Laboratoire Procédés et Ingénierie en Mécanique et Matériaux

The masks have always been mentioned as an effective tool against environmental threats. They are considered as protective equipment to preserve the respiratory system against the non-desirable air droplets and aerosols such as the viral or pollution particles. The aerosols can be pollution existence in the air, or the infectious airborne viruses initiated from the sneezing, coughing of the infected people. The filtration efficiency of the different masks against these aerosols are not the same, as the particles have different sizes, shapes, and properties. Therefore, the challenge is to fabricate the filtration masks with higher efficiency to decrease the penetration percentage at the nastiest conditions. To achieve this concept, knowledge about the mechanisms of the penetration of the aerosols through the masks at different effective environmental conditions is necessary. In this paper, the literature about the different kinds of face masks and respiratory masks, common cases of their application, and the advantages and disadvantages of them in this regard have been reviewed. Moreover, the related mechanisms of the penetration of the aerosols through the masks are discussed. The environmental conditions affecting the penetration as well as the quality of the fabrication are studied. Finally, special attention was given to the numerical simulation related to the different existing mechanisms.

Abstract Attenuation measurements were made near Limon, Colorado, where the Pierre shale is unusually uniform from depths of less than 100 ft to approximately 4,000 ft. Particle velocity wave forms were measured at distances up to 750 ft from explosive and mechanical sources. Explosives gave a well-defined compressional pulse which was observed along vertical and horizontal travel paths. A weight dropped on the bottom of a borehole gave a horizontally-traveling shear wave with vertical particle motion. In each case, signals from three-component clusters of geophones rigidly clamped in boreholes were amplified by a calibrated, wide-band system and recorded oscillographically. The frequency content of each wave form was obtained by Fourier analysis, and attenuation as a function of frequency was computed from these spectra. For vertically-traveling compressional waves, an average of 6 determinations over the frequency range of 50–450 cps gives α = 0.12 f. For horizontally-traveling shear waves with vertical motion in the frequency range 20–125 cps, the results are expressed by α = 1.0 f. In each case attenuation is expressed in decibels per 1,000 ft of travel and f is frequency in cps. These measurements indicate, therefore, that the Pierre shale does not behave as a visco-elastic material.

In the past, data in which science and engineering is based, was scarce and frequently obtained by experiments proposed to verify a given hypothesis. Each experiment was able to yield only very limited data. Today, data is abundant and abundantly collected in each single experiment at a very small cost. Data-driven modeling and scientific discovery is a change of paradigm on how many problems, both in science and engineering, are addressed. Some scientific fields have been using artificial intelligence for some time due to the inherent difficulty in obtaining laws and equations to describe some phenomena. However, today data-driven approaches are also flooding fields like mechanics and materials science, where the traditional approach seemed to be highly satisfactory. In this paper we review the application of data-driven modeling and model learning procedures to different fields in science and engineering.

Due to the population growth and the increased reliance on cooling and heating systems, buildings have become the largest energy consumer worldwide. The use of phase change material (PCM) has shown great potential to reduce the annual cooling and heating load by up to 50%. Nowadays, the direct incorporation of PCM in cement-based materials (CBM) is creating a considerable debate in the research community with regards to the proper selection and the beneficial utilization of PCM (microencapsulated or composite) in CBM. Therefore, this paper reviews the pros and cons of using microencapsulated and composite PCM in CBM by highlighting the mechanisms involved in the mechanical strength loss and thermal properties enhancement. Generally, a high thermal energy storage CBM was obtained. However, PCM exhibited a negative effect on the compressive strength of CBM. In view of the literature review, the compressive strength reduction varies considerably with no clear trend which is understandable in view of the differences in mix designs as well as the variety of materials used in each study. Finally, an up-to-date PCM case studies, gaps and future directions are also presented to provide a reliable basis and helpful reference for the future development of eco-friendly and energy-efficient building materials containing PCM.

The discovery of large (>100 u) molecules in Titan's upper atmosphere has heightened astrobiological interest in this unique satellite. In particular, complex organic aerosols produced in atmospheres containing C, N, O, and H, like that of Titan, could be a source of prebiotic molecules. In this work, aerosols produced in a Titan atmosphere simulation experiment with enhanced CO (N(2)/CH(4)/CO gas mixtures of 96.2%/2.0%/1.8% and 93.2%/5.0%/1.8%) were found to contain 18 molecules with molecular formulae that correspond to biological amino acids and nucleotide bases. Very high-resolution mass spectrometry of isotopically labeled samples confirmed that C(4)H(5)N(3)O, C(4)H(4)N(2)O(2), C(5)H(6)N(2)O(2), C(5)H(5)N(5), and C(6)H(9)N(3)O(2) are produced by chemistry in the simulation chamber. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analyses of the non-isotopic samples confirmed the presence of cytosine (C(4)H(5)N(3)O), uracil (C(5)H(4)N(2)O(2)), thymine (C(5)H(6)N(2)O(2)), guanine (C(5)H(5)N(5)O), glycine (C(2)H(5)NO(2)), and alanine (C(3)H(7)NO(2)). Adenine (C(5)H(5)N(5)) was detected by GC-MS in isotopically labeled samples. The remaining prebiotic molecules were detected in unlabeled samples only and may have been affected by contamination in the chamber. These results demonstrate that prebiotic molecules can be formed by the high-energy chemistry similar to that which occurs in planetary upper atmospheres and therefore identifies a new source of prebiotic material, potentially increasing the range of planets where life could begin.

