Engineering Commons^™

Characterization Of 3d Printed Polylactic Acid/ Polycaprolactone/Titanium Dioxide Composites For Bone Replacement And Grafting, Sandra Elena Najera Beltran

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A material that mimics the properties of bones was developed by optimizing the ratio of polymer composites of polylactic acid (PLA) and poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL), containing small amounts of titanium oxide (TiO2). Although titanium-based alloys have commonly been used for bone replacement procedures due to their biocompatibility with the human body and their mechanical properties, stress shielding continues to be a problem. The structure of a bone has a porosity which permits the flow of nutrients, blood, oxygen and minerals, and is an issue at the time of creating bone replacements using conventional methods. PLA and PCL have been used in …

Bragg Gratings In Polarization Maintaining Optical Fiber As Three Dimensional Strain Sensor, Joel Quintana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Fiber-Bragg Gratings (FBG) for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) have been studied extensively as they offer electrically passive operation, electromagnetic interference (EMI) immunity, high sensitivity and multiplexing as compared to conventional electric strain sensors. FBG sensors written within polarization maintaining (PM) optical fiber offer ad- ditional dimensions of strain measurement, greatly reducing the number of sensors needed to properly monitor a structure. This reduction however, adds complexity to the dis- crimination of the sensorâ??s optical response to its corresponding applied strains. This Dissertation defines the set of algorithms needed to measure planar strain using PM-FBGs exclusively. It defines the minimum number …

Study Of Materials And Machines For 3d Printed Large-Scale, Flexible Electronic Structures Using Fused Deposition Modeling, Seyeon Hwang

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The 3 dimensional printing (3DP), called to additive manufacturing (AM) or rapid prototyping (RP), is emerged to revolutionize manufacturing and completely transform how products are designed and fabricated. A great deal of research activities have been carried out to apply this new technology to a variety of fields. In spite of many endeavors, much more research is still required to perfect the processes of the 3D printing techniques especially in the area of the large-scale additive manufacturing and flexible printed electronics.

The principles of various 3D printing processes are briefly outlined in the Introduction Section. New types of thermoplastic polymer …