Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been established as a rapid, in situ, and real-time spectroscopic analytical technique for material characterization. It is very handy for the study of all kinds of materials irrespective of their state. After being used for a Mars mission, LIBS has gained global attention and many scientific researches are investigating its applications. The main objective of this dissertation is to study the possibility of using laser spectroscopic sensing techniques for material characterization and if possible, to develop methodologies. Studying molecular emission spectra for elemental analysis is a relatively new trend in the spectroscopic field. Molecular emission from SrCl and SrO observed in LIBS spectra were analyzed and compared with atomic emission from Sr. Calibration models were developed using both molecular bands and atomic spectral peaks. The determination of nutritional elements in crops, vegetables, and fruits is very important to evaluate their nutritional status. The LIBS technique was applied to identify the nutritional elements present in cauliflower and broccoli, and to evaluate the difference between organic and conventional vegetables in terms of nutritional elements. Principal component analysis (PCA) and one-to-one comparison using Student's t-test were employed for discrimination between organic and conventional vegetable flowers. Early iron and steel production in the state of Pennsylvania (United States) mostly utilized blast furnaces that were operated by charcoal as a primary fuel, followed by anthracite, then coke. The process left behind a by-product known as blast furnace slag. Blast furnace slag, non-metallic in nature, appears to have various industrial applications. LIBS was used for the analysis of charcoal blast furnace slags and qualitative as well as quantitative analyses were demonstrated. To evaluate the possibility of using the LIBS technique to detect and quantify rare earth elements, three consecutive studies were executed. Firstly, pure oxides of six rare earth elements were studied and then real samples directly taken from natural ores were analyzed. In the third step, two rare earth elements (Eu and Yb) in aqueous solutions were studied by underwater LIBS and the pressure effect on the plasma emission is discussed.

Dispersion, attenuation, and crosstalk are several major challenges that both a high-speed digital and a microwave serial link must overcome to achieve their desirable performance. These phenomena are directly related to the frequency dependency of the dielectric property of the material used in package and interconnect. The dielectric property of a material is commonly measured by its manufacturer in a particular direction at a few discrete frequencies using resonator and waveguide methodology. Since the dielectric property may vary during manufacturing processing, the measurements taken by the manufacturer might be not adequate. Moreover, the dielectric property of a material in a bandwidth that covers at least the second harmonics of the fundamental operational frequency is required to accurately predict the link performance. One of the efforts in this research is to investigate the methodology of realizing broadband characteristics of the dielectric property of a material in its "as packaged" configuration using various transmission line topologies, such as microstrip line and Co-Planar Waveguide (CPW). Transitions from CPW to other transmission line topologies are mandatory if CPW probes are used to achieve broadband and repeatable measurements. Since microstrip line is one of the transmission line topologies involved in this research, a research effort is dedicated to develop a broadband CPW-to-microstrip line transition. An effort is also expended to creating casual material models that can be used in electromagnetic simulators to appropriately model the link based on the polarization mechanism of the materials. In addition to focusing on the measurement method in frequency domain, Short Pulse Propagation (SPP), a time domain method, is investigated as well. A virtual test bench is created to investigate the correlation between impedance variations in stripline structures due to fabricated tolerance and the attenuation predicted by SPP.

Engineering industries usually require nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods to ensure quality control, safety, and optimized use of resources. Among potential NDE techniques, ultrasonic wave methods are widely used because of their versatility and affordability. For applications to layered structures, ultrasonic guided waves are naturally excited and detected, so these guided waves are the preferred choice when compared to conventional bulk waves. The main advantage of guided waves over bulk waves for layered structures is that these guided waves can propagate a much farther distance, and thus they enable long range inspection. It is important to note that guided waves are multi-mode, so a preferred mode can be selectively used, although it is sometimes more efficient to use multiple wave modes. The characteristics of guided waves, namely dispersive propagation and attenuation, are directly related to the properties of the system in which they are propagating, so the measurement of these wave characteristics can be used for material characterization and condition monitoring. Despite a number of successful techniques to experimentally measure propagation characteristics of guided waves, there is a lack of a standard procedure to obtain attenuation characteristics. This research develops such a quantitative and systematic procedure to extract attenuation characteristics from real guided wave time-domain signals. This research considers multiple wave-modes, and focuses on broadband attenuation measurements with laser ultrasonic techniques. The analytical model of guided waves with attenuation is studied in general cases, and a numerical simulation is developed to model the point source/receiver laser measurement system. The attenuation extraction technique is developed using synthetic signals generated by the simulation. Finally, this research demonstrates the use of experimentally-measured attenuation data for material characterization and condition monitoring by developing an inversion scheme to back-calculate material properties for a number of practical cases.

