In this thesis the nature and strengthening effect of the various precipitates in Al-4% Cu are reviewed, followed by a literature survey on the response of this alloy to fatigue. The first experiments described were carried out to measure the Bauschinger effect and the results of these are presented. The experimental study was further extended by cyclic straining corresponding to fatigue conditions and the results obtained are presented graphically and through electron micrographs. The fatigue behaviour was further investigated at liquid air temperature. Also, the effect of heat treatments carried out during the interruption of fatigue on a specimen containing metastable θ" precipitates is reported. All the experiments were carried out on single crystals and most of them with 112 orientation as indicated later. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

Les émulsions de type huile-dans-eau jouent un rôle important lors des opérations de ré-injection des eaux de production (PWRI). Ce travail s'intéresse à l'écoulement /rétention de ce type d'émulsions en milieux poreux et à leur impact sur l'injectivité. Deux mécanismes fondamentaux sont distingué selon la valeur du Jamming ratio Jr (taille des restrictions /taille des gouttes): le dépôt dit de surface aux forts Jr et le «straining» (blocage, par le forces capillaires, d'une ou plusieurs gouttes à l'amont d'une restriction) aux faibles Jr.Ce document traite, d'abord, de la physicochimie du dépôt de surface. L'étude en fonction de différents paramètres, tels que la salinité et le débit, permis de décrire la structure et la cinétique du dépôt. Nous avons notamment mis en évidence la formation d'une monocouche compacte é gouttelettes individuelles et montré que la cinétique du dépôt vérifie les lois d'échelle développées pour les colloïdes. L'ensemble de nos résulta conforte la similarité de comportement entre les émulsions stables et diluées et les systèmes colloïdaux.Ensuite, le «straining» est mis en évidence et discuté en fonction des distributions en taille -des restrictions et des gouttes- et des valeurs du nombi capillaire.Enfin, nous avons établi que l'endommagement associé au dépôt de surface peut être très significatif et que les pertes d'injectivité sont prédictibles par une loi de Poiseuille modifiée. Pour le «straining», l'impact est encore plus sévère mais sa vitesse de propagation est plus lente.En conclusion, l'effet de ce type d'émulsion doit être pris en compte pour minimiser les risques et optimiser le schéma de réinjection. / The O/W emulsions are major actors in the operations of produced water reinjection (PWRI). This work focuses on the flow/retention of these specific emulsions in porous media and their impact on injectivity. Two fundamental mechanisms are considered according to the jamming ration Jr, that is to say the pore throat to droplet size ratio. At high Jr, surface retention is operative, whereas at small ones, it is the "straining" which describes the upstream clogging of a pore throat by one or more droplets because of the capillary forces.This report firstly targets the physicochemistry of the surface deposit. Several parameters were checked, such as salinity and flow rate, and allow us to descrïbe the deposit structure and the deposition kinetics. We evidenced the formation of a dense monolayer of individual oil droplets and showed that the deposition kinetïcs follows the scaling power laws initially developed for colloids. It clearly underlines the similar behaviour of stable emulsion anc other colloidal systems.Then, the straining was observed and discussed according to size distributions of botte droplets and pore throats and also according to the capillary number.Finally, we established that the injectivity losses caused by surface retention can be very significant and that they are predictable through a modified Poiseuille's law. Concerning the "straining", the impact is even more severe but its propagation rate is far smaller.To conclude, the effects of these emulsions have to be taken into account to minimise the risks and optimise the reinjection scheme.

Automotive magnesium sheets typically exhibit poor room temperature ductility which makes them unsuitable for room temperature sheet stamping applications. This research involved aspects of re-processing and forming of AZ31 automotive magnesium sheet to improve its room temperature ductility and bendability (and, more generally, formability). The sheet re-processing studies for formability improvement were carried out by two different methods, (i) cyclic bending-unbending and annealing (or CBUA) and (ii) wire brushing and annealing (or WBA). These two processing methods led to a complex stress and strain distribution through the thickness and a multi-layered microstructure after annealing. The grain structure, micro-texture, and micro-hardness of each of the layers were studied by optical microscopy, electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) and indentation measurements, respectively. The through-thickness grain structure study indicated grain refinement and texture randomization in the surface layers for both CBUA and WBA processed materials. In addition, the as-received (and fully annealed) sheet as well as processed materials were subsequently deformed in uniaxial tension and bending by a process referred to in the literature as pre-strain annealing (or PSA). The PSA process was studied as a single step as well as multi-step process to assess its effect on formability improvement, underlying changes in microstructural and mechanical behavior, and to explore practical limitations and advantages of the process. The results from single-step PSA process were also used to develop a microstructure-based constitutive material model to capture and predict the observed mechanical and microstructural response of AZ31 sheet to PSA variables. This model explicitly considered the effect of recovery on recrystallization kinetics, and non-constant nucleation and growth rate. The model was extended to predict the grain size at the end of recrystallization and within the grain growth stage as well as post-PSA yield and work hardening characteristics. The mechanical property prediction was based on considering the microstructure as a composite of un-recrystallized, recrystallized and coarsened grain structure and by employing a rule of mixture. The processing and forming methods led to significantly increased cumulative uniaxial tensile ductility and plane strain cumulative bendability of AZ31 sheet at room temperature depending upon PSA process parameters. The experimental and modeling studies collectively helped correlate mechanical properties from various processing conditions and forming methods with microstructural parameters, and to explain the improvement in room temperature formability based on microstructural and textural considerations. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

