Nanocomposites

Next month Oxford engineers will start investigating what kind of composite materials would make for stronger, stealthier and more durable submarines.

Composites are already being used in warships because they can be made stronger and lighter than metal parts and are less susceptible to corrosion. They have also been shown to resist the forces unleashed in an explosion better than metal.

As reported in The Engineer the Oxford team will begin their EPSRC-funded project by testing how composites submerged in water respond to a shockwave generated by a metal projectile. High-speed cameras will capture how the materials deform under the pressure.

Testing and modelling is vital to determine what the best structure for a submarine composite would be – many composites, for instance, are made out of a ‘sandwich’ of different materials – as well as how composites fare after being submerged in water for a long time.

Vito Tagarielli, one of the Oxford team led by Nik Petrinic, told The Engineer: ‘We hope to reduce the weight of the submarine so there is less inertia and it can have higher acceleration and easier manoeuvrability.’

‘[Also] If a submarine is made of composite it makes it invisible to modern sea mines that detonate when they recognise a specific magnetic or acoustic signature.’

The project runs for five years and involves a host of industrial partners alongside the Ministry of Defence.

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/science_blog/



“Nanomanufacturing” has been declared one of the keys to future product innovations in a broad range of industries from pharmaceuticals to semiconductors. Generally, the term nanomanufacturing has been applied to the production of materials where control of a single dimension on the order of 100 nm or less is vital to the performance of the product. The everyday production of large area coatings for improved energy performance of architectural and automotive glazings by magnetron sputtering is rarely considered to be part of nanomanufacturing, let alone on the cutting edge of this technology.This paper will demonstrate how the development of more complex multilayer energy control coatings has gone hand in hand with the development of capabilities to control deposition uniformity on 10-20 m2 substrates to nanomanufacturing tolerances that express the limits of today’s technologies. The development from simple solar control and single silver layer low-emissivity coatings, through double, and in the last year, triple silver layer low-E, has come with ability to control deposition uniformity to nanometer precision over large areas...
The link to the technical article:
http://www.glassfiles.com/library/article1171.htm



Advances in Research

Values of the key glazing performance parameters: total solar energy transmittance, g, overall heat loss coefficient (thermal transmittance) U, and visible transmittance, Tv, are given. Solar transmittance and thermal emissivity values are also given. Emissivity values refer to the coated or uncoated surface of the glazing category and not the double glazed unit (DGU). Values are representative only and will vary dependent on glass type and thickness, gap dimensions and coating structure. Total thickness is an essential parameter for use of modern glazing in existing frames of older buildings. Edge-seal and edge spacer thermal transmittance are dominant parameters for the effective thermal transmission of a glazing unit.
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/eesd/docs/indicators_55_glazing.pdf


























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