Faculty Publications

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Processing of cenosphere/HDPE syntactic foams using an industrial scale polymer injection molding machine
(Elsevier Ltd, 2016) Bharath Kumar, B.R.; Doddamani, M.R.; Zeltmann, S.E.; Gupta, N.; Ramesh, M.R.; Ramakrishna, S.
Rapid production of high quality components is the key to cost reduction in industrial applications. The present work is the first attempt of manufacturing syntactic foams, hollow particle filled lightweight composites, using an industrial scale injection molding machine. High density polyethylene (HDPE) is used as the matrix material and fly ash cenospheres are used as the filler. Development of syntactic foams with cenospheres serves dual purpose of beneficial utilization of industrial waste fly ash and reduction in the cost of the component. The pressure and temperature used in the injection molding process are optimized to minimize fracture of cenospheres and obtain complete mixing of cenospheres with HDPE. The optimized parameters are used for manufacturing syntactic foams with 20, 40 and 60 wt.% cenospheres. With increasing cenosphere content, density and strength reduce and modulus increases. Surface modification of constituents results in rise in strength with increasing filler content. A theoretical model based on a differential scheme is used to estimate the properties of cenospheres by conducting parametric studies because of inherent difficulties in direct measurement of cenosphere properties. The potential for using the optimized injection molding process is demonstrated by casting several industrial components. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
Prediction of strain rate sensitivity of high density polyethylene using integral transform of dynamic mechanical analysis data
(Elsevier Ltd, 2016) Zeltmann, S.E.; Bharath Kumar, B.R.; Doddamani, M.R.; Gupta, N.
Recent interest in understanding the effect of strain rate on mechanical properties has motivated this study to develop a correlation between frequency domain dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) results and elastic modulus values that are obtained from a separate set of elaborate tensile tests conducted over a wide range of strain rates. Using the time-temperature superposition principle and the integral relations of viscoelasticity, the DMA results are converted into a time-domain relaxation function in order to predict the strain-rate dependent modulus. The transformation technique is validated with experimental results for high density polyethylene (HDPE) resin and is found to be accurate over a wide range of strain rates. Cross correlation between DMA results and tensile test results over a wide range of strain rates can help in substantially reducing the requirement for tests that are needed to characterize the material behavior with respect to strain rates, temperature and loading frequency. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd
Eco-friendly lightweight filament synthesis and mechanical characterization of additively manufactured closed cell foams
(Elsevier Ltd, 2019) Patil, B.; Bharath Kumar, B.R.; Bontha, S.; Balla, V.K.; Powar, S.; Hemanth Kumar, V.H.; Suresha, S.N.; Doddamani, M.
Environmentally pollutant fly ash cenospheres (hollow microballoons) are utilized with most widely consumed, relatively expensive high density polyethylene (HDPE) for developing lightweight eco-friendly filament for 3D printing of closed cell foams. Cenospheres (20, 40 and 60 by volume %) are blended with HDPE and subsequently extruded in filament to be used for 3D printing. Cenosphere/HDPE blends are studied for melt flow index (MFI) and rheological properties. MFI decreases with cenospheres addition. Complex viscosity, storage and loss modulus increase with filler loading. DSC results on the filament and printed samples reveal increasing crystallization temperature and decreasing crystallinity % with no appreciable change in peak melting temperature. Cooling rate variations exhibit crystallinity differences between the filament and the prints. CTE decreases with increasing cenosphere content resulting in lower thermal stresses and under diffusion of raster leading to non-warped prints. Micrography on freeze fractured filament and prints show cenospheres uniform distribution in HDPE. Intact cenospheres lower the foam density making it lightweight. Tensile tests are carried out on filaments and printed samples while flexural properties are investigated for 3D prints. Cenospheres addition resulted in improved tensile modulus and decreased filament strength. Tensile and flexural modulus of printed foams increases with filler content. Results are also compared with injection molded samples. Printed foams registered comparable tensile strength. Specific tensile modulus is noted to be increased with cenospheres loading implying weight saving potential of 3D printed foams. Property map reveals printed foams advantage over other fillers and HDPE composites synthesized through injection and compression molding. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd
Compressive behavior of fly ash based 3D printed syntactic foam composite
(Elsevier B.V., 2019) Patil, B.; Bharath Kumar, B.R.; Doddamani, M.
Syntactic foams are widely used in damage tolerance and low-density applications. In present work compressive behavior of 3D printed three-phase syntactic foams under quasi-static strain rates (0.001, 0.01 and 0.1 s?1) are investigated. Extruded filaments of High density polyethylene (HDPE) with environmentally pollutant fly ash cenospheres (0, 20, 40 and 60 vol%) are used for 3D printing. Micrography reveal that syntactic foam filament and 3D printed samples are three phase systems comprising matrix, cenosphere and porosity. Matrix porosity of about 7% makes these foams lightweight and suitable for buoyant applications. The compressive properties are extracted from the stress-strain plots. It is observed that modulus and specific modulus increases with strain rate and cenosphere content. Specific compressive strength increases with strain rate and decrease with cenosphere content. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

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