ABSTRACT In this paper, the study of the temperature variation during fatigue tests was carried out on different materials (steels and aluminium alloys). Tests were performed at ambient temperature using a piezoelectric fatigue system (20 kHz). The temperature field was measured on the surface of the specimen, by means of an infrared camera. Just at the beginning of the test, it was observed that the temperature increased, followed by a stabilization which corresponds to the balance between dissipated energy associated with microplasticity and the energy lost by convection and radiation at the specimen surface and by conduction inside the specimen. At the crack initiation, the surface temperature suddenly increases (whatever the localization of the initiation), which allows the determination of the number of cycles at the crack initiation and the number of cycles devoted to the fatigue crack propagation. In the gigacycle fatigue domain, more than 92% of the total life is devoted to the initiation of the crack. So, the study of the thermal dissipation during the test appears a promising method to improve the understanding of the damage and failure mechanism in fatigue and to determine the number of cycles at initiation.

Abstract Blending poly(lactic acid) (PLA) with a small amount of poly(3‐hydroxybutyrate‐ co ‐3‐hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV; 10 wt%) using a custom multilayer co‐extrusion process increases both ductility and gas barrier properties of extruded films compared with neat PLA and classical blending methods. The co‐extrusion process allows multiplication of the number of alternate layers of PLA and PHBV within a film. It was observed that for a critical number of theoretical layers, PHBV layers are broken into lamellas. A well‐developed lamellar morphology, with thin and long lamellas of highly crystalline PHBV in PLA matrix was obtained. A balance between aspect ratio and crystallinity of the lamellas, and their dispersion within the PLA matrix was needed to obtain films with improved permeability and mechanical properties.

Recently published research indicated that, in additive manufacturing fields, single fiber reinforcements often increased some mechanical properties of composites, but at the same time decreased other mechanical behaviors , leading to a limited application of single fiber filled composites in the industry. Therefore, 3D printed hybrid composites made from a combination of short/short fibers, short/continuous fibers, or continuous/continuous fibers have received significant attention from researchers, owing to the comprehensive performance improvements and tailored mechanical behaviors. This paper reviewed the state-of-the-art 3D printed hybrid composites and elaborated on their mechanical behaviors, application limitations, potential improvements and future perspectives. The review started with a detailed discussion of different existing hybrid composite printing methods. Then, the mechanical performance, deformation and failure behaviors of hybrid composites were discussed. Finally, this review explored the limitations of printed hybrid composites and looked forward to printing hybrid composite with improved performance. • The state-of-the-art 3D printed hybrid fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites were summarized. • Mechanical performance, deformation and failure behaviors of hybrid FRP composites were discussed. • Limitations and perspectives of 3D printed hybrid FRP composites were provided, which could be beneficial to applied widely in industry.

Abstract The barrier properties of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) play a key role in food packaging applications. For their optimization, the influence of crystallinity on the barrier properties of PLA and the interaction of PLA with the aroma compound ethyl acetate were investigated. PLA film samples with various crystallinities were fabricated by flat die extrusion and thermocompression and compared to PLA Biophan ™ . The degree of crystallinity had no effect on the oxygen permeability. However, an increase of crystallinity caused a decrease in ethyl acetate sorption. The sorption isotherm of ethyl acetate obtained using microgravimetry showed a steep increase with increasing aroma activity, a form which is consistent with a plasticization effect. This behaviour was verified using differential scanning calorimetry and dynamic mechanical analysis. Sorption caused a marked decrease in the glass transition temperature well below room temperature to approximately 0 °C. Furthermore, PLA underwent a solvent‐induced crystallization when equilibrated in ethyl acetate atmosphere at an activity of 0.5. The results obtained show the importance of considering possible interactions between polymer and foodstuff during the optimization step of polymeric materials for food packaging applications. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry

This paper proposes a state-of-the-art laser adhesion test. It consists of testing material interfaces with laser-driven shock wave. Since the first demonstration in the 1980s by Vossen, many studies and developments have been done. This paper presents recent experiments and developments on the basic physics involved. Results show the ability of the technique to perform a quantitative adhesion test for a wide range of materials and configurations. Edge effect principle and ultra-short shock wave give perspectives for new applications for multi-layer combination of material. Fundamental principles are evidenced through experiments on bulk ductile materials before demonstrating their application to coated systems.

