Super-absorbent swellable polymer as grouting material for treatment of karst water inrush

Grouting is the most commonly used method to control water inrush in underground engineering.Traditional cement-based materials are easy to dilute and hard to coagulate under the influence of large flow and high-velocity water inrush.To address these deficiencies,a new type of polymer grouting material with an excellent expansion ratio was synthesised.The material quickly absorbs water and has an expansion ratio of 1:300.The material is composed of a superabsorbent polymer(SAP),glycerol,and ethanol.The effects of water quality on the expansion ratio and expansion rate of the material were examined,and the best solid–liquid ratio for the slurry was determined by fluidity measurements.A karst specially designed pipeline water inrush test device showed that 800 g of SAP can achieve 0.6 m/s water flow blockage in the smooth pipeline,demonstrating that the ability of the SAP slurry to block water inrush is superior to those of other materials.This study provides a reference for water inrush plugging,and has important implications for the reduction and control of karst pipeline-type water inrush disasters,ensuring the safety of construction sites and preventing loss of life and damage to property.

Development of EPDM composites reinforced by CNTs@SiO_(2)for thermal protection systems of aerospace propulsion:Significant improvement in oxidation and ablation resistance properties

Carbon Nanotubes(CNTs)reinforced Polymer-Matrix Composites(PMCs)is widely used as insulation materials in thermal protection system of aerospace propulsion.However,CNTs are prone to oxidation and have high thermal conductivities,which makes it difficult to improve the ablation resistance of insulation materials that contain CNTs.SiO_(2)was encapsulated onto the surface of CNTs(CNTs@SiO_(2)),which were then added to Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer(EPDM)rubber to prepare the insulation materials.Thermogravimetric analysis and ablation test were used to evaluate the resistance of the insulation materials to thermal oxidation and ablation.Additionally,scanning electron microscopy was performed to analyze their microstructures.Results revealed that the addition of CNTs@SiO_(2)could visibly reduce the effects of hot corrosion and ablation on insulation materials.The C-CNTs@SiO_(2)-1 formulation had the best ablative resistance.Further,compared with the unencapsulated formulation(C-CNTs-10),the C-CNTs@SiO_(2)-1 formulation reduced the line ablation rate by 51%to 0.0130 mm/s after oxygen-acetylene experiments.Lastly,the ablation mechanism was investigated based on the effects of the CNTs@SiO_(2)additive on their properties.Thus,the improvement in ablation performance may be attributed to CNTs@SiO_(2)-induced decreases in thermal conductivity,improvement in the hot corrosion resistance in the char layer,and changes in the microstructure.

Theoretical and experimental study on the rheological properties of WIS grout and the dispersion and sealing mechanism

Recently a new grout material called water inflow sealing(WIS) was invented for sealing water inflow in tunneling and underground constructions. In this study, a special experimental method called intubated counter grouting(ICG) was proposed to investigate the influence of water dispersion on the rheological properties of the grout during the grouting process, and to testify the sealing performance of the grout,such as instant gelling ability(IGA) and anti-dispersion ability(ADA). In the experiment, dispersion was restricted in the downstream of the channel with a high turbulence intensity. The influences of ADA and IGA were therefore decoupled and evaluated separately. Experimental results revealed two distinctive sealing mechanisms of WIS. For a low initial velocity of water, WIS turned the shear flow of water into an overall movement of a plug by absorbing water into the particles. For a high initial velocity and the situation that the particles reached the outlet before sufficiently expanding, WIS modified the rheology of the water in the channel and reduced its velocity till the static state. The distinctive feature of WIS brings a reformation on the sealing mechanism and provides an effective way to control water inflow with high pressure and velocity.

Model construction and numerical simulation of arterial remodeling after stent implantation with variations of cell concentration

Differences in concentration of molecules can cause different molecular diffusion.This issue has not been well studied in the vascular remodeling process with regards to is-stent restenosis.This study designed and built a model to explore the effect of differences in vascular cell concentration on vascular remodeling.Finite element analysis(FEA)models and the agent-based models(ABMs)were established to simulate the damage and proliferation process of vascular smooth muscle cells(VSMCs)caused by coronary artery stent implantation.The FEA model simulated the expansion of the stent in the coronary artery,the tensile stress was captured and imported into the ABM,and the damaged VSMCs proliferated to reduce their damage level.VSMCs were randomly distributed within a defined domain,and the number of VSMCs in a unit volume(or area)was defined as the concentration of VSMCs.VSMCs with the smallest concentration of VSMCs will preferentially proliferate,which simulates the cell proliferation affected by the concentration of VSMCs.The results showed that after stent implantation,VSMCs proliferated gradually from the severely damaged stent area to the lumen until the artery reached a steady state.By comparison,the loss of arterial lumen and the number of newly grown VSMCs were greater in the presence of the concentration than in its absence.Cells made full use of the lumen space under the influence of concentration differences,so the concentration was of great significance to vascular remodeling.