High mast illumination poles (HMIPs) are tall cantilevered structures used to efficiently illuminate large portions of highways and interchanges. Great interest in the performance of HMIPS has arisen from the discovery of extensive premature cracking at the toes of base plate to pole shaft welds of poles currently in service. These cracks, in some cases, have become so severe that HMIPs have actually collapsed, and therefore present a great threat to public safety. Previous research at the University of Texas at Austin sought to solve the design problems posed by these pole failures by conducting both full-scale and analytical tests on optimized designs of HMIPs for fatigue loads. These studies indicated that using full penetration welds to connect 3" thick base plates to relatively thin shaft walls minimized warping of the base plate during fatigue loading, and maximized fatigue performance. Toward the end of these studies when researchers sought to test an uncoated optimized HMIP back-to-back against a galvanized HMIP of the same design and material, researchers discovered the galvanized specimen had cracked during the galvanizing process. This finding prompted an in-depth study to determine the cause of these cracks, and to determine if practices could be implemented to prevent crack formation. Initially, bend radius, chemistry, and shaft to base plate thickness studies were conducted to find how these parameters affect HMIPs during galvanizing. These parameters were found to play a minor role in the cracking of HMIPs relative to the thermal effects induced during the galvanizing process. Full-scale and analytical tests verified the impact of thermal straining within HMIPs during galvanizing. Instrumenting HMIPs and smaller HMIP stub sections with thermocouples and strain gages provided temperature and initial strain gradients resulting from exposure to the molten zinc bath. This data, as well as observations of cracks in the tested HMIP sections, aided the development of a finite element parametric study comparing HMIPs of the same 150' length and 80 mph design but varying shaft thicknesses. This research concludes that reducing the pole shaft diameter to thickness ratio reduces the likelihood of galvanizing crack formation. / text

It is impossible to improve the quality of the machines, to increase their reliability and lifetime if the working conditions and the properties of the material are not analyzed. We must know the type of the material (hardening, softening or cyclically stabile), what is chosen for the constructions in low cycle loading, because strain and stress change during the exploitation and depend on this type. If we know the type of the material, we can determine the possibility of its application in concrete exploitation conditions. Real working conditions of the most constructions are close to loading with limited strain (hard straining), because elastic and plastic deformation is met in the zones of crack and stress concentration, that are surrounded with elastically deformed material. The low cycle loading curves parameters A, and are used for the computation of elastic plastic strain curves. These parameters are obtained from the soft low cycle loading results in many cases. The other possible ways for the determination of parameters A, and are shown in this work. The most investigated materials had the initial instability in the interval . For more objective evaluation of stress strain curves parameters A, and , all values of width of hysteresis loop up to semicycle were rejected as insignificant in comparison with the rest lifetime in cycles range . The parameter for the evaluation of hardening (softening) intensity was determined, when the values of... [to full text]

We investigate experimentally the turbulent flow through a two-dimensional contraction. Using a water tunnel with an active grid we generate turbulence at Taylor microscale Reynolds number Reλ ~ 250 which is advected through a 2.5:1 contraction. Volumetric and time-resolved Tomo-PIV and Shake-The-Box velocity measurements are used to characterize the evolution of coherent vortical structures at three streamwise locations upstream of, and within the contraction. We confirm the conceptual picture of coherent large-scale vortices being stretched and aligned with the mean rate of strain. This alignment of the vortices with the tunnel centerline is stronger compared to the alignment of vorticity with the large-scale strain observed in numerical simulations of homogeneous turbulence. We judge this by the peak probability magnitudes of these alignments. This result is robust and independent of the grid-rotation protocols. On the other hand, while the point-wise vorticity vector also, to a lesser extent, aligns with the mean strain, it principally remains aligned with the intermediate eigen-vector of the local instantaneous strain-rate tensor, as is known in other turbulent flows. These results persist when the distance from the grid to the entrance of the contraction is doubled, showing that modest transverse inhomogeneities do not significantly affect these vortical-orientation results.

