L’influence de l’incorporation d’un produit bio sourcé comme adjuvant dans les matériaux cimentaires tant à l’état frais qu’à l’état durci a été étudiée. La présence du bioproduit ne provoque pas de modifications sur les résistances mécaniques et sur la microstructure des pâtes de ciment (ATG/ATD et DRX). Des essais de caractérisation du réseau poreux de mortiers et pâtes cimentaires ont montré un effet du bioproduit sur la qualité de la peau des échantillons. Un protocole de réalisation et de conservation d’échantillons de pâte cimentaire a été mis au point afin de permettre différents essais sur des surfaces identiques dans le cas du projet « substances extracellulaires pour les bétons » impliquant des partenaires microbiologistes. L’étude de l’évolution de l’angle de contact dynamique d’une goutte d’eau posée sur des pâtes de ciment a montré que la présence du bioproduit favorise l’étalement au détriment de la pénétration de celle-ci au sein du matériau, en modifiant la tortuosité des capillaires de la matrice cimentaire. Une méthode d’analyse d’évolution de l’angle de contact en fonction du diamètre de la goutte a été développée et validée avec des données de la littérature. Cette technique originale a permis une détermination précise des angles d’avancée et de recul sur des substrats poreux. / The influence of the incorporation of a product organically sourced in cementitious materials (at fresh and hardened state) was studied. The presence of the bioproduct does not cause changes on mechanical strength and on cement past microstructure (TGA / DTA and XRD). Porous network characterization tests on mortar and cement paste showed an effect of bioproduct on the quality of skin samples. A protocol of realization and conservation of cement paste samples was developed in order to allow various tests on same surfaces for the microbiologists partners of the « extra cellular substances for concrete » project. The study of the evolution of the dynamic contact angle of a drop of water placed on cement pastes showed that the presence of the bioproduct favored at the expense of spreading the penetration of water within the material, modifying the tortuosity of the capillaries of the cementitious matrix. An analytical method of drop behaviour (contact angle versus diameter) was developed and validated with literature data. This original technique allowed an accurate determination of the angles of advance and retreat on porous substrates.

The performance of PEM fuel cells (PEMFC) relies on the proper control and management of the liquid water that forms as a result of the electrochemical process, especially at high current densities. The liquid water transport and removal process in the gas flow channel is highly dynamic and many of its fundamental features are not well understood. This thesis presents an experimental and theoretical investigation of the emergence of water droplets from a single pore into a microchannel. The experiments are performed in a 250 µm × 250 µm air channel geometry with a single 50 µm pore that replicates a PEMFC cathode gas channel. A droplet manipulation platform is constructed using a microfluidics soft lithographic process to allow observation of the dynamic nature of the water droplets. Flow conditions that correspond to typical operating conditions in a PEMFC are selected. A test matrix of experiments comprised of different water injection velocities and air velocities in the gas microchannel is studied. Emergence, detachment and subsequent dynamic evolution of water droplets are analyzed, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Quantitative image analysis tools are implemented and applied to the time-resolved images to document the time evolution of the shape and location of the droplets, characteristic frequencies, dynamic contact angles, flow regime and stability maps. Three different flow regimes are identified, slug, droplet, and film flow. The effects of the air flow rate and droplet size on the critical detachment conditions are also investigated. Numerical simulations using Volume-of-Fluid method are presented to investigate the water dynamics in the droplet flow. The focus of the modeling is on methods that account for the dynamic nature of the contact line evolution. Results of different approaches of dynamic contact angle formulations derived empirically and by using the theoretically based Hoffmann function are compared with the static contact angle models used to date. The importance of the dynamic formulation as well as the necessity for high numerical resolution is highlighted. The Hoffmann function implementation is found to better capture the salient droplet motion dynamics in terms of advancing and receding contact angle and periodicity of the emergence process. To explore the possibility of using the pressure drop signal as a diagnostic tool in operational fuel cells that are not optically accessible, a flow diagnostic tool was developed based on pressure drop measurements in a custom designed two-phase flow fixture with commercial flow channel designs. Water accumulation at the channel outlet was found to be the primary cause of a low-frequency periodic oscillation of pressure drop signal. It is shown that the flow regimes can be characterized using the power spectrum density of the normalized pressure drop signal. This is used to construct a flow map correlating pressure drop signals to the flow regimes, and opens the possibility for practical flow diagnostics in operating fuel cells. / Graduate

