Characterization and Failure Analysis of Plastics

Volume 11B serves as a reference and guide to help engineers determine the causes of failure in plastic components and make corrective adjustments through design and manufacturing modifications. It contains seven major divisions, covering polymer science and processing, material selection and design, chemical, thermal, and physical analysis, mechanical behavior and testing, degradation mechanisms, systematic failure analysis, and life assessment and optimization. It examines a wide range of factors that contribute to the properties and behaviors of engineering plastics and the effect of thermal and mechanical stresses, impact loading, fatigue, wear, weathering, moisture and chemical exposure, photochemical aging, microbial degradation, and elevated temperatures. It addresses issues such as flammability, environmental stress cracking, crazing, and stress whitening and describes the unique characteristics of polymer fracture and how to assess and predict service life using fracture mechanics. It also presents and analyzes numerous examples of failure, including design and manufacturing related failures, wear failures of reinforced plastics, and failures due to creep and yielding.

Open Innovation in Times of Crisis: An Overview of the Healthcare Sector in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge and disruptive technological changes in the healthcare sector, transforming the way businesses and societies function. To respond to the global health crisis, there have been numerous innovation projects in the healthcare sector, including the fast design and manufacturing of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical devices, and testing, treatment, and vaccine technologies. Many of these innovative activities happen beyond organizational boundaries with collaboration and open innovation. In this paper, we review the current literature on open innovation strategy during the pandemic and adopt the co-evolution view of business ecosystems to address the context of change. Based on a detailed exploration of the COVID-19-related technologies in the UK and global healthcare sectors, we identify the key emerging themes of open innovation in crisis. Further discussions are conducted in relation to each theme. Our results and analysis can help provide policy recommendations for the healthcare sector, businesses, and society to recover from the crisis.

Perspective on Micro-Supercapacitors

The rapid development of portable, wearable, and implantable electronic devices greatly stimulated the urgent demand for modern society for multifunctional and miniaturized electrochemical energy storage devices and their integrated microsystems. This article reviews material design and manufacturing technology in different micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) along with devices integrate to achieve the targets of their various applications in recent years. Finally, We also critically prospect the future development directions and challenges of MSCs.

RETALT_TPS design and manufacturing

The present document discusses the development of a new trowelable Thermal Protection System (TPS), able of being mixed, applied and cured directly onto the vehicle structure, with the aim to fulfill the requirements of the thermal properties for the re-usable launch vehicle studied in the Retro Propulsion Landing Technology (RETALT) project. During the development of this TPS, several formula optimizations were made to improve or eliminate cracks in the char surface, increase char stiffness, rheological adjustments, and adhesion improvement to different substrates. The most promising material developed is composed by cork and epoxy resin, together with a set of rheological and thermal resistance additives, that makes it possible to be applied with a spatula, while at the same time it is able to withstand the demanding environmental conditions during atmospheric reentry. In terms of thermal properties, the developed material has a higher thermal conductivity than the current P50 TPS commercialized by Amorim Cork Composites (ACC), but it has a better behavior when exposed to flame conditions. It is expected that the absence of cracks improves its structure and resistance to demanding conditions. The development work included a detailed study of the composition and processes required for the development of a TPS material, which were evaluated by several types of flame characterization tests and thermal properties analysis.

Design and manufacturing of an innovative rolling ball tool: A step forward towards the development of SPIF process

Incremental sheet forming (ISF) is an innovative forming technology which is widely used in various sectors of mechanical production. This is particularly useful for rapid prototyping and limited batch without a specific die. A new class of this method is single-point incremental forming (SPIF). This paper presents a comprehensive experimental investigation on the SPIF of Aluminum sheets, and, in particular, the influence of the forming tool is taken into account. A new rolling ball tool is designed to follow this, and the formability of the Aluminum sheets under the SPIF procedure is investigated for both new and conventional tools. Moreover, a number of important process parameters such as the feed rate, forming force, and surface roughness are considered in the experiments’ design. Finally, the optimal conditions in achieving a developed SPIF procedure in terms of the mentioned factors are reported and discussed. The findings of this work suggest that the surface quality after the forming process can be enhanced by 55% when using the new designed tool, while the forming force is reduced by 38% at the same time.

Kohti yhteiskehittelyä

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan peruskoulussa toteutettua keksintöprojektia, jonka aikana oppilasryhmä suunnitteli ja toteutti älyvaatteen. Tutkimus on osa laajempaa tutkimushanketta, jossa koulua kehitetään keksivänä ja innovatiivisena yhteisönä. Tässä tutkimuksessa selvitetään, miten oppilasryhmän älyvaatteen suunnittelu- ja valmistusprosessi eteni ja mikä rooli opettajilla oli prosessin aikana. Tutkimusaineisto sisältää yhdeksän opetuskerran videoinnit. Videoaineistoon tehdyn makroanalyysin perusteella kartoitettiin kaikki ne opetustilanteet, joissa ilmeni vuorovaikutusta opettajan ja oppilaiden välillä. Teoriaohjaavaan analyysiin pohjautuen erotellaan ja tulkitaan vuoro-vaikutuksen erilaisia muotoja. Tutkimustuloksissa korostuu opettajan rooli sekä vaatteen yhteiskehittelyssä että oppilaiden toiminnan ohjaamisessa. Yhteiskehittelyn toteutuminen edellyttää riittäviä aika- ja taitoresursseja sekä motivaatiota ratkaista haastavia suunnitteluongelmia. Towards co-creation: Observations of the teacher's role in the smart clothing project Abstract In this article we examined an invention project in a comprehensive school where a group of pupils designed and manufactured a set of smart clothing. The study is a part of a wider research project in which the school is being developed as an inventive and innovative community. In this study we analysed how the design and manufacturing processes of the smart clothing proceeded and what roles the teachers had during the process. The research data comprised video recordings of nine project sessions. All the teaching episodes containing interactions between the teacher and the pupils were surveyed as part of the macro level analysis. Based on the theory-driven analysis, the different forms of the interaction were identified and interpreted. In the results, the nature of the teacher's role emerged in both the co-creation of the smart clothing and in directing the pupils' actions. Successful co-creation requires enough time, skill, and motivation to solve challenging design problems. Keywords: discovery learning, e-textiles, apparel design, smart clothing