Experiments were performed to determine to what extent increments in esophageal and abdominal pressure would have on arterial blood pressure during fatiguing isometric exercise. Arterial blood pressure was measured during handgrip and leg isometric exercise performed with both a free and occluded circulation to active muscles. Handgrip contractions were exerted at 33 and 70% MVC (maximum voluntary contraction) by 4 volunteers in a sitting position and calf muscle contractions at 50 and 70% MVC with the subjects in a kneeling position. Esophageal pressure measured at the peak of inspirations did not change during either handgrip or leg contractions but peak expiratory pressures increased progressively during both handgrip and leg contractions as fatigue occurred. These increments were independent of the tensions of the isometric contractions exerted. Intra-abdominal pressures measured at the peak of either inspiration or expiration did not change during inspiration with handgrip contractions but increased during expiration. During leg exercise, intraabdominal pressures increased during both inspiration and expiration, reaching peak levels at fatigue. The arterial blood pressure also reached peak levels at fatigue, independent of circulatory occlusion and tension exerted, averaging 18.5-20 kPa (140-150 mm Hg) for both handgrip and leg contrations. While blood pressure returned to resting levels following exercise with a free circulation, it declined by only 2.7-3.8 kPa after leg and handgrip exercise, respectively, during circulatory occlusion. These results indicate that straining maneuvers contribute 3.5 to 7.8 kPa to the change in blood pressure depending on body position.

Plastics, due to their extensive production and inert nature, accumulate in the environment after their improper disposal. While being in the environment, these plastic-based products undergo different degradation processes resulting in smaller sized microplastics (MPs) and nanoscale plastics (NPs). MPs and NPs can adsorb various organic and inorganic contaminants due to their huge surface area to volume ratio and the presence of diverse functional groups. Hence, the presence of various contaminants in the environment can impact both the plastics and the adsorbed contaminants fate in the environment. In light of this, the current work investigates the co-transport behavior of polystyrene (PS) MPs and copper metal (Cu), as both PS MPs and Cu are commonly encountered in the environment. The co-transport behavior was observed by understanding the mobility and deposition behavior of both contaminants under various ionic strength conditions (IS) and salt types (NaCl, CaCl2). Bench scale packed column studies and batch adsorption experiments were used to observe the transport behavior. The quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) was used to determine the mechanisms responsible for the deposition behavior of MPs and NPs at the nanoscale level. Results showed that in the absence of Cu, the secondary energy minimum was responsible for the reduced PS mobility (40-60%) with increasing IS of NaCl and CaCl2 respectively. However, when Cu was present, PS mobility reduced even more (10-30%), which might result from the adsorption of PS-Cu complexes on porous media following their formation. Similarly, in the absence of PS, Cu had less mobility (nearly 10%) in all IS and salt types due to electrostatic attraction between sand and Cu. On the other hand, Cu demonstrated increasing mobility during co-transport owing to a lack of adsorption sites caused by the competing adsorption of PS and Cu. The batch adsorption results also revealed that MPs had a greater adsorption capacity on quartz sand in the presence of Cu, resulting in enhanced heavy metal mobility. QCM experiments also showed that with increasing IS and in absence of Cu, both MPs and NPs deposition on the silica surface increased due to compression of the electric double layer, following DLVO theory. However, in presence of Cu, PSMPs and PSNPs had 6.6 and 4.0-fold higher deposition respectively for NaCl and 1.5 and 4.8-fold respectively for CaCl2 under the high IS condition, than in absence of Cu. Positive metal ions can compress the electrostatic double-layer even more, lowering the energy barrier and form complexes with the PS causing greater PS deposition on the silica surfaces. Furthermore, QCM showed that regardless of the presence of heavy metals, NPs mass deposition was higher than MPs on the silica surface. According to DLVO theory, NPs had a lower energy barrier than MPs due to their smaller size, resulting in a higher deposition. In summary, the findings of this study showed that the interaction between PS and Cu can influence both their transport and deposition behaviors in the environment under different aquatic chemistry conditions. This work could be used to anticipate the fate and movement of MPs and NPs in the presence of other pollutants in the aquatic environment and allow necessary steps to be taken to prevent additional contamination and design their subsequent removal.

Atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials come in all necessary flavors to make semiconductor devices: conductors, semiconductors, and insulators. Graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) are the quintessential building blocks. The van der Waals nature of the bonds in 2D films allows the ability to stack materials to achieve novel properties because of their exceptional mechanical, electronic, and optical properties and interactions, which enables various applications of 2D materials in transistors, biosensors, light-emitting devices, and photodetectors. Spectroscopic measurements such as Raman and photoluminescence (PL) reveal a wealth of information since 2D materials are affected by their environment and other local perturbations, e.g., strain and charge doping. My research focused on developing efficient and noninvasive optical methods to evaluate and characterize the properties of 2D materials. In particular, we investigated strain-tunable properties, the effects and signature of charge doping, and the environmental screening properties of graphene and TMDCs. Identifying the charge density and impurities in graphene is vital for graphene-based applications, which require high-quality graphene. I developed an effective optical method to determine the doping level and the local charge density variations in graphene before any fabrication process. This method differentiates charge density variations in graphene via the Raman 2D peak asymmetry that manifests at low charge 1-25 × 1010 cm-2. We explore the effect of charge inhomogeneity, "charge puddles", within the laser spot using simulated Raman 2D spectra, revealing a different signature for large or small charge puddles. Our work provides a simple and noninvasive optical method for estimating the doping level, local charge density variation, and transport properties of graphene, with up to two orders of magnitude higher precision than previously reported optical methods. Strain is another crucial factor that significantly impacts the properties of 2D materials. We studied the charge distribution and radiative efficiency of excitonic complexes in strained monolayer TMDCs, especially WSe2. Straining and electrostatic gating are combined to investigate the dynamics of quasi-particles in WSe2. We found that negative trions accumulate while positive trion emission is near zero, indicating that both conduction and valence bands are bent downwards in the strained area. Finite element analysis of strain distribution and density functional theory calculations of band structures of WSe2 support the experimental results. Hence, localized strain allows locally separating electrons and holes in WSe2 and manipulating light-matter interaction for applications in novel strained-engineered optoelectronics. I applied machine learning and deep learning techniques to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data processing and analysis since traditional methods require domain expertise and have the potential to introduce artifacts. I categorized the wealth of information and data by applying machine learning to spectroscopic information to separate different influences, e.g., strain, charge doping, and dielectric environment. We developed deep learning models to classify graphene Raman spectra according to different charge densities and dielectric environments. To improve the accuracy and generalization of all models, we use data augmentation through additive noise and peak shifting. Using a convolutional neural net (CNN) model, we demonstrated the spectra classification with 99% accuracy. Our approach has the potential for fast and reliable estimation of graphene doping levels and dielectric environments. The proposed model paves the way for achieving efficient analytical tools to evaluate the properties of graphene. / 2022-11-23T00:00:00Z

The phenomenon of particle retention in granular materials has a wide range of implications. For agricultural operations, these particles can be contaminants transported through the ground that can eventually reach to aquifers, consequently contaminating the water. In oil reservoirs, these particles can be clays that get detached from the rock and migrate with the flow after a change of pressure, plugging the reservoir with the consequent reduction in permeability. These particles can also be traceable nanoparticles, introduced in the reservoir with the purpose of identifying bypassed oil. For all these reasons it is important to understand the mechanisms that contribute to the transport and retention of these particles. In this dissertation the retention of micro and nano size particles was investigated. In saturated model sediments (sphere packs), we analyzed the retention of particles by the mechanism of straining (size exclusion). The analysis focused on experiments reported in the literature in which particles smaller than the smallest pore throats were retained in the sediment. The analysis yields a mechanistic explanation of these observations, by indentifying the retention sites as gaps between pairs of sediment grains. A predictive model was developed that yields a relationship between the straining rate constant and particle size in agreement with the experimental observations. In unsaturated granular materials, the relative contributions of grain surfaces, interfacial areas and contact lines between phases to the retention of colloidal size particles were investigated. An important part of this analysis was the identification and calculation of the length of the contact lines between phases. This estimation of contact line lengths in porous media is the first of its kind. The algorithm developed to compute contact line length yielded values consistent with observations from beads pack and real rocks, which were obtained independently from analysis of high resolution images. Additionally, the predictions of interfacial areas in granular materials were consistent with an established thermodynamic theory of multiphase flow in porous media. Since there is a close relationship between interfacial areas and contact lines this supports the accuracy of the contact line length estimations. Predictions of contact line length and interfacial area in model sediments, combined with experimental values of retention of colloidal size particles in columns of glass beads suggested that it is plausible for interfacial area and contact line to contribute in the same proportion to the retention of particles. The mechanism of retention of surface treated nanoparticles in sedimentary rocks was also investigated, where it was found that retention is reversible and dominated by attractive van der Waals forces between the particles and the rock’s grain surfaces. The intricate combination of factors that affect retention makes the clear identification of the mechanism responsible for trapping a complex task. The work presented in this dissertation provides significant insight into the retention mechanisms in relevant scenarios. / text