This research concerns the development and characterization of methylene bis (p-cyclohexyl isocyanate/butanediol) (HMDI/BD) based polyurethanes used in connection with surface-active anti-microbial polyurethanes. Previously studied polyurethanes having an isophorone diisocyanate/butanediol (IPDI/BD) hard block contaminated water during dynamic contact angle (DCA) analyses. This contamination by unknown species confounds results from biocidal studies and jeopardizes the use of the polyurethane as a matrix polyurethane. By contrast, polyurethanes with methylene bis (p-cyclohexyl isocyanate)/butanediol hard block showed no contamination during DCA analysis. For this reason, further study of HMDI/BD/PTMO polyurethanes was conducted. HMDI/BD polyurethanes were synthesized with 15-50wt% hard block and a soft block of PTMO-2000 or PTMO-1000 where PTMO-2000 is poly (tetramethylene oxide) with a molecular weight of 2000g/mol and PTMO-1000 has a molecular weight of 1000g/mol. Characterization was performed with FT-IR and 1H NMR spectroscopy to verify polyurethane composition as well as hard block percentage. Thermal characterization was performed with modulated differential scanning calorimetry (MDSC). From MDSC, the glass transition temperatures of the soft and hard block for polyurethanes with PTMO-2000 as the soft block were -80°C and 86°C, respectively. For corresponding polyurethanes containing PTMO-1000 as the soft block, the measured Tgs for the soft and hard segments were -55°C and 65°C, respectively. The disparity between the respective soft and hard segment Tgs of these polyurethanes of differing soft block molecular weights is due to increased phase mixing that causes an increase in soft block Tg and a decrease in hard block Tg for the PTMO-1000 polyurethanes. From dynamic contact angle analyses of HMDI/BD/PTMO polyurethanes, the advancing and receding contact angles gradually decreased with each cycle but approached 80° and 60°, respectively. Results from force-distance curves with flamed glass slides obtained before and after immersion of the polyurethane coatings indicated that no water contamination occurred. Tensile tests demonstrated that hard block percentage, soft block molecular weight, and the amount of chain extender influences mechanical properties. For example, increasing hard block weight percentage increases the modulus. HMDI/BD(30)/PTMO-2000 (PU-1), HMDI/BD(25)/PTMO-2000, (PU-2) and HMDI/BD(35)/PTMO-2000 (PU-10) exhibited the best elastomeric properties. As the final outcome, lack of contamination and good mechanical properties made PU-2 and PU-9 (HMDI/BD(50)/PTMO-1000) suitable candidates as polyurethane matrices for polymer surface modifier evaluation.

No description available.

In this dissertation physical phenomena relevant to (i) an interface formed between two fluids and a solid phase (wetting line) and (ii) an interface between three fluids (triple contact line) were investigated. In the former case, the wetting line (WL) phenomena which encompass the wetting line energy (WLE) or pinning, the wetting line velocity (WLV), and the contact angle hysteresis, were studied using a micropump based on electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD). In the latter case, the interfacial phenomena such as the air film lubrication effect and the liquid free surface deformation were taken into account to explain the dual equilibrium states of water droplets on liquid free surfaces. EWOD was implemented to devise a pumping method for a continuous flow in a microchannel. An active micropump with a simple layout and no moving parts is designed and fabricated which has on demand flow on/off capability. The micropump is based on droplet/meniscus pressure gradient generated by EWOD. By altering the contact angle between liquid and solid using an electric field a pressure gradient was induced and a small droplet was pumped into the channel via a uniform flow rate. A surface tension based propellant method was introduced as a low power consumption actuation method in microfluidic devices. For an initial droplet volume of 0.3µL and a power of 12nW a constant flow rate of 0.02µL/sec was demonstrated. Sample loading on-demand could be achieved by regulating an electric potential. Unexpectedly, the flow rate of the pump was found to be constant in spite of the changes in the droplet’s radius, which directly affects the pump’s driving pressure. iv The WL phenomena were studied in details to unravel the physical concept behind the micropump constant flow rate during the operation. An interesting observation was that the shrinking input droplet changes its shape in two modes in time sequence: (i) in the first mode its contact angle decreases while its wetting area remains constant due to the pinning, (ii) in the second mode the droplet’s WL starts to move while its contact angle changes as a function of its velocity. Contact angles were measured for the droplet advancing and receding WLs at different velocities to capture a full picture of contact angle behavior due to pinning and WLV effects. These results are also relevant to the meniscus inside the channel. The changes on the contact angle caused by the presence of EWOD at the bottom of the channel were studied in detail. The EWOD based micropump was used as a platform to study the contribution of the pinning and WLV effects on its constant flow rate. The effects of the WLE on the static contact angle and the WLV on the dynamic contact angle in the pump operation were investigated. Also the effect of EWOD voltage on the magnitude and uniformity of the micropump flow rate was studied. Dynamic contact angles (as a function of pinning and WLV) were used to accurately calculate the pressure gradient between the droplet and the meniscus and estimate the flow rate. It was shown that neglecting either of these effects not only results in a considerable gap between the predicted and the measured flow rates but also in an unphysical instability in the flow rate analysis. However, when the WLE and WLV effects were fully taken into account, an excellent agreement between the predicted and the measured flow rates was obtained. v For the study of the TCL between three fluids, aqueous droplets were formed at oil-air interface and two stable configurations of (i) non-coalescent droplet and (ii) cap/bead droplet were observed. General solutions for energy and force analysis were obtained and were shown to be in good agreement with the experimental observations. Further the energy barrier obtained for transition from configuration (i) to (ii), was correlated to the droplet release height and the probability of non-coalescent droplet formation. Droplets formed on the solid surfaces and on the free surface of immiscible liquids have various applications in droplet-based microfluidic devices. This research provides an insight into their formation and manipulation.

