Supercritical carbon dioxide has replaced many liquid organic solvents in industry due to its tunable solvent properties, environmental friendliness, and easily achievable critical parameters. The unique properties of supercritical fluids in general, such as gas-like diffusivity and zero surface tension, make them particularly applicable to the field of conservation. This presentation reports o...

Wood drying is essential for preparation of this natural resource for practical applications. Solar drying can reduce drying costs and energy consumption. There are many potential models to describe the drying process. However, most models confirm that the tortuosity of the moisture transport path is an important control parameter during the diffusion-controlled drying process. Microwave heatin...

Consider a substitutional solution of two metallic elements A and B. When the alloy is exposed to air at an elevated temperature, A oxidizes, but B does not. In the alloy, the two elements diffuse in opposite directions, but usually at different rates; the nonreciprocal diffusion is known as the Kirkendall effect. At the oxide-alloy interface, metallic atoms may either emit from or inject into ...

A thorough examination has been performed of the thermally induced stresses on a window in an enclosure-fire environment. Analytical and numerical methods establish the importance of bridling stress (due to axial elongation) and flexing stress (due to normal deformation). Most previous studies omitted the consideration of flexing stresses. Maximum stresses, being the sum of bridling and flexing...

Changes in the physical properties (size, particle density, bulk density, shrinkage and porosity) and fluidization behaviour of cut green beans with change in moisture content during drying were investigated using a heat pump and fluidized bed dryers. Three length:diameter ratios 1:1, 2:1, 3:1 of cut green beans were considered. All drying experiments were conducted at 50 + 2 0 C and 13 + 2 % R...

Solvent evaporation upon drying the precipitate was found to be the key factor for the phase transformation of cubic mesoporous silica SBA-1 to hexagonal SBA-3 studied by in-situ X-ray diffraction and 29Si solid state NMR on the precipitates formed various crystallisation conditions.

A new experimental method which allows the direct separation of the components of drying creep due to micro cracking and stress-induced shrinkage is developed, demonstrated and validated. The hasic idea is to compare the curL'CIture creep of heams suhjected to the same hending moment hut rery different axial forces. The results confirm that drying creep has two different sources: microcracking ...

Cavitation can be often observed in soft materials. Most previous studies were focused on cavitation in an elastomer, which is under different mechanical loadings. In this paper, we investigate cavitation in a constrained hydrogel induced by drying. Taking account of surface tension and chemo-mechanics of gels, we calculate the free energy of the system as a function of cavity size. The free en...

This work employs the constitutive principles of linear elasticity to examine the nature of growth-induced stresses in soft tissues. An analysis of the simpler case of isotropic growth gives insight into the effect of the spatial non-uniformity of the growth process on both the nature and distribution tissue stresses. Anisotropic growth is also considered, illustrating its role in relieving gro...

The durability of adhesive joints is of special concern in structural applications and moisture has been identified as one of the major factors affecting joint durability. This is especially important in applications where joints are exposed to varying environmental conditions throughout their life. This paper presents a methodology to predict the stresses in adhesive joints under cyclic moistu...