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 mixing as filler dispersion method and the surface topography, respectively. Both SEM and AFM images showed that the zirconia nanopowder were distributed fairly well within the polymer. Statistically, highly significant increase in tear strength, tensile strength and hardness with non-significant decrease in elongation at break and non-significant increase in surface roughness were seen with 1% and 2% groups. Whereas with 3% group, there was significant improvement in tear strength, tensile strength and hardness but there was significant undesirable decrease in elongation and increase in roughness. Cytotoxicity test revealed that the addition of zirconia nanopowder was nontoxic to Rat Embryonic Fibroblast (REF) cells and there was non-significant change in the cell viability of all study groups after 24- and 72-hours incubation periods. In conclusion, the addition of 2% by weight nano zirconia to VST-50 maxillofacial silicone could be beneficial in enhancing its performance.
Supernova explosions are described as very violent events which transfer a significant amount of energy to interstellar media and are responsible for a large variety of physical processes. This study does not discuss the actual explosion mechanisms but follows the behavior of the dynamical evolution of some selected type I and type II supernova remnant and particularly after a thousand years from their explosion and shows how the density of the medium affects the evolution and the lifetime of each remnant. By studying such behaviors, a simplified model has been proposed here for the velocity and radius of the remnant after thousand years of explosion that depends only on the density of the medium and age of the remnant. It has been found th
... Show MoreEnzymatic hydrolysis process of lignocellulosic biomass materials is difficult because of inherent structural features of biomass, which represents barriers that prevent complete hydrolysis; therefore, pretreatment techniques are necessary to render biomass highly digestible in enzymatic hydrolysis process. In this research, (non?) oxidative short-term lime pretreatment of willow wood was used. A weight of 11.40 g of willow wood was mixed with an excess of calcium hydroxide (0.4 g Ca(OH)2/g raw biomass) and water loading (15 g/g raw biomass). Lime pretreatment was carried out for various periods of time including 1, 2, 3.5, 5 and 6 h, with temperatures at 100, 113, 130, 147 and 1600C, and oxygen pressures as o
... Show MoreThe study included selection six species of the fungi related to Pleurotus genus were evaluated for their ability to production of Pleurotin, one of them, Pleurotus ostreatus (P.11) was isolated and identified in the present study. Pleurotin was extracted with screening by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and quantification High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Cytotoxicity of Pleurotin extracted from P. ostreatus (P.11) grown in different sugar sources (galactose, mannitol, sucrose, dextrose and lactose) liquid media was test against three selected cancer cell lines, CaSki, MCF-7 and A549 addition to Human Non Cancer Fibroblast Cell Line (MRC-5). Pleurotin of P. ostreatus (P.11) grown in galactose induced the significant highest
... Show MoreThe present study explores numerically the energy storage and energy regeneration during Melting and Solidification processes in Phase Change Materials (PCM) used in Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage (LHTES) systems. Transient two-dimensional (2-D) conduction heat transfer equations with phase change have been solved utilizing the Explicit Finite Difference Method (FDM) and Grid Generation technique. A Fortran computer program was built to solve the problem. The study included four different Paraffin's. The effects of container geometrical shape, which included cylindrical and square sections of the same volume and heat transfer area, the container volume or mass of PCM, variation of mass flow rate of heat transfer fluid (HTF), and temp
... Show MoreIn this paper waste natural material (date seed) and polymer particles(UF) were used for investigation of removal dye of the potassium permanganate. Also study effect some variables such as pH, dye concentration and adsorbent concentration on dye removal. 15 experimental runs were done using the itemized conditions designed established on the Box-Wilson design employed to optimize dye removal. The optimum conditions for the dye removal were found: (pH) 12, (dye con.) 2.38 ppm, (adsorbant con.) 0.0816 gm for date seed with 95.22% removal and for UF (pH) 12, (dye con.) 18 ppm, (adsorbant con.) 0.2235 gm with 91.43%. The value of R-square was 85.47% for Date seed and (88.77%) for UF.
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Abstract In the current contribution, a novel binuclear nickel(II) and zinc(II) complexes were prepared from a hexadentate ligand prepared via condensation of 3,3'-Bipyridine-6,6'-dicarbaldehyde , 2-amino-5-chlorobenzaldehyde and 2-Aminophenol .The symmetric ligand (H2DTPE) and its metal complexes were illustrated utilizing various techniques of physicochemical containing magnetic moment, analytical analysis and spectroscopy of mass, IR, 13C and 1H NMR, TGA and UV-Vis. The particles of MO Nanoscale were created from the labeled complex applying the ways of pyrolysis and utilizing methods of XRD, FT-IR, and FE-SEM, that specified close compatibility with the typical pattern for nanoparticles of NiO, ZnO and appeared the reasonable size in
... Show MoreThe ceramic composite with different proportions of clay and silica was prepared with a grain size of 70 μm and the weight percentage was selected for four groups (clayx silica100-x) were x q15, 25, 30 and 50. In this manuscript, for each pressured sample, a sintering procedure was carried out for 3 hours under static air and at various sintering temperatures (1000, 1100, 1200, 1400)°C. After sintering, the density, porosity, water absorption, compression strength and thermal conductivity were measured. The best results were obtained using a mixture of 15% clay and 85% silica which were sintering at 1400°C for three hours under air.
The focus of this work is on systematically understanding the effects of packing density of the sand grains on both the internal and bulk mechanical properties for strip footing interacting with granular soil. The studies are based on particle image velocimetry (PIV) method, coupled with a high resolution imaging camera. This provides valuable new insights on the evolution of slip planes at grain-scale under different fractions of the ultimate load. Furthermore, the PIV based results are compared with finite element method simulations in which the experimentally characterised parameters and constitutive behaviour are fed as an input, and a good level of agreements are obtained. The reported results would serve to the practicing engineers, r
... Show MoreThis study is concerned with channel banks slopes in the middle sector of Al-Massab Al-Aam channel in the middle and south of Iraq. The geotechnical properties of soil in the channel banks including physical ,engineering, chemical and mineralogical characters in over (25) station have been studied.
The grain size distribution of the bank soils of channel showed that the clay percentage is higher than those of the silt and sand percentages.
The bank soils are classified according to the USCS standards. They are composed of clay with low plasticity (CL) that represents 88% of the soil and ,clay with high plasticity (CH)represents 12% of the soil. The saturated density values ranges between 1.679 and 1.953 g/cm3 with average value of