Effect of frictional boundary conditions and percentage area reduction on the extrusion pressure of Aluminum AA6063 alloy using FE analysis modelling

© 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada. This is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Finite Element Analysis was carried out to describe the effect of frictional boundary conditions and percentage reduction on deformation modelling (forward extrusion) of Aluminum AA6063 alloy. Curved die profiles of regular polygons (square, hexagonal, heptagonal, and octagonal) were designed using MATLAB R2009b and Autodesk Inventor 2013 to generate the coordinate and thesolid CAD model of the die profile respectively form a circular billet. The numerical analysis was performed using DeformTM-3D commercial package with frictional boundary conditions of 0.38 and 0.75 representing the wet and dry condition and varying the percentage reduction of 50%, 70%, and 90%. The results of the temperature distribution, effective stress, effective strain, andstrain rate were reported. As the percentage area reduction increases, the extrusion pressure also increases with an increasing frictional condition, and die length. Also, extrusion pressure decreases when the side of the polygon increases from square-shaped section follow by hexagonal shaped-section and least in octagonal shaped-section for both friction factors and percentage areareductions. For a given percentage reduction and cross-sectional area, there is no distinct difference between the predictive loads for the shaped-polygons. When the result of this analysis is compared with the experimental results from the literature, it is evident that DeformTM-3D is an effective tool for finite element analysis of non-isothermal deformation processes.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Potential of natural fibres and their composites for South Asian countries: Moving towards sustainability

Increased environmental concerns and depletion of petroleum-based resources arising from the use of non-renewable resources have increased the demand of natural fibre reinforced composites (NFRCs). Composite materials reinforced with glass and carbon fibres have limited end-of-life (EoL) options, which is a major concern. To minimise this situation, lignocellulose plant fibres have been studied extensively in recent years, due to the increasing demand for sustainable lightweight and environmentally friendly materials. Natural plant fibres are considered as a viable substitute to E-glass fibres owing to their many attractive benefits, such as biodegradable, recyclability, high specific strength and stiffness suitable as reinforcements for many semi-structural and structural composite applications. This new class of lightweight sustainable composites can offer environmental, social and economic benefits as substitute materials for various applications. Through an up-to-date review, this work presents an overview of natural plant fibres as reinforcements of composites for various applications, especially in the context of the South Asian countries.Final Published versio

Development and performance evaluation of a natural draft mixed-type solar dryer for agricultural products

Reduced moisture content enhances storage properties of agricultural products and reduces post-harvest losses. Effective drying can be achieved using solar dryers in regions with abundant solar radiation. In this study, a natural draft mixed-type solar dryer suitable for rural communities of developing countries was developed. The performance of the solar dryer was also investigated using pepper, okra and tomato. The temperature taken at different points of the drying chamber and the auxiliary collector show that the temperature within the drying chamber is higher than the ambient temperature. The temperature within the drying chamber was also found to depend on the atmospheric conditions. The maximum drying rate was obtained at periods between 1200 and 1400 hrs Nigeria local time during which the temperature within the solar dryer is also maximum. Temperature within the solar dryer reached up to 62°C. The solar collector efficiency was 52.0% while the drying efficiency was 21.9%.Peer reviewe

Effect of frictional boundary conditions and percentage area reduction on the extrusion pressure of aluminum AA6063 alloy using FE analysis modelling

Abstract: Finite Element Analysis was carried out to describe the effect of frictional boundary conditions and percentage reduction on deformation modelling (forward extrusion) of Aluminum AA6063 alloy. Curved die profiles of regular polygons (square, hexagonal, heptagonal, and octagonal) were designed using MATLAB R2009b and Autodesk Inventor 2013 to generate the coordinate and the solid CAD model of the die profile respectively form a circular billet. The numerical analysis was performed using DeformTM-3D commercial package with frictional boundary conditions of 0.38 and 0.75 representing the wet and dry condition and varying the percentage reduction of 50%, 70%, and 90%. The results of the temperature distribution, effective stress, effective strain, and strain rate were reported. As the percentage area reduction increases, the extrusion pressure also increases with an increasing frictional condition, and die length. Also, extrusion pressure decreases when the side of the polygon increases from square-shaped section follow by hexagonal shaped-section and least in octagonal shaped-section for both friction factors and percentage area reductions. For a given percentage reduction and cross-sectional area, there is no distinct difference between the predictive loads for the shaped-polygons. When the result of this analysis is compared with the experimental results from the literature, it is evident that DeformTM-3D is an effective tool for finite element analysis of non-isothermal deformation processes

Assessment of effectiveness of hollow fins for performance enhancement of solar still device using simulation approach

Unavailability of relatively clean water for several industrial, domestic and agricultural purposes is a serious concern to many regions of the world today. This challenge is growing worse with the increasing world global warming and human population. Therefore, there is need to research into an innovative, sustainable and/or improved technology for an efficient and effective solution, such as desalination. Desalination of freely available sea water is considered a promising source of fresh water. Solar radiation is abundant and can be used to desalinate water, using a solar still device. Also, it is important to increase the productivity of the solar still device through hollow fin modification. Therefore, the effectiveness of this improvement was investigated in this study, using an analysis system (ANSYS) Fluent computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation. Appropriate models were used to describe the physical processes, including condensation, evaporation, multiphase flow, surface tension and solar radiation. A close agreement between the simulation values of solar energy and the water temperature in the basin was observed when compared with the experimental data from the literature. Velocity of 0.259 m/s, pressure of 55.8 Pa, temperature of 57.85 ºC and mass transfer rate of 1.41 kg/m³/s were obtained in the mid-plane of the improved double slope single basin (DSSB). The degree of improvement was 5-7% when compared with the existing models. Importantly, this process is economically efficient and can support the concepts of sustainability and healthy living, especially in rural areas.Peer reviewe

