Role of strain reversal in microstructure and texture of pure al during non-monotonic simple shear straining

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Dyestuff is one of the most widely released pollutants into the environment. Many approaches have been considered to deal with the dye removal from polluted water such as adsorption, ultrafiltration, osmosis, solvent extraction and photocatalytic degradation. The photocatalytic degradation process is one of the most beneficial, economical and environmentally friendly ways to degrade the organic pollutants from wastewater. In this study, an efficient ferrite-based photocatalyst, AgFeO2/rGO/TiO2 was successfully developed using simple deposition and reflux method. Physical, chemical and structural properties were analyzed by using XRD, FTIR Raman and PL spectroscopy. The efficiency of photocatalyst was investigated for the decolorization of methyl blue (MB) dye and activity was measured through UV-vis spectroscopy. The effect of parameters like pH, concentrations of MB dye, and loading of silver ferrite (AgFeO2) was investigated. The study depicted that the properties of TiO2 were improved due to addition of silver ferrite and reduced graphene oxide (rGO). The 2.5% AgFeO2/rGO/TiO2 exhibited the highest efficiency and completely degraded the 50 ppm of MB dye in 30 min. The parametric study revealed that dye decolorization is faster in a neutral solution than in basic and acidic medium. The higher performance of the photocatalyst was attributed to the reduced charge recombination and improved optical properties. Thus, AgFeO2/rGO/TiO2 can be a potential composite for photocatalytic dye degradation and other photocatalytic applications under UV-Visible light irradiations

On the Production of Severely Deformed Workpieces in Large Scales: A Step Towards Industrialization

© 2019, The Author(s). Improvement of the functional properties of aluminium and its alloys by grain refinement is an effective way to increase their applications. The capability of severe plastic deformation methods to produce ultrafine-grained materials has been well established. However, their industrial application is limited because of the required additional equipment and limitation of the product size. Due to the direct extrusion characteristic of the simple shear extrusion (SSE) method and consequently the minimal additional tools and expenses, SSE is a good candidate for commercialization. The aim of this research is to scale up the SSE products to facilitate their potential use in practical applications. To overcome the limitation on the length of the plunger and reduce the load of the SSE process, a design is proposed in the current research. Microstructural investigations and mechanical tests of commercial pure aluminium (AA1050) workpieces confirm the effectiveness of the proposed design on the grain refinement and its capability to reduce the processing load

Microstructure and texture inhomogeneity after large non-monotonic simple shear strains: Achievements of tensile properties

© 2018 by the authors. In this study, for the first time, the effect of large non-monotonic simple shear strains on the uniformity of the tensile properties of pure Cu specimens was studied and justified by means of microstructural and textural investigations. A process called simple shear extrusion, which consists of two forward and two reversed simple shear straining stages on two different slip planes, was designed in order to impose non-monotonic simple shear strains. Although the mechanism of grain refinement is continuous dynamic recrystallization, an exceptional microstructural behavior and texture were observed due to the complicated straining path results from two different slip planes and two pairs of shear directions on two different axes in a cycle of the process. The geometry of the process imposes a distribution of strain results in the inhomogeneous microstructure and texture throughout the plane perpendicular to the slip plane. Although it is expected that the yield strength in the periphery reaches that of the center by retardation, it never reaches that value, which results in the different deformation modes of the center and the periphery. The occurrence of shear reversal in each quarter of a cycle results in the elimination of some of the boundaries, an increase in the cell wall thickness, and a decrease in the Taylor factor. Change in the shear plane in each half of a cycle leads to the formation of cell boundaries in a different alignment. Since the direction of the shear and/or the shear plane change frequently in a cycle, the texture of a sample after multi-cycles of the process more closely resembles a random orientation