Formation of a hard surface layer during drying of a heated porous media

We report surface hardening or crust formation, unlike caking, during drying when a confined porous medium was heated from above using IR radiation. These crusts have higher strength than their closest counterparts such as sandcastles and mud-peels which essentially are clusters of partially wet porous medium. Observed higher strength of the crusts is mostly due to surface tension between the solid particles which are connected by liquid bridges (connate water). Qualitative (FTIR) and quantitative (TGA) measurements confirm the presence of trapped water within the crust. Amount of the trapped water was ~1.5% (this is about 10 times higher than in the samples with caking) which was confirmed using SEM images. Further, in the fixed particle sizes case, the crust thickness varied slightly (10-20 particle diameters only for cases with external heating) while with the natural sand whole porous column was crusted; surprisingly, crust was also found with the hydrophobic glass beads. Fluorescein dye visualization technique was used to determine the crust thickness. We give a power law relation between the crust thickness and the incident heat flux for various particle sizes. The strength of the crust decreases drastically with increasing hydrophilic spheres diameter while it increases with higher surface temperature.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, 1 table Information regarding 'Supplementary Information File' is mentioned in the main tex

Effect of micropillar surface texturing on friction under elastic dry reciprocating contact

Surface texturing is considered to be a promising method to improve the tribological properties. Depending upon the experimental conditions, the effect of texturing varies from favourable to unnoticeable to detrimental. In this work, surfaces with micropillars are studied under elastic dry reciprocating contact. An array of micropillars with different pillar heights are generated on stainless steel using wire-cut electrical discharge machining. The effect of stiffness of the micropillars on friction is investigated, keeping the number of micropillars in contact with a flat aluminium alloy (Al6061) slider and contact geometry constant. Reciprocating experiments are carried out against a flat surface such that about 81 micropillars are in contact. From the experimental results, it is found that the coefficient of friction is independent of the stiffness of the texture elements. However, work done per cycle significantly varied with the stiffness of texture element and applied normal load. A lumped system model with Coulomb friction shows that the work done per cycle varies quadratically with the normal load. The experimental results agree with this simplified model except in the incipient sliding regime. These results show how the work done per cycle varies, for different contact stiffness under elastic contact even though the coefficient of friction remains constant. The implication of this study for a macroscopic measured coefficient of friction as a function of microscopic asperity level friction is discussed

Porous alumina based ordered nanocomposite coating for wear resistance

Uniformly dispersed nanocomposite coating of aligned metallic nanowires in a matrix of amorphous alumina is fabricated by pulsed electrodeposition of copper into the pores of porous anodic alumina. Uniform deposition is obtained by controlling the geometry of the dendritic structure at the bottom of pores through stepwise voltage reduction followed by mild etching. The tribological behaviour of this nanocomposite coating is evaluated using a ball on flat reciprocating tribometer under the dry contact conditions. The nanocomposite coating has higher wear resistance compared to corresponding porous alumina coating. Wear resistant nanocomposite coating has wide applications especially in protecting the internal surfaces of aluminium internal combustion engines

Probing atomic level interactions in Ni nanorods and AFM cantilever using atomic force microscopy based F–D spectroscopy

Atomic force microscopy based force-displacement spectroscopy is used to quantify magnetic interaction force between sample and magnetic cantilever. AFM based F–D spectroscopy is used widely to understand various surface-surface interaction at small scale. Here we have studied the interaction between a magnetic nanocomposite and AFM cantilevers. Two different AFM cantilever with same stiffness but with and without magnetic coating is used to obtain F–D spectra in AFM. The composite used has magnetic Ni nanophase distributed uniformly in an Alumina matrix. Retrace curves obtained using both the cantilevers on magnetic composite and sapphire substrate are compared. It is found for magnetic sample cantilever comes out of contact after traveling 100 nm distance from the actual point of contact. We have also used MFM imaging at various lift height and found that beyond 100nm lift height magnetic contrast is lost for our composite sample, which further confirms our F–D observation