractions can be easily fabricated. The maximum thermal conductivity reaches 5.24 W/mK, which is 1,600% improvement in comparison with that of pristine epoxy material. In addition, the as-...

Obtaining device parameters of thermal microsensors is essential for evaluating their performances and simulation modeling. We report an ac electrical method for extracting these parameters experimentally with relatively simple instrumentation. The basic parameters of resistive microsensors, the resistance, temperature coefficient of resistance, thermal capacitance, and conductance, are derivab...

As part of sustainable architecture principles and practices, designers need to define building's architectural requirements based on climatic conditions, environmental preservation and reduction in energy consumption. The natural energy sources such as solar radiation affect thermal and lighting performances of buildings depending on its facade characteristics. Traditionally, buildings thermal...

We report an in situ thermal study of Yb-doped fluorite crystals Yb:CaF(2) and Yb:SrF(2) under high power pumping, with or without laser operation. The experiment combines simultaneously thermography and measurement of the thermal aberrations. This setup allows us to measure temperature gradients, thermal lens, and absorption coefficients. From these measurements, we evaluate the thermal conduc...

The problem of determining the optimal hourly generation in hydrothermal power plants and total thermal generation is studied. A multi reservoir cascaded hydro-electric system with a non-linear relationship between water discharge rate, net head and power generation is considered. PSO technique has been motivated by the behavior of the organisms such as fish schooling and bird flocking. The ind...

Photovoltaic based reverse osmosis desalination systems (PV/RO) present an effective method of water desalination especially in remote areas. The increase of the feed water temperature leads to an amelioration of the plant performances. Photovoltaic Thermal Collector (PV/T) represents an ideal power source as it provides both electric and thermal energies for the reverse osmosis process. Nevert...

In this paper infrared (IR) measurements and dedicated signal processing algorithms were developed and applied for defect detection on green ceramic tiles. Tiles with defects having known dimension and position were realized and tested by acquiring either heating and cooling transients of the tile subjected to thermal pulse excitation. As rarely defects appear directly in the thermal map, post-...

Performances of four related techniques i.e., photoacoustic spectroscopy, photothermal deflection, thermal lensing, and photothermal phase shift spectroscopy have been compared to the conventional beam transmittance spectrophotometry. This concerns to the analytical potential in studies of environmental pollutants. Solutions of pesticides in water are used as specimens in this study. Spectropho...