Imaging genetics offers the possibility of detecting associations between genotype and brain structure as well as function, with effect sizes potentially exceeding correlations between genotype and behavior. However, study results are often limited due to small sample sizes and methodological differences, thus reducing the reliability of findings. The IMAGEN cohort with 2000 young adolescents assessed from the age of 14 onwards tries to eliminate some of these limitations by offering a longitudinal approach and sufficient sample size for analyzing gene-environment interactions on brain structure and function. Here, we give a systematic review of IMAGEN publications since the start of the consortium. We then focus on the specific phenotype 'drug use' to illustrate the potential of the IMAGEN approach. We describe findings with respect to frontocortical, limbic and striatal brain volume, functional activation elicited by reward anticipation, behavioral inhibition, and affective faces, and their respective associations with drug intake. In addition to describing its strengths, we also discuss limitations of the IMAGEN study. Because of the longitudinal design and related attrition, analyses are underpowered for (epi-) genome-wide approaches due to the limited sample size. Estimating the generalizability of results requires replications in independent samples. However, such densely phenotyped longitudinal studies are still rare and alternative internal cross-validation methods (e.g., leave-one out, split-half) are also warranted. In conclusion, the IMAGEN cohort is a unique, very well characterized longitudinal sample, which helped to elucidate neurobiological mechanisms involved in complex behavior and offers the possibility to further disentangle genotype × phenotype interactions.

We present an algorithm to learn the relevant latent variables of a large-scale discretized physical system and predict its time evolution using thermodynamically-consistent deep neural networks. Our method relies on sparse autoencoders, which reduce the dimensionality of the full order model to a set of sparse latent variables with no prior knowledge of the coded space dimensionality. Then, a second neural network is trained to learn the metriplectic structure of those reduced physical variables and predict its time evolution with a so-called structure-preserving neural network. This data-based integrator is guaranteed to conserve the total energy of the system and the entropy inequality, and can be applied to both conservative and dissipative systems. The integrated paths can then be decoded to the original full-dimensional manifold and be compared to the ground truth solution. This method is tested with two examples applied to fluid and solid mechanics.

Multilayer coextrusion processing was applied to produce 2049-layer film of poly(butylene succinate-co-butylene adipate) (PBSA) confined against poly(lactic acid) (PLA) using forced assembly, where the PBSA layer thickness was about 60 nm. This unique technology allowed to process semicrystalline PBSA as confined polymer and amorphous PLA as confining polymer in a continuous manner. The continuity of PBSA layers within the 80/20 wt % PLA/PBSA layered films was clearly evidenced by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Similar thermal events to the reference films were revealed by thermal studies; indicating no diffusion of polymers during the melt-processing. Mechanical properties were measured for the multilayer film and the obtained results were those expected considering the fraction of each polymer, revealing the absence of delamination in the PLA/PBSA multinanolayer film. The confinement effect induced by PLA led to a slight orientation of the crystals, an increase of the rigid amorphous fraction (RAF) in PBSA with a densification of this fraction without changing film crystallinity. These structural changes allowed to strongly improve the water vapor and gas barrier properties of the PBSA layer into the multilayer film up to two decades in the case of CO2 gas. By confining the PBSA structure in very thin and continuous layers, it was then possible to improve the barrier performances of a biodegradable system and the resulting barrier properties were successfully correlated to the effect of confinement on the microstructure and the chain segment mobility of the amorphous phase. Such investigation on these multinanolayers of PLA/PBSA with the aim of evidencing relationships between microstructure implying RAF and barrier performances has never been performed yet. Besides, gas and water permeation results have shown that the barrier improvement obtained from the multilayer was mainly due to the reduction of solubility linked to the reduction of the free volume while the tortuosity effect, as usually expected, was not really observed. This work brings new insights in the field of physicochemical behaviors of new multilayer films made of biodegradable polyesters but also in interfacial processes due to the confinement effect induced in these multinanolayer structures obtained by the forced assembly coextrusion. This original coextrusion process was a very advantageous technique to produce eco-friendly materials with functional properties without the help of tie layer, additives, solvents, surface treatments, or inorganic fillers.

