Our research focuses on re-using a waste a material, cross-linked polyethylene abbreviated XLPE, which is a widely used coating for wires. XLPE is strong and has excellent thermal properties due to its chemical structure - what leads to the significance of recycling this valuable polymer. Properties of XLPE include good resistance to heat, resistance to chemical corrosion, and high impact strength. A wire is usually composed of a metal core conductor and polymeric coating layers. One creates a new coating, including little pieces of recycled XLPE in the lower layer adjacent to the wire, and virgin XLPE only in the upper layer. Industries are often wasting materials which might be useful. Mostly, some returned or excess products could be recycled to create a new type of product or enable the original use. This method helps cleaning the waste, lowers the costs, and enhances the income of the manufacturing company. With the changing of the thickness of the outer layer, the roughness changes significantly. Moreover, different processing methods result in surfaces that look differently.

Solid state lithium ion electrolytes are important to the development of next generation safer and high power density lithium ion batteries. Perovskite-structured LLT is a promising solid electrolyte with high lithium ion conductivity. LLT also serves as a good model system to understand lithium ion diffusion behaviors in solids. In this thesis, molecular dynamics and related atomistic computer simulations were used to study the diffusion behavior and diffusion mechanism in bulk crystal and grain boundary in lithium lanthanum titanate (LLT) solid state electrolytes. The effects of defect concentration on the structure and lithium ion diffusion behaviors in LLT were systematically studied and the lithium ion self-diffusion and diffusion energy barrier were investigated by both dynamic simulations and static calculations using the nudged elastic band (NEB) method. The simulation results show that there exist an optimal vacancy concentration at around x=0.067 at which lithium ions have the highest diffusion coefficient and the lowest diffusion energy barrier. The lowest energy barrier from dynamics simulations was found to be around 0.22 eV, which compared favorably with 0.19 eV from static NEB calculations. It was also found that lithium ions diffuse through bottleneck structures made of oxygen ions, which expand in dimension by 8-10% …

Lack of crystalline order and microstructural features such as grain/grain-boundary in metallic glasses results in a suite of remarkable attributes including very high strength, close to theoretical elasticity, high corrosion and wear resistance, and soft magnetic properties. In particular, low coercivity and high permeability of iron and cobalt based metallic glass compositions could potentially lead to extensive commercial use as magnetic heads, transformer cores, circuits and magnetic shields. In the current study, few metallic glass compositions were synthesized by systematically varying the iron and cobalt content. Thermal analysis was done and included the measurement of glass transition temperature, crystallization temperature, and the enthalpies of relaxation and crystallization. Magnetic properties of the alloys were determined including saturation magnetization, coercivity, and Curie temperature. The coercivity was found to decrease and the saturation magnetization was found to increase with the increase in iron content. The trend in thermal stability, thermodynamic properties, and magnetic properties was explained by atomic interactions between the ferromagnetic metals and the metalloids atoms in the amorphous alloys. Mechanical behavior of iron based metallic glasses was evaluated in bulk form as well as in the form of coatings. Iron based amorphous powder was subjected to high power mechanical milling and …

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the effects of adding natural fiber (kenaf fiber, retted kenaf fiber, and sugarcane fiber) into polymer materials. The effects are obtained by considering three main parts. 1. Performance in thermoplastic composites. The effect of fiber retting on polymer composite crystallization and mechanical performance was investigated. PHBV/PBAT in 80/20 blend ratio was modified using 5% by weight kenaf fiber. Dynamic mechanical analysis of the composites was done to investigate the glass transition and the modulus at sub-ambient and ambient temperatures. ESEM was conducted to analyze fiber topography which revealed smoother surfaces on the pectinase retted fibers. 2. Performance in thermoset composites. The effect of the incorporation of natural fibers of kenaf and of sugarcane combined with the polyester resin matrix is investigated. A comparison of mechanical properties of kenaf polyester composite, sugarcane polyester composite and pure polyester in tensile, bending, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMA) and moisture test on performance is measured.. 3. Performance in sandwich composites. The comparison of the performance characteristics and mechanical properties of natural fiber composites panels with soft and rigid foam cores are evaluated. A thorough test of the mechanical behavior of composites sandwich materials in tensile, bending …