No description available.

Boiling is used in a wide variety of industries, including electronics cooling, distillation, and power generation. Fundamental studies on the boiling process are needed for effective implementation. Key performance characteristics of boiling are the heat transfer coefficient, which determines the amount of heat flux that can be dissipated for a given superheat, and critical heat flux(CHF), the failure point that occurs when vapor blankets the surface. The wettability of a surface is one of the key parameters that affects boiling behavior. Wetting surfaces(e.g., hydrophilic surfaces), typically characterized by a static contact angle below 90°,have better critical heat flux due to effective rewetting, but compromised heat transfer coefficients due to increased waiting times between nucleation of each bubble. Meanwhile, nonwetting surfaces (e.g., hydrophobic surfaces), characterized by static contact angles greater than 90°, have better heat transfer coefficients due to improved nucleation characteristic, but reach critical heat flux early due to surface dry out. However, recent studies have shown that the static contact angle alone offers and incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, description of this behavior, which is instead governed entirely by the dynamic wettability. Specifically, the receding contact angle impacts the size and contact area of bubbles forming on a surface during boiling, while the advancing contact angle determines how the bubble departs. With this more complete set of wettability descriptors, three characteristic wetting regimes define the boiling behavior: hygrophilic surfaces having advancing and receding contact angles both under 90°; hygrophobic surfaces having both these dynamic contact angles over 90°;and ambiphilic surfaces having a receding contact angle less than 90°, but an advancing contact angle greater than 90°.The goal of this thesis is to experimentally characterize and compare the behavior of boiling surfaces in each of these regimes, observe the contact line behavior, and explain the mechanisms for their differences in performance.

A significant level of research is currently being carried out in the development of driver support systems as they are expected to play a key role in minimizing road vehicle accidents and creating a safe driving environment under harsh weather conditions. However, the performance of some components used by existing driver support systems like LIDAR and visual cameras are affected by extreme weather conditions such as heavy rain fall and snow. Therefore, it is paramount to identify key locations in an automotive vehicle where such systems are least affect by external weather conditions, thereby, improving their overall performance. The field of research that deals with such questions from a simulation perspective is called contamination modeling. At the moment, one of the biggest knowledge gaps in this field is how to consider the effect of different materials on the movement of liquids such as water on different automotive surfaces like glass, plastic, rubber and painted metal. The work presented in this research study has been carried out to investigate and establish the most suitable simulation strategies to match numerical predictions with experimental data for flow of water over different automotive surfaces. Following a comprehensive parametric study of simulation parameters, it was found that the most suitable model that can be tweaked to achieve different flow properties with different surfaces is a dynamic contact angle model. The Blended Kistler model available in STAR-CCM+ required specific values for static, advancing and receding contact angles to optimize a surface for a given material. Therefore, droplet experiments of two droplet sizes were initially carried out for all tested materials at different inclinations and necessary flow parameters were recorded. All experiments were carried out using an approach known as light induced fluorescence imaging where the captured images provided a very convenient method for post processing in computational software. Results from droplet experiments showed that water moved quickest on plastic and slowest on glass. Static contact angle measurements were carried out first on horizontal surfaces. Afterwards, the surface was inclined at 15, 30, 45, 60, and 75 degrees to measure changes in contact angle and velocities. The surfaces for glass and painted metal were directly taken from the door of a Volvo S60 while a separate surface was used for plastic and rubber. These results were then used to create simulation setups for rivulets in STAR-CCM+ with the multiphase modeling approach known as volume of fluid. Rivulet simulations were carried out for all four materials at five different inclinations and the results were compared and validated with experimental data. The results show good correlation between numerical predictions for rivulet movement and experimental data emphasising on the possibility of fine-tuning the surfaces of a simulation setup to represent different material properties.