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Full-Text Articles in Materials Science and Engineering

Direct Solar Absorption Nanoparticle Doped Membranes For A Hybrid Membrane Distillation And Photovoltaic Cell, Alejandro Espejo Sanchez Dec 2020

Direct Solar Absorption Nanoparticle Doped Membranes For A Hybrid Membrane Distillation And Photovoltaic Cell, Alejandro Espejo Sanchez

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The growing demand for clean water supplies is driving the need for an innovative approach of water desalination. Developing a method for treating water with high salinities is possible with membrane distillation (MD). Additionally, MD is very attractive for pairing with solar energy due to the low temperature requirements. The integration of a membrane distillation system with a photovoltaic (PV) system will result in the co-production of electricity and clean water, thereby improving the economics of MD. Such a hybrid system will directly absorb thermal energy in the membrane for desalination while taking advantage of the spectrally selective nature of …


General-Purpose Coarse-Grained Toughened Thermoset Model For 44dds/Dgeba/Pes, Michael M. Henry, Stephen Thomas, Mone’T Alberts, Carla E. Estridge, Brittan Farmer, Olivia Mcnair, Eric Jankowski Nov 2020

General-Purpose Coarse-Grained Toughened Thermoset Model For 44dds/Dgeba/Pes, Michael M. Henry, Stephen Thomas, Mone’T Alberts, Carla E. Estridge, Brittan Farmer, Olivia Mcnair, Eric Jankowski

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The objective of this work is to predict the morphology and material properties of crosslinking polymers used in aerospace applications. We extend the open-source dybond plugin for HOOMD-Blue to implement a new coarse-grained model of reacting epoxy thermosets and use the 44DDS/DGEBA/PES system as a case study for calibration and validation. We parameterize the coarse-grained model from atomistic solubility data, calibrate reaction dynamics against experiments, and check for size-dependent artifacts. We validate model predictions by comparing glass transition temperatures measurements at arbitrary degree of cure, gel-points, and morphology predictions against experiments. We demonstrate for the first time in molecular simulations …


New Methods For Understanding And Controlling The Self-Assembly Of Reacting Systems Using Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics, Stephen Thomas Aug 2018

New Methods For Understanding And Controlling The Self-Assembly Of Reacting Systems Using Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics, Stephen Thomas

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This research aims at developing new computational methods to understand the molecular self-assembly of reacting systems whose complex structures depend on the thermodynamics of mixing, reaction kinetics, and diffusion kinetics. The specific reacting system examined in this study is epoxy, cured with linear chain thermoplastic tougheners whose complex microstructure is known from experiments to affect mechanical properties and to be sensitive to processing conditions. Mesoscale simulation techniques have helped to bridge the length and time scales needed to predict the microstructures of cured epoxies, but the prohibitive computational cost of simulating experimentally relevant system sizes has limited their impact. In …