PREPARATION OF FUNCTIONAL MATERIALS BY BLENDING COPOLYESTERS WITH PVA AND METAL COMPLEX FORMATION OF POLYMER BLENDS

Copolyesters having secondary and tertiary amine salt groups in the main and side chains are prepared by chemoselective polymerization. These copolyesters are soluble in a 10% aqueous solution of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) at 90 degree C and act as plasticizer in the blend films cast from the solution. Only a glass transition temperature is observed for all these blends indicating the formation of compatible blends from these polyesters with PVA. These blends exhibit manifold characteristics such as ionic conductivity, complex formation with metal ions, absorption of moisture and color changes. The electric conductivity of the copolyesters and blends is in the range of 10** minus **6 Scm** minus **1. The blends with PVA forms complexes with Cu**2** plus and Co**2** plus . The coordination structure with two chelate rings is suggested for these polymer blend/metal complexes. (Author abstract) 10 Refs.

Graphics Evolutionary Computations in Higher Order Parametric Bezier Curves

This work demonstrates in practical terms the evolutionary concepts and computational applications of Parametric Curves.Specific cases were drawn from higher order parametric Bezier curves of degrees 2 and above.Bezier curves find real life applications in diverse areas of Engineering and Computer Science,such as computer graphics,robotics,animations,virtual reality,among others.Some of the evolutionary issues explored in this work are in the areas of parametric equations derivations,proof of related theorems,first and second order calculus related computations,among others.A Practical case is demonstrated using a graphical design,physical hand sketching,and programmatic implementation of two opposite-faced handless cups,all evolved using quadratic Bezier curves.The actual drawing was realized using web graphics canvas programming based on HTML 5 and JavaScript.This work will no doubt find relevance in computational researches in the areas of graphics,web programming,automated theorem proofs,robotic motions,among others.

NUAT T-splines of odd bi-degree and local refinement

This paper presents a new kind of spline surfaces, named non-uniform algebraic- trigonometric T-spline surfaces （NUAT T-splines for short） of odd hi-degree. The NUAT T- spline surfaces are defined by applying the T-spline framework to the non-uniform algebraic- trigonometric B-spline surfaces （NUAT B-spline surfaces）. Based on the knot insertion algorithm of the NUAT B-splines, a local refinement algorithm for the NUAT T-splines is given. This algorithm guarantees that the resulting control grid is a T-mesh as the original one. Finally, we prove that, for any NUAT T-spline of odd hi-degree, the linear independence of its blending functions can be determined by computing the rank of the NUAT T-spline-to-NUAT B-spline transformation matrix.

Quadrature Element Vibration Analysis of Arbitrarily Shaped Membranes

The aim of the present study is to develop an efficient weak form quadrature element for free vibration analysis of arbitrarily shaped membranes.The arbitrarily shaped membrane is firstly mapped into a regular domain using blending functions,and the displacement in the element is assumed as the trigonometric functions.Explicit formulations are worked out for nodes of any type and a varying number of nodes.For verifications,results are compared with exact solutions and data obtained by other numerical methods.It is demonstrated that highly accurate frequencies can be obtained with a small number of nodes by present method.

PARACRYSTAL STRUCTURE PARAMETERS STUDIES IN LDPE/EPO BLENDS WITH VARIANCE-RANGE FUNCTION METHOD

X-ray diffraction line profiles of low density polyethylene(LDPE)/ (ethylene-propylene-octene-1)copolymer(EPO)blends have been analyzed with variance range function method.Theories for determining the microparacrystallite size and the distortion parameter from single reflection have been described,and the value of these two parameters at (110)and(200)directions have been determined.

Statistical and Geometrical Way of Model Selection for a Family of Subdivision Schemes

The objective of this article is to introduce a generalized algorithm to produce the m-point n-ary approximating subdivision schemes(for any integer m, n ≥ 2). The proposed algorithm has been derived from uniform B-spline blending functions. In particular, we study statistical and geometrical/traditional methods for the model selection and assessment for selecting a subdivision curve from the proposed family of schemes to model noisy and noisy free data. Moreover, we also discuss the deviation of subdivision curves generated by proposed family of schemes from convex polygonal curve. Furthermore, visual performances of the schemes have been presented to compare numerically the Gibbs oscillations with the existing family of schemes.

Preparation and Characterization of DGEBA/EPN Epoxy Blends with Improved Fracture Toughness

The physical and mechanical properties of blends composed of two kinds of epoxy resins of different numbers of functional groups and chemical structure were studied. One of the resins was a bifunctional epoxy resin based on diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A and the other resin was a multifunctional epoxy novolac resin. Attempt was made to establish a correlation between the structure and the final properties of cured epoxy samples. The blend samples containing high fraction of multifunctional epoxy resin showed higher solvent resistance and lower flexural modulus compared with the blends containing high fraction of bifunctional epoxy resin. The epoxy blends showed significantly higher ductility under bending test than the neat epoxy samples. The compressive modulus and strength increased with increasing of multifunctional epoxy in the samples, probably due to enhanced cross-link density and molecular weight. Morphological analysis revealed the presence of inhomogeneous sub-micrometer structures in all samples. The epoxy blends exhibited significantly higher fracture toughness（by 23% at most） compared with the neat samples. The improvement of the fracture toughness was attributed to the stick-slip mechanism for crack growth and activation of shear yielding and plastic deformation around the crack growth trajectories for samples with higher content of bifunctional epoxy resin as evidenced by fractography study.