Application of mixture experimental design to optimize formulation and performance of thermoplastic road markings

The influence offormulation components on the physical, mechanical and optical properties of hot melt thermoplastic road markings was studied. To minimize the number of experiments, mixture method was used as an effective tool for experimentaldesign. Binder (rosin ester and hydrocarbon based resins), pigment (TiO2), filler (talc) and plasticizer (long oil alkyd resin and dibutyl phthalate) were taken into consideration as the key factors at different levels. A range offormulations were prepared by melt blending of variables and other required components. Softening point temperature (Tsp) and its changes (ΔTsp), Taber abrasion resistance, color difference (ΔE) before and after exposure to the accelerated weathering conditions and heat stability test, were chosen as the key responses. A window of optimum end-use properties of thermoplastic road marking formulations was narrowed down within the range of desired responses in quadratic model using DX v.7.1.3 program. The results showed that the optimized formulations were very close to those from the regression analysis, and the mixture experimental design was an effectual method to optimize the composition of a thermoplastic road marking formulation with respect to its properties. The precision of the model was evaluated by preparing two samples in the optimized window and comparing the predicted and actual properties. The results showed a good agreement between the proposed model and experimental measurements

Corrosion performance of epoxy coatings containing silane treated ZrO2 nanoparticles on mild steel in 3.5 % NaCl solution

Clear epoxy coatings were modified by adding various levels of ZrO2 nanoparticles. In order to achieve proper dispersion of nanoparticles in the epoxy-based coating and making possible chemical interactions between nanoparticles and polymeric coating, the surface of the nanoparticles was treated with aminopropyl trimethoxy silane (APS). Corrosion performance of mild steel coated specimens was investigated employing EIS, electrochemical noise (ECN) techniques and salt spray test. Coatings with 2–3 wt% ZrO2 nanoparticles possessed the best corrosion performance among the coating specimens. Possible chemical interactions between polymeric matrix and treated nanoparticles in nanocomposites cause high barrier properties and ionic resistance

A New Method for Edge Detection Using Imperialist Competitive Algorithm

In this paper, a method for extracting edges from Imperialistic competition evolutionary algorithm is used. The edges of this method are obtained in two distinct ways: The first method of imperialistic competitive algorithm for optimizing the parameters of a decision threshold. The method is useful to derive the standard Sobel edge operator and improved Sobel operator productivity. The second method uses two-dimensional image structure on the edge of the neighborhood will be defined so that each entry in the data represents the position of each pixel. Simulation results show the proposed method can solve edge detection problem with relatively good quality. The review indicated the proposed method is robust against noise. Keywords:Edge detection, Imperialistic competitive algorithm, Sobel, Noise, Evolutionary approach I