Effect of Steel Slag and Granulated Blast-furnace Slag on the Mechanical Strength and Pore Structure of Cement Composites

Reuse of solid industrial wastes is an effective approach to develop low-carbon construction materials. This paper examines how two materials, steel slag（ST） and granulated blast-furnace slag（SL） impact the mechanical performance and pore structure of cement-based systems. Analysis was done on the variations of the porosity, pore size, and pore volume distribution with the curing age and replacement content, and the fractal dimensions of pore surfaces. The results suggested that systems with both supplementary materials had lower early strengths than pure cement, but could generally surpass pure cement paste after 90 d; higher SL content was particularly helpful for boosting the late strengths. The addition of ST increased the porosities and mean pore sizes at each age, and both increased with ST content; SL was helpful for decreasing the system＇s late porosity（especially harmless pores below 20 nm）; The lowest porosity and mean pore size were obtained with 20% SL. Both systems had notably fractal characteristics on pore surfaces, with ST systems showing the highest dimensions at 10% ST, and SL systems at 20% SL. Compressive strength displayed a significant linear increase with fractal dimension.

Processing of a Novel Zn Alloy Micro-Tube for Biodegradable Vascular Stent Application

In recent years, zinc based alloys as a new biodegradable metal material aroused intensive interests. However, the processing of Zn alloys micro-tubes （named slender-diameter and thin-walled tubes） is very difficult due to their HCP crystal structure and unfavorable mechanical properties. This study aimed to develop a novel technique to produce micro-tube of Zn alloy with good performance for biodegrad- able vascular stent application. In the present work, a processing method that combined drilling, cold rolling and optimized drawing was proposed to produce the novel Zn-5Mg-1Fe （wt%） alloy micro- tubes. The micro-tube with outer diameter of 2.5 mm and thickness of 130 μm was fabricated by this method and its dimension errors are within 10 μm. The micro-tube exhibits a fine and homogeneous microstructure, and the ultimate tensile strength and ductility are more than 220 MPa and 20% respectively. In addition, the micro-tube and stents of Zn alloy exhibit superior in vitro corrosion and expansion performance. It could be concluded that the novel Zn alloy micro-tube fabricated by above method might be a promising candidate material for biodegradable stent.

Optimization of fused deposition modeling process parameters using a fuzzy inference system coupled with Taguchi philosophy

Fused deposition modeling （FDM） is an additive manufacturing technique used to fabricate intricate parts in 3D, within the shortest possible time without using tools, dies, fixtures, or human intervention. This article empiri- cally reports the effects of the process parameters, i.e., the layer thickness, raster angle, raster width, air gap, part orientation, and their interactions on the accuracy of the length, width, and thicknes, of acrylonitrile-butadiene- styrene （ABSP 400） parts fabricated using the FDM tech- nique. It was found that contraction prevailed along the directions of the length and width, whereas the thickness increased from the desired value of the fabricated part. Optimum parameter settings to minimize the responses, such as the change in length, width, and thickness of the test specimen, have been determined using Taguchi＇s parameter design. Because Taguchi＇s philosophy fails to obtain uniform optimal factor settings for each response, in this study, a fuzzy inference system combined with the Taguchi philosophy has been adopted to generate a single response from three responses, to reach the specific target values with the overall optimum factor level settings. Further, Taguchi and artificial neural network predictive models are also presented in this study for an accuracy evaluation within the dimensions of the FDM fabricated parts, subjected to various operating conditions. The pre- dicted values obtained from both models are in good agreement with the values from the experiment data, with mean absolute percentage errors of 3.16 and 0.15, respectively. Finally, the confirmatory test results showed an improvement in the multi-response performance index of 0.454 when using the optimal FDM parameters over the initial values.