Y. Ballesteros

Determination of linuron in soil by stripping voltammetry with a carbon fiber microelectrode.

A carbon fiber microelectrode was used for the electroanalytical determination of Linuron (LIN) in soil extracts. The microelectrode was subjected to an electrochemical pretreatment in order to improve the herbicide adsorption on the electrode surface. With this preconcentration step, detection limits of 80 ng ml(-1) and determination limits of 260 ng ml(-1) were reached. Optimal conditions with respect to accumulation time and potential, scan rate and pH were established. The LIN was determined in a soil sample with the method proposed and the results found were comparable to those obtained by HPLC.

Influence of Surface Preparation on the Fracture Behavior of Acrylic Adhesive/CFRP Composite Joints

The surface modification and adