Engineering Commons^™

Composite Mechanical Property Enhancement Through The Use Of Y-End Shaped Short Fibers, Jin Tan

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This study uses Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to predict the mechanical property enhancement of the composites reinforced by end-shaped short fibers with different aspect ratios and volume fractions at microscale. Fibers used include conventional straight short fibers (CSSF), dumbbell-end shaped short fibers (DSSF), bone-end shaped short fibers (BSSF) and Y-end shaped short fibers (YSSF) with various lengths and angles. The critical distances between neighboring fiber ends for FEA modeling were theoretically deduced and numerically verified. This study has never been done before and the results fill a gap to this field.

In conclusion, planar-end Y-shaped short fiber reinforced composites showed …

Extension Of Stereolithography Mold Life Using Gas-Assisted Injection Molding, Dilip Bose Ramalingam Nagarajan

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Stereolithography (SL) molds show great promise for injection molding of limited number of parts, greatly reducing the time to product and production cost. However, they present challenges to designers because of their strength, thermal characteristics and shorter lifetimes compared to metal molds. Gas-assisted injection molding (GAIM) has been used to alleviate the problems of distortion and thermal damage. The use of GAIM makes it possible to produce a large number of parts compared to conventional injection molding in epoxy molds with higher quality. In this research solid models of the mold with different part geometry were created using CAD and …

Development Of A Novel Microreactor For Improved Chemical Reaction Conversion, Yu Liang

Doctoral Dissertations

Microreactors have been widely studied over the past two decades for different chemical reactions, to develop new analytical capabilities, and to obtain high mixing performance in the reactors. The main objectives of this work are to investigate the effect of different microchannel structures on the fluid properties and mixing behavior in microreactors, and to design, fabricate, and test a novel microreactor for higher conversion in a chemical reaction. The development of this novel microreactor is intended to provide a valuable guideline in achieving enhanced chemical mixing and to make available a solid research base for optimization of the yield of …