A fracture mechanics study has been carried out on the fracture of rubber by cylindrical indentors. Several phenomena have been identified which affect the puncture process. It has been observed that a ring crack forms on the rubber surface before puncture occurs. By treating this crack as a starter crack, an equation has been derived for the puncture energy. The values of puncture energy so obtained were found to agree well with the catastrophic tearing energy obtained from the trouser tear test. The energy stored in the rubber influenced the value of the puncture energy calculated. The energy beneath the indentor was determined using a model experiment based on the biaxial stretching of rubber by inflation. The energy stored in the rubber surrounding the indentor was calculated. The contribution of these energies was shown to be small. The puncture test was used to study the strength of thick rubber blocks which had been exposed to long-term ageing and to high temperatures. These rubber blocks were taken from rubber bearings of 20 and 96 years of age respectively. A study was also carried out on a natural rubber tyre after forty two years immersion in sea water.

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In recent years, considerable concern has been shown about the effects SPF cavitation has on the mechanical properties of superplastic alloys. This investigation was undertaken to ascertain whether Hot Isostatic Pressure (HIP) eliminated this cavitation in Supral 150 and correspondingly brought about an improvement in the mechanical properties. It was found that the density increased with various isothermal anneals; the activation energy for this process was close to that for grain boundary diffusion in aluminium (61.93 KJ mol-1). The rate of cavity sintering was seen experimentally to be enhanced by the application of pressures greater than 7 HPa, and had an activation energy of 62.42KJ mol-1. Complete cavity closure occurred when the external pressure was greater than the flow stress of the material at thaý temperature and strain-rate; the ratio of external pressure (Pe) to flow stress (of) increased with falling HIP temperature. The activation energy at constant strain-rate (Q-) associated with plastic flow under conditions of hole closure was found to be 53.54KJ mol-1; giving a corresponding activation energy at constant stress (Qa), which is close to that for lattice diffusion in aluminium. The alloy used contained a high level of hydrogen which caused blistering on heat treatment, and was also responsible for the reappearance of porosity in subsequently heat-treated material previously returned to theoretical density; the extent of which was decreased by the use of higher temperatures and pressures or by vacuum degassing the material prior to HIP. Post SPF room temperature ductility was enhanced by HIP. The scatter in the 0.2% PS and UTS values found in as-received SPF specimens was not altered by the use of low pressure HIP (up to 35 MPa), although higher pressures (100 NPa) did slightly enhance these values and drastically reduced the scatter. Room temperature fracture of as-received Supral was by a 450 ductile shear mechanism. In the SPF cavitated material, the external characteristics Of fracture had a more jagged appearance, as the cavitation alters the route of the propagating crack. SPF material which has been HIPped to remove cavitation, fails in a manner similar to the as-received material.

The J-laying technique for the construction of offshore pipelines requires a fast welding process that can produce sound welds in the horizontal-vertical position. The suitability of narrow gap gas metal arc welding (NG-GMA W) process for this application was previously demonstrated. The present programme studied the influence of process parameters on the fusion characteristics of NG-GMA welding in a range of different shielding gas compositions and welding positions. Statistical techniques were employed for both designing the experimental programme and to process the data generated. A partial factorial design scheme was used to investigate the influence of input variables and their interaction in determining weld bead shape. Modelling equations were developed by multiple linear regression to represent different characteristics of the weld bead. Transformation of the response variable based on the Cox-Box method was commonly used to simplify the model format. Modelling results were analysed by graphical techniques including surface plots and a multiplot approach was developed in order to graphically assess the influence of up to four input variables on the bead shape. Conditions for acceptable bead formation were determined and the process sensitivity to minor changes in input parameters assessed. Asymmetrical base metal fusion in horizontalvertical welding is discussed and techniques to improve fusion presented. At the same time, the interaction between the power supply output characteristic and the bead geometry was studied for narrow gap joints and the effect of shielding gas composition on both process stability and fusion of the base metal was assessed. An arc instability mode that is strongly influenced by arc length, power supply characteristic and shielding gas composition was demonstrated and its properties investigated. An optimized shielding gas composition for narrow gap process was suggested.

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No description available.

This thesis concerns the development of a robotic cell to perform assembly and handling operations on cloth.- A flexible automation approach was adopted, in which the robot was required to control the cloth panel during both handling and sewing operations, without the aid of hard automation attachments which might limit the flexibility of the system. The cell consisted of an adaptively controlled robot, a hierarchy of controllers, a conventional sewing machine, a two-fingered fabric steering end-effector, and several sensor systems. A technique was developed for producing a seam parallel to an edge of arbitrary contour, in which two cameras, a cloth tension sensor and the sewing machine's shaft encoder provided the sensory input. Two sensory servo control systems were required, one control system generated the robot's trajectory to maintain a small constant cloth tension, and the other directed the robot to manipulate the cloth panel to maintain a constant seam width. The design of the cloth tension control was based on the measured frequency response of the open loop system. The seam width control was designed using simulation studies, which accounted for the control transfer function, and nonlinearities such as camera pixel resolution, time delays and robot motion limitations. Several robotic handling techniques were developed, so that a cloth panel placed arbitrarily on the sewing table could be set up for an edge seaming operation, and the cloth could be rotated about the needle. The system's flexibility was demonstrated in the assembly of an irregularly shaped cloth panel, in which three adjacent sides were sewn up.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.