Microarray-CGH (comparative genomic hybridization) experiments are used to detect and map chromosomal imbalances. A CGH profile can be viewed as a succession of segments that represent homogeneous regions in the genome whose representative sequences share the same relative copy number on average. Segmentation methods constitute a natural framework for the analysis, but they do not provide a biological status for the detected segments. We propose a new model for this segmentation/clustering problem, combining a segmentation model with a mixture model. We present a new hybrid algorithm called dynamic programming-expectation maximization (DP-EM) to estimate the parameters of the model by maximum likelihood. This algorithm combines DP and the EM algorithm. We also propose a model selection heuristic to select the number of clusters and the number of segments. An example of our procedure is presented, based on publicly available data sets. We compare our method to segmentation methods and to hidden Markov models, and we show that the new segmentation/clustering model is a promising alternative that can be applied in the more general context of signal processing.

Quasi-periodic motions and their stability are addressed from the point of view of different harmonic balance-based approaches. Two numerical methods are used: a generalized multidimensional version of harmonic balance and a modification of a classical solution by harmonic balance. The application to the case of a nonlinear response of a Duffing oscillator under a bi-periodic excitation has allowed a comparison of computational costs and stability evaluation results. The solutions issued from both methods are close to one another and time marching tests showing a good agreement with the harmonic balance results confirm these nonlinear responses. Besides the overall adequacy verification, the observation comparisons would underline the fact that while the 2D approach features better performance in resolution cost, the stability computation turns out to be of more interest to be conducted by the modified 1D approach.

A wisely chosen geometry of micro textures with the favorable relative motion of lubricated surfaces in contacts can enhance tribological characteristics. In this paper, a computational investigation related to the combined influence of bearing surface texturing and journal misalignment on the performances of hydrodynamic journal bearings is reported. To this end, a numerical analysis is performed to test three texture shapes: square “SQ”, cylindrical “CY”, and triangular “TR”, and shaft misalignment variation in angle and degree. The Reynolds equation of a thin viscous film is solved using a finite differences scheme and a mass conservation algorithm (JFO boundary conditions), taking into account the presence of textures on both full film and cavitation regions. Preliminary results are compared with benchmark data and are consistent with a positive enhancement in misaligned bearing performances (load carrying capacity and friction). The results suggest that the micro-step bearing mechanism is a key parameter, where the micro-pressure recovery action present in dimples located at the second angular part of the bearing (from 180° to 360°) can compensate for the loss on performances caused by shaft misalignment, while the micro-pressure drop effect at the full film region causes poor performances. Considering the right arrangement of textures on the contact surface, their contours geometries can have a significant impact on the performance of misaligned journal bearings, particularly at high eccentricity ratios, high misalignment degrees and when the misalignment angle α approaches to <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">°</mml:mi> </mml:math> or <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>180</mml:mn> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">°</mml:mi> </mml:math> .

Unveiling physical laws from data is seen as the ultimate sign of human intelligence. While there is a growing interest in this sense around the machine learning community, some recent works have attempted to simply substitute physical laws by data. We believe that getting rid of centuries of scientific knowledge is simply nonsense. There are models whose validity and usefulness is out of any doubt, so try to substitute them by data seems to be a waste of knowledge. While it is true that fitting well-known physical laws to experimental data is sometimes a painful process, a good theory continues to be practical and provide useful insights to interpret the phenomena taking place. That is why we present here a method to construct, based on data, automatic corrections to existing models. Emphasis is put in the correct thermodynamic character of these corrections, so as to avoid violations of first principles such as the laws of thermodynamics. These corrections are sought under the umbrella of the GENERIC framework [M. Grmela and H. Ch. \"Ottinger, Dynamics and thermodynamics of complex fluids. I. Development of a general formalism. Phys. Rev. E 56, 6620, 1997], a generalization of Hamiltonian mechanics to non-equilibrium thermodynamics. This framework ensures the satisfaction of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, while providing a very appealing context for the proposed automated correction of existing laws. In this work we focus on solid mechanics, particularly large strain (visco-)hyperelasticity.

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In this study, a novel and extremely facile method for the synthesis of conducting polypyrrole (PPy) was achieved in aqueous solution. This radiolytic method is totally free of template and environmentally friendly compared with traditional chemical methods. According to ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy analysis, pyrrole (Py) monomers were polymerized into PPy thanks to their oxidation by HO(•) radicals produced by the radiolysis of water when exposed to γ irradiation. The morphology of PPy was characterized by cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM) in aqueous solution and by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) after deposition. In an original way, high-resolution atomic force microscopy, coupled with infrared nanospectroscopy, was used to probe the local chemical composition of PPy nanostructures. The results demonstrated that spherical and chaplet-like PPy nanostructures were formed by γ-radiolysis. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and electronic conductivity measurements showed that radiosynthesized PPy had good thermal stability and an electrical conductivity higher than that of chemically synthesized PPy.

Investigation of adsorbents maximum theoretical performance, computational efficiency of multiscale screening workflows, and consistency of materials rankings for CO₂capture.