Imperfection sensitivity of mechanical properties in soft network materials with horseshoe microstructures

Developments of soft network materials with rationally distributed wavy microstructures have enabled many promising applications in bio-integrated electronic devices,due to their abilities to reproduce precisely nonlinear mechanical properties of human tissues/organs.In practical applications,the soft network materials usually serve as the encapsulation layer and/or substrate of bio-integrated electronic devices,where deterministic holes can be utilized to accommodate hard chips,thereby increasing the filling ratio of the device system.Therefore,it is essential to understand how the hole-type imperfection affects the stretchability of soft network materialswith various geometric constructions.Thiswork presents a systematic investigation of the imperfection sensitivity of mechanical properties in soft network materials consisting of horseshoe microstructures,through combined computational and experimental studies.A factor of imperfection insensitivity of stretchability is introduced to quantify the influence of hole imperfections,as compared to the case of perfect soft network materials.Such factor is shown to have different dependences on the arc angle and normalized width of horseshoe microstructures for triangular network materials.The soft triangular and Kagome network materials,especially with the arc angle in the range of(30?,60?),are found to be much more imperfection insensitive than corresponding traditional lattice materials with straight microstructures.Differently,the soft honeycomb network materials are not as imperfection insensitive as traditional honeycomb lattice materials.

Surface-tailored PtPdCu ultrathin nanowires as advanced electrocatalysts for ethanol oxidation and oxygen reduction reaction in direct ethanol fuel cell

The development of advanced electrocatalysts for efficient catalyzing ethanol oxidation reaction(EOR)and oxygen reduction reaction(ORR) is significant for direct ethanol fuel cells(DEFCs).However,in many previous studies,the major difficulties including lower utilization efficiency and weaker anti-CO-poison ability of Pt hamper the practical testing of such DEFCs,Herein,ternary Pt22Pd27C51 ultrathin(~5 nm)NWs are fabricated via a facile surfactant-free strategy.The surface and electronic structures of Pt22Pd27Cu51 NWs are further tailored via acid-etching treatment.The resulted PtPdCu NWs with an optimal atomic Pt/Pd/Cu ratio of 36:41:23 display excellent specific activities towards EOR(4.38 mA/cm^(2))and ORR(1.16 mA/cm^(2)),which are 19.8-and 5.7-folds larger than that of Pt/C,respectively.A singlecell was fabricated using Pt36Pd41Cu23 NWs as electrocatalyst in both anode and cathode with Pt loading of 1.2 mgpt/cm^(2).The power density measured at 80 ℃ is 21.7 mW/cm^(2),which is ~3.9 folds enhancement relative to that fabricated by using Pt/C(2 mgPt/cm^(2)).The enhanced catalytic performance of Pt36Pd41Cu23NWs could be attributed to that synergistic effect between Pt,Pd and Cu enhances CO anti-poisoning ability and promotes the C-C bond cleavage.This work provides a promising strategy for developing efficient electrocatalysts for DEFCs.

INTEGRATED LAYOUT DESIGN OF CELLS AND FLOW PATHS

The integrated layout problem in manufacturing Systems is investigated. Anintegrated model for Concurrent layout design of cells and flow paths is formulated. A hybridapproach combined an enhanced branch-and-bound algorithm with a simulated annealing scheme isproposed to solve this problem. The integrated layout method is applied to re-layout the gear pumpshop of a medium-size manufacturer of hydraulic pieces. Results show that the proposed layout methodcan concurrently provide good solutions of the cell layouts and the flow path layouts.

Optimization of clay material mixture ratio and filling process in gypsum mine goaf

Because there is neither waste rock nor mill tailings in the gypsum mine, and the buildings on the goaf of gypsum mine are needed to be protected, the research proposed the scheme of the clay filling technology. Gypsum, cement, lime and water glass were used as adhesive, and the strength of different material ratios were investigated in this study. The influence factors of clay strength were obtained in the order of cement, gypsum, water glass and lime. The results show that the cement content is the determinant influence factor, and gypsum has positive effects, while the water glass can enhance both clay strength and the fluidity of the filing slurry. Furthermore, combining chaotic optimization method with neural network, the optimal ratio of composite cementing agent was obtained. The results show that the optimal ratio of water glass, cement, lime and clay (in quality) is 1.17:6.74:4.17:87.92 in the process of bottom self-flow filling, while the optimal ratio is 1.78:9.58:4.71:83.93 for roof-contacted filling. A novel filling process to fill in gypsum mine goaf with clay is established. The engineering practice shows that the filling cost is low, thus, notable economic benefit is achieved.