Introduction: We aimed to evaluate the shear bond strength of acrylic denture teeth to flexible and heat-cured denture base material after surface treatments with argon plasma, chemical bonding agent (PALFIQUE universal), and combination. Methods: A total of 80 incisor acrylic denture teeth were treated with a argonplasma, chemical bond (PALFIQUE universal bond), and a combination with 10 samples for each group. The neck (gingival portion) of teeth was cut at a 45° angle, and the teeth were attached to heat-cured acrylic resin and flexible denture base material. All the specimens were stored in artificial saliva for 7 days in an incubator (37 °C). A shear

Resilient polymeric materials such as silicone elastomers are currently used for maxillofacial prostheses construction but the strength of these materials and their clinical performance need to be optimized with the addition of reinforcing fillers. This study investigates the effect of zirconia nanopowder addition on tear strength, tensile strength, elongation at break, Shore A hardness, surface roughness and cytotoxicity of VST-50 maxillofacial silicone. Silicone base was mixed with different amounts (1%, 2% and 3%) of zirconia nanopowder using a vacuum mixer. Silicone without filler was used as control for comparison. Scanning Electron Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy were utilized to assess the efficiency of high-shear vacuum mixin

The solidification process in a multi-tube latent heat energy system is affected by the natural convection and the arrangement of heat exchanger tubes, which changes the buoyancy effect as well. In the current work, the effect of the arrangement of the tubes in a multi-tube heat exchanger was examined during the solidification process with the focus on the natural convection effects inside the phase change material (PCM). The behavior of the system was numerically analyzed using liquid fraction and energy released, as well as temperature, velocity and streamline profiles for different studied cases. The arrangement of the tubes, considering seven pipes in the symmetrical condition, are assumed at different positions in the system, i

In this paper, a national grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system is proposed. It extracts the maximum power point (MPP) using three-incremental-steps perturb and observe (TISP&O) maximum power point tracking (MPPT) method. It improves the classic P&O by using three incremental duty ratio (ΔD) instead of a single one in the conventional P and O MPPT method. Therefore, the system's performance is improved to a higher speed and less power fluctuation around the MPP. The Boost converter controls the MPPT and then is connected to a three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI). This type of inverter needs a high and constant input voltage. A second-order low pass (LC) filter is connected to the output of VSI to reduce t

In this paper, nanofluid of TiO₂/water of concentrations of 0.002% and 0.004% volume was used. This nanofluid was flowing through heat exchanger of shell and concentric double tubes with counter current flow to the hot oil. The thermal conductivity of nanofluid is enhanced with increasing concentrations of the TiO₂, this increment was by 19% and 16.5% for 0.004% and 0.002% volume respectively relative to the base fluid (water). Also the heat transfer coefficient of the nanofluid is increased as Reynold's number and nanofluid concentrations increased too. The heat transfer coefficient is increased by 66% and 49% for 0.004% and 0.002% volume respectively relative to the base fluid. This study showed that the friction

The efficiency of internal combustion engines (ICE) is usually about thirty percent of the total energy of the fuel. The residual energy is lost in the exhaust gas, the lubrication, and the cooling water in the radiators. Recently much of the researcher’s efforts have focused on taking advantage of wasted energy of the exhaust gas. Using a thermoelectric generator (TEG) is one of the promising ways. However, TEG depends entirely on the temperature difference, which may be offered by the exhaust muffler. An experimental test has been conducted to study the thermal performance of a different muffler internal design. The researchers resort to the use of lost energy in an ICE using TEG, which is one of the ways to take adv

Electromyogram (EMG)-based Pattern Recognition (PR) systems for upper-limb prosthesis control provide promising ways to enable an intuitive control of the prostheses with multiple degrees of freedom and fast reaction times. However, the lack of robustness of the PR systems may limit their usability. In this paper, a novel adaptive time windowing framework is proposed to enhance the performance of the PR systems by focusing on their windowing and classification steps. The proposed framework estimates the output probabilities of each class and outputs a movement only if a decision with a probability above a certain threshold is achieved. Otherwise (i.e., all probability values are below the threshold), the window size of the EMG signa