Quantitative Assessment of Damage in Composites by Implementing Acousto-Ultrasonics Technique

This study focused on quantitative damage severity assessment in composite materials using Acousto-Ultrasonics (AU), an in-service and active non-destructive inspection technique in which Lamb waves are communicated through a damaged zone. This was done by activating a signal onto the composite material surface and acquiring the received waves after their interactions with the damage. It relied on early research that presented a series of stress wave factors (SWFs) derived from the frequency-domain of the AU data, as quantitative identifiers of the received signal. Although, the SWFs have previously been proven to determine the understanding of the spatial arrangements of the impact damage, the degree or severity of the damage inside the impact damage area has not been assessed. Therefore, the current research was a step in the right way toward that aim. AU waves were generated via a laminate with increasing concentrations of ply faults, across longitudinal length. The stress wave factors were first examined for an undamaged composite, and the SWFs were then connected with the fault concentration. The significance of the found linkages and the possible futures of quantitative assessment of the degree of damage by such relationships were examined. The stress wave factors showed clear and consistent patterns, as the fault concentration increased. With a rise in fault density, an element measuring the energy content of the waves significantly changed with R- sq(adj) = 91.33% and almost linearly, and provided a robust measurable trend, while other parameter exhibited lesser shifts with R- sq(adj) = 51.86%. The result obtained from the presented work provided a base to cost-effective and in- service measure to early detection of catastrophic failures in composite structures, including the wind turbine blades for renewable and sustainable energy generation.Peer reviewe

Effects of Sensor Spacing and Material Thickness of Al 6082-T6 using Acousto-Ultrasonics Technique

© 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, to view a copy of the license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Peer reviewe

Damage Characterisation in Composite Laminates using Vibro-Acoustic Technique

The need to characterise in-service damage in composite structures is increasingly becoming important as composites find higher utilisation in wind turbines, aerospace, automotive, marine, among others. This paper investigates the feasibility of simplifying the conventional acousto-ultrasonic technique setup for quick and economic one-sided in-service inspection of composite structures. Acousto-ultrasonic technique refers to the approach of using ultrasonic transducer for local excitation while sensing the material response with an acoustic emission sensor. However, this involves transducers with several auxiliaries. The approach proposed herewith, referred to as vibro-acoustic testing, involves a low level of vibration impact excitation and acoustic emission sensing for damage characterisation. To test the robustness of this approach, first, a quasi-static test was carried out to impute low-velocity impact damage on three groups of test samples with different ply stacking sequences. Next, the vibro-acoustic testing was performed on all test samples with the acoustic emission response for the samples acquired. Using the acoustic emission test sample response for all groups, the stress wave factor was determined using the peak voltage stress wave factor method. The stress wave factor results showed an inverse correlation between the level of impact damage and stress wave factor across all the test sample groups. This corresponds with what has been reported in literature for acousto-ultrasonic technique; thus demonstrating the robustness of the proposed vibro-acoustic set-up.Peer reviewe

Effects of sand and gating architecture on the performance of foot valve lever casting components used in pump industries

Funding Information: The authors thank Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education, Krishnankoil for providing the facilities for various tests and characterizations. The King Saud University authors extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research at King Saud University for funding the work through the research group project no. RG-148. This Research was funded by King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok has received funding support from the National Science, Research and Innovation Fund (NSRF) (Grant No. KMUTNB-MHESI-64-16.1). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)This work addresses manufacture, testing and simulation of foot valve lever (FVL) for monoblock pump industry, using a cost-effective casting design process. The impact of different types of sands, such as air-set, dry and sodium silicate as well as gating designs, namely H-, U- and O-type, were studied with respect to surface roughness and porosity. The mold pattern was produced using additive manufacturing (AM) technology. Both experimental and numerical investigations were performed on the temperature distribution of molten metal at random locations for the different gating configurations or designs, considering mold filling and solidification. It was evident from the experimental investigation that contribution of air-set sand and O-type gating architecture showed limited consistency effects. Importantly, gating architecture was the most influential parameter to determine all specified quality outcomes, independent of sand mold. An order of O < H < U-type was obtained from the gating designs for minimal surface roughness and percentage of porosity. Furthermore, the microstructure analysis depicted only an irregular defect with minimum quantity at both surface and cross-section of O-type at two different locations. Optimum pouring temperatures of 740, 750 and 790 °C were obtained for mold filling of all 24 components of H-, O- and U-type of gating designs, respectively. The varying solidification temperature was observed from real time thermocouple reading, which was in close agreement with the numerical simulation. Evidently, O-type of gating design exhibited best performance for large-scale development of the FVL in terms of surface roughness, porosity and cooling effects.Peer reviewe

A Novel Signal Processing Method for Friction and Sliding Wear

© 2021 by ASME. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4052063This current study proposed a new computationally efficient and comparatively accurate algorithm for calculating both static and dynamic coefficients of friction from high frequency data. Its scope embraced an application in a real-time friction-based system, such as active braking safety systems in automobile industries. The signal sources were from a heavy-duty reciprocating dry sliding wear test platform, focused on experimental data related to friction induced by stick-slip phenomena. The test specimen was a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)-coated basalt/vinyl ester composite material, tested at a large scale. The algorithm was primarily aimed to provide scalability for processing significantly large tribological data in a real-time. Besides a computational efficiency, the proposed method adopted to evaluate both static and dynamic coefficients of friction using the statistical approach exhibited a greater accuracy and reliability when compared with the extant models. The result showed that the proposed method reduced the computation time of processing and reduced the variation of the absolute values of both static and dynamic frictions. However, the variation of dynamic friction was later increased at a particular threshold, based on the test duration.Peer reviewe