Analysis of a Low-Speed Drive System Using Intelligent Materials

This paper presents a low speed drive system with a simple and reliable construction, which can be used in an area where there is no power supply (isolated areas, forests, agricultural fields, etc.) and which operates on the basis of two heat sources, one from solar radiation and one provided by water. Alternatively, this system can be used to recover energy from wastewater from industry. The operation and role of the parameters that can influence the value of the rotation speed of the drive system are analyzed through a simulation, maintaining a constant speed in the case of the prototype is achieved through the control system because in real situations the temperature of heat sources can vary within certain limits. The models and tests performed highlight the parameters of the analyzed drive system and the limits of the range in which its speed can vary.

Mining Logical Circuits in Fungi

Living substrates are capable for nontrivial mappings of electrical signals due to the substrate nonlinear electrical characteristics. This property can be used to realize Boolean functions. Input logical values are represented by amplitude or frequency of electrical stimuli. Output logical values are decoded from electrical responses of living substrates. We demonstrate how logical circuits can be implemented in mycelium bound composites. The mycelium bound composites (fungal materials) are getting growing recognition as building, packaging, decoration and clothing materials. Presently the fungal materials are passive. To make the fungal materials adaptive, i.e. sensing and computing, we should embed logical circuits into them. We demonstrate experimental laboratory prototypes of many-input Boolean functions implemented in fungal materials from oyster fungi P. ostreatus. We characterize complexity of the functions discovered via complexity of the space-time configurations of one-dimensional cellular automata governed by the functions. We show that the mycelium bound composites can implement representative functions from all classes of cellular automata complexity including the computationally universal. The results presented will make an impact in the field of unconventional computing, experimental demonstration of purposeful computing with fungi, and in the field of intelligent materials, as the prototypes of computing mycelium bound composites.

Programming Self-Assembled Materials With DNA-Coated Colloids

Introducing the concept of programmability paves the way for designing complex and intelligent materials, where the materials’ structural information is pre-encoded in the components that build the system. With highly tunable interactions, DNA-coated particles are promising building elements to program materials at the colloidal scale, but several grand challenges have prevented them from assembling into the desired structures and phases. In recent years, the field has seen significant progress in tackling these challenges, which has led to the realization of numerous colloidal structures and dynamics previously inaccessible, including the desirable colloidal diamond structure, that are useful for photonic and various other applications. We review this exciting progress, focusing in detail on how DNA-coated colloids can be designed to have a sophisticatedly tailored surface, shape, patches, as well as controlled kinetics, which are key factors that allow one to program in principle a limitless number of structures. We also share our view on how the field may be directed in future.

Intelligent Materials and their Direction of Use

The paper presents the manufacturing process of two classes of material that feature intelligent precursors, used for welding/cladding, and deposit layers with viable physical proprieties, that can be predetermined by a precise and well-balanced programming of the process parameters. The fields of use for these materials are those of manufacturing welded structures that have equal resistant joints, made from stainless steel with austenitic-ferrite-martensitic structure or mixes of the above mentioned structures, with the possibility of machining, in welded state, namely with self-hardening proprieties during exploitation. The methods of securing the above mentioned materials is programming, according to exploitation requirements, of the preheating and in between rows temperature, as well as the dilution degree of the filler into the base material. Results obtained by structural or morphological changes of the crystalline grains are determined by perturbing the equilibrium state and/or precipitation of secondary phases. The field of use of the methods above mentioned are valid in the interval: 30-55 HRC, namely 500-1200 N/mm2.