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To properly design the microwave components such as transmission lines, filters, capacitors, inductors, and many others, it is important to know the characteristics of the construction materials at microwave frequencies. One of the most reliable techniques in material characterization at microwave frequencies is the coplaner coupled stripline resonator technique. This technique is an enhancement to the classical stripline resonator technique. In this technique, the measured resonance frequency and quality factor of the resonator are used to determine the complex permitivity. One of the main problems in this technique is the proper modeling of the coupling gaps. In this dissertation we will introduce an accurate model of the coupling gap, which will shows that the capacitive behavior of the gap is not pure capacitive as known before, but it turns into more complex one at higher frequencies depending on the dimensions of the gap primarily. The second main problem is the limitation in the frequency range for accurate measurements. At higher frequencies, the coupling reaches its peak value for a given stripline resulting in excessive loading to the resonator and thus a lowered Q value. In this frequency range, measurement of the dielectric properties looses its accuracy because the lowered Q values which means inaccuracies in determining the resonant frequencies as well as great error in determining the Qc and Qd terms. In this dissertation, attempts to remedy this problem by introducing two different approaches to get an improved design for the coplaner coupled stripline resonator are presented. The first approach to optimize the design of the coplaner coupled stripline resonator is based on optimizing the dimensions of the coplaner coupled stripline resonator three sections (coplaner, transition region, and the center stripline). In the second approach, a reactive stub (via) is introduced in the coupling gap between the coplaner line and the center stripline. The added stub is designed to improve the Q values of the structure resonances. Simulations of different designs of the coplaner coupled stripline resonator using different stub dimensions are presented. Advantages and disadvantages of these designs as well as the solution to their resonance frequency shift problems are discussed as well. / Ph. D.

Measurements of the mechanical properties of lithium-ion battery electrode films can be used to quantify and improve manufacturing processes and to predict the mechanical and electrochemical performance of the battery. This thesis demonstrates the use of acoustic resonances to distinguish among commercial-grade battery films with different active electrode materials, thicknesses, and densities. Resonances are excited in a clamped circular area of the film using a pulsed infrared laser or speaker and responses are measured using an electret condenser microphone. A numerical model is used to quantify the sensitivity of resonances to changes in mechanical properties. When the numerical model is compared to simple analytical models for thin plates and membranes, the battery films measured here trend more similarly to the membrane model. Resonance measurements are also used to monitor the drying process. Results from a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer verify the modes excited in the films, and a combination of experimental and simulated results is used to estimate the Young's modulus of the battery electrode coating layer.

Being able to accurately model soft tissue behaviour, such as that of heart valvular tissue, is essential for developing effective numerical simulations of in-vivo conditions and determining patient-specific care options. Although several analytical material models, based on strain energy functions, have been successful in predicting soft tissue behaviour, complications arise when these models are implemented into finite element (FE) programs due to the incorporation of a penalty parameter for numerically enforcing material incompressibility. Specifically, material parameters determined through non-FE methods may no longer produce a material behaviour that reflects the experimental behaviour once they are used in an FE analysis. Based on commercial finite element software LS-DYNA, an inverse methodology was developed in MATLAB to simultaneously optimize the material parameters and the penalty parameter for the Guccione strain energy model. The methodology produced accurate predictions of the material behaviour under planar equibiaxial testing for five biomaterials used in heart valve cusp replacements.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Material jetting (MJ) additive manufacturing (AM) has experienced an increased adoption in several industry areas and as well as research applications. One of MJ’s distinct benefits is the ability to print tunable composites, digital materials (DM) by carefully adjusting the ratio of droplets of heterogeneous base-polymeric inks. However, the lack of material information usable in computer simulations has hampered its acceptance in some end-use applications. For these materials to be used in Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulations the mechanical properties of the DMs need to be characterized into usable material models. DMs printable with an MJ printer has a wide variety of materials properties, ranging from flexible silicone rubber to rigid Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS). Therefore, to cohesively express the mechanical behavior of the DMs it is necessary to utilize non-linear material models. The objective this research is to conduct physical testing to characterize the mechanical behavior of DMs printable with an MJ. Subsequently, to validate the effectiveness of the material models for multi-DM prints. Utilizing the newly characterized material models two use cases were investigated, with the goal of improving the performance of printed parts through simulation. In this study, an MJ printer was used to fabricate the test specimens as well as the components used in the use case studies. The study was focused on the family of six DMs printable from the mixture of the base polymers Tango Black+ (TB+) and Vero White+ (VW+). To characterize the mechanical properties of the materials a tensile test was conducted utilizing the KS-M6518 standard as a basis. The mechanical properties of the DMs were then fitted into four non-linear models and the results compared. The fitted models were, the Neo Hookean model, a two-parameter, three-parameter, and a five-parameter Mooney Rivlin model. To confidently use the material models for multi-DM prints FEA simulations need to validate the accuracy to which they can predict the deformation of the samples under load. To compare the results of the computer simulations and the physical test, strain maps for both results were analyzed. Four different test specimens were printed and tested. A baseline single material samples were compared to three multi-material samples with different embedded structures. The results confirmed the validity of the material models even when used for multi-DM prints. The recently characterized models are utilized in two use case studies which showcase the potential of DMs. The first use case was focused on printing multi-DM substrates for the use of stretchable electronics. The second use case investigated the benefits of utilizing multiple materials to create 3D conductive traces utilizing a new method, the “swollen-off” method. Both case studies showed the benefits of utilizing DMs as well as the applicability of the material models in predictive simulations.

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