Objectives This work presents laser coating of grade 1 pure titanium (Ti) dental implant surface with sintered biological apatite beta-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP), which has a chemical composition close to bone. Materials and methods Pulsed Nd:YAG laser of single pulse capability up to 70 J/10 ms and pulse peak power of 8 kW was used to implement the task. Laser pulse peak power, pulse duration, repetition rate and scanning speed were modulated to achieve the most homogenous, cohesive and highly adherent coat layer. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray microscopy (EDX), optical microscopy and nanoindentation analyses were conducted to characterise and evaluate the microstructure, phases, modulus of elasticity of the coating layer and calcium-to-phosphate ratio and composition. Results showed that the laser power and scanning speed influenced coating adherence. The cross-sectional field-emission scanning electron microscopy images at low power and high speed showed poor adherence and improved as the laser power increased to 2 kW. Decreasing the scanning speed to 0.2 mm/s at the same power of 2 kW increased adherence. EDX results of the substrate demonstrated that the chemical composition of the coat layer did not change after processing. Moreover, the maps revealed proper distribution of Ca and P with some agglomeration on the surface. The sharp peaks on the X-ray diffraction patterns indicated that β-TCPs in the coat layer were mostly crystalline. The elastic modulus was low at the surface and increased gradually with depth to reach 19 GPa at 200 nm; this value was close to that of bone. The microhardness of the coated substrate increased by about 88%. The laser pulse energy of 8.3 J, pulse peak power of 2 kW, pulse duration of 4.3 min, repetition rate of 10 Hz and scanning speed of 0.2 ms−1 yielded the best results. Conclusion: Both processing and coating have potential use for dental implant applications.
The accuracy of the Moment Method for imposing no-slip boundary conditions in the lattice Boltzmann algorithm is investigated numerically using lid-driven cavity flow. Boundary conditions are imposed directly upon the hydrodynamic moments of the lattice Boltzmann equations, rather than the distribution functions, to ensure the constraints are satisfied precisely at grid points. Both single and multiple relaxation time models are applied. The results are in excellent agreement with data obtained from state-of-the-art numerical methods and are shown to converge with second order accuracy in grid spacing.
A general velocity profile for a laminar flow over a flat plate with zero incidence is obtained by employing a new boundary condition to the other available boundary conditions. The general velocity profile is mathematically simple and nearest to the exact solution. Also other related values, boundary layer thickness, displacement thickness, momentum thickness and coefficient of friction are nearest to the exact solution compared with other corresponding values for other researchers.
The current paper aims to identify potential factors associated with employees’ intentions to leave information and communication technology companies in Iraq. There is evident variability in the literature regarding these factors; hence, a factor analysis approach was employed to identify these factors within the surveyed environment. Due to the difficulty in precisely delineating the size of the research population, a purposive sampling method was employed to reach an appropriate number of respondents within the aforementioned companies. A total of 288 employees responded to the survey conducted via Google Forms. The test results revealed the presence of five primary factors associated with employees’ intentions to leave, name
... Show MoreTo evaluate the toxicity of benzalkonium chloride in aquaculture, the hemato-serological indices of Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus are used as biomarkers. Following exposure to three concentrations of benzalkonium chloride BAC 0.1, 0.25, 0.50, and 1 mg/l (BAC1,2,3 and 4) in aquaria for two durations 21 and 42 days, the microbiological assay in fish aquaria, in addition to blood parameters were assessed. Except for the mean difference between BAC2 and BAC3 (P > 0.05) at 42 days, the mean values of the bacterial counts revealed a significant difference between all compared groups (0.05 ≥ P ≤ 0.01). Following exposure to the lower concentrations of BAC (1, 2 and 3), the main blood parameters of Oreochromis niloticus namely red bl
... Show MoreRealizing the full potential of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) highlights many design issues, particularly the trade-offs concerning multiple conflicting improvements such as maximizing the route overlapping for efficient data aggregation and minimizing the total link cost. While the issues of data aggregation routing protocols and link cost function in a WSNs have been comprehensively considered in the literature, a trade-off improvement between these two has not yet been addressed. In this paper, a comprehensive weight for trade-off between different objectives has been employed, the so-called weighted data aggregation routing strategy (WDARS) which aims to maximize the overlap routes for efficient data aggregation and link cost
... Show MoreIn this paper the experimentally obtained conditions for the fusion splicing with photonic crystal fibers (PCF) having large mode areas were reported. The physical mechanism of the splice loss and the microhole collapse property of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) were studied. By controlling the arc-power and the arc-time of a conventional electric arc fusion splicer (FSM-60S), the minimum loss of splicing for fusion two conventional single mode fibers (SMF-28) was (0.00dB), which has similar mode field diameter. For splicing PCF (LMA-10) with a conventional single mode fiber (SMF-28), the loss was increased due to the mode field mismatch.
The present work focuses on the experimental implementation of one of the fiber optical sensors, the optical glass fiber built on surface Plasmon resonance. A type of optical glass fiber was used in this work, single-mode no-core fiber with pre-tapering diameter: (125.1 μm) and (125.3 μm), respectively. The taper method can be tested by measuring the output power of the optical fiber before and after chemical etching to show the difference in cladding diameter due to the effect of hydrofluoric acid with increasing time for the taper process. The optical glass fiber sensor can be fabricated using the taper method to reduce the cladding diameter of the fibers to (83.12 µm, 64.37 µm, and 52.45 µm) for single-mode fibers using Hydrofluoric
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