As applications for thermoplastic composites increase, the understanding of their properties become more important. Fabrication methods for thermoplastic composites continually improve to match designs specifications. These advanced thermoplastics have begun to show an improvement in mechanical properties over those found in thermoset composites commonly used in industry. Polyaryletherketones (PEK) have high service temperatures, good mechanical properties, and improved processing capabilities compared to thermoplastics used in the past making them important to the aerospace industry. The wide range of types of PEK make them suitable for a variety of applications, but selection of specific chemistries, processing parameters, and composite stack-ups determine the mechanical properties produced. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were used to determine crystallinity and chemical properties of several polyaryletherketones. Tensile, compressive, and Mode I interlaminar fracture toughness tests were conducted to analyze mechanical properties of these advanced thermoplastics. Several fabrication processes were also tested to determine optimal consolidation and aesthetic appearance of structural members. All testing was conducted at The Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington. Because all testing and conclusions are proprietary a general synopsis of the experience will be presented.

Plants secrete peptide ligands and use receptor signaling to respond to stress and control development. Understanding the signaling mechanisms and associated molecular trafficking is key to improving plant health and productivity for food, fiber and energy applications. However, one of the challenges to elucidating communication pathways in plants is to study the trafficking of molecules and signals iteratively and non-destructively. This study focuses on using fiber-optic fluorescence microscopy to image live plants iteratively and non-destructively after delivering both labeled and unlabeled phytosulfokine (PSK) into the plant. PSK is a sulfated peptide hormone involved in the regulation of plant cell division and growth via specific receptors, PSKRs. It also plays a role in regulating how plants are able to tolerate stress conditions. The microscope provides two-color (FITC/TRITC) optics and provides high-resolution (3–5 µm) epifluorescence micrographs via a 1-m coherent imaging fiber and a GRIN objective lens. To obtain high-quality images, the fiber was mounted either to a conventional upright microscope body equipped with a leaf compressor, or to a leaf clip with 5-axis positioning (X–Y–Z plus pitch and yaw) mounted on an extensible arm. PSK and TAMRA-labelled PSK were delivered into the roots of various Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes (wt; receptor-deficient: pskr1/pskr2; and tagged receptor overproducing: PSKR1‑GFP), and their movement in roots and leaves was tracked with the fiber-optic fluorescence microscope. Peptide trafficking was successfully observed in live plants non- destructively, confirming that PSK is mobile in both wt and receptor-deficient plants. Preliminary results suggest that the level of receptor PSKR1 may change in response to PSK, and that levels of PSKR1, PSKR2 or both may impact the trafficking of PSK. Understanding how PSK is trafficked in plants will offer insights into how we can improve plants health and productivity.

Until recent years, terahertz (THz) waves were an undiscovered, or most importantly, an unexploited area of electromagnetic spectrum. This was due to difficulties in generation and detection of THz waves. Recent advances in hardware technology have started to open up the field to new applications such as THz imaging. This non-destructive and non-contact imaging technique can penetrate through diverse materials such that internal structures, in some cases invisible to other imaging modalities, can be visualized. Today, there are variety of techniques available to generate and detect THz waves in both pulsed and continuous fashion in two different geometries; transition, and reflection modes. In this thesis continuous wave THz imaging was employed for higher spatial resolution. However, with any new technology comes its challenges; automated processing of THz images can be quite cumbersome. Low contrast and the presence of a widely unknown type of noise make the analysis of these images difficult. In this work, there is an attempt to detect defects in composite material via segmentation by using a Terahertz imaging system. According to our knowledge, this is the first time that this type of materials are being tested under Terahertz cameras to detect manufacturing defects in aerospace industry. In addition, segmentation accuracy of THz images have been investigated by using a phantom. Beyond the defect detection for composite materials, this can establish some general knowledge about Terahertz imaging, its capabilities and limitations. To be able to segment the THz images successfully, pre-processing techniques are inevitable. In this thesis, a variety of different image processing techniques, self-developed or available from literature, have been employed for image enhancement. These methods range from filtering to contrast adjustment to fusion of phase and amplitude images by using fuzzy set theory, to just name a few. The result of pre-procssing and segmentation methods demonstrates promising outcome for future work in this field.

Until recent years, terahertz (THz) waves were an undiscovered, or most importantly, an unexploited area of electromagnetic spectrum. This was due to difficulties in generation and detection of THz waves. Recent advances in hardware technology have started to open up the field to new applications such as THz imaging. This non-destructive and non-contact imaging technique can penetrate through diverse materials such that internal structures, in some cases invisible to other imaging modalities, can be visualized. Today, there are variety of techniques available to generate and detect THz waves in both pulsed and continuous fashion in two different geometries; transition, and reflection modes. In this thesis continuous wave THz imaging was employed for higher spatial resolution. However, with any new technology comes its challenges; automated processing of THz images can be quite cumbersome. Low contrast and the presence of a widely unknown type of noise make the analysis of these images difficult. In this work, there is an attempt to detect defects in composite material via segmentation by using a Terahertz imaging system. According to our knowledge, this is the first time that this type of materials are being tested under Terahertz cameras to detect manufacturing defects in aerospace industry. In addition, segmentation accuracy of THz images have been investigated by using a phantom. Beyond the defect detection for composite materials, this can establish some general knowledge about Terahertz imaging, its capabilities and limitations. To be able to segment the THz images successfully, pre-processing techniques are inevitable. In this thesis, a variety of different image processing techniques, self-developed or available from literature, have been employed for image enhancement. These methods range from filtering to contrast adjustment to fusion of phase and amplitude images by using fuzzy set theory, to just name a few. The result of pre-procssing and segmentation methods demonstrates promising outcome for future work in this field.

This thesis presents a new optical imaging technique which measures the structure of objects without the use of lenses. Termed diffraction-contrast imaging (DCI), the method retrieves the object structure from a Fresnel diffraction pattern of the object, using a deconvolution algorithm. DCI is particularly adept at imaging highly transparent objects and this is demonstrated by retrieving the structure of an almost transparent cloud of laser-cooled atoms. Applied to transparent Bose-Einstein condensates, DCI should allow the non-destructive imaging of the condensate while requiring only the minimum possible apparatus of a light source and a detector. (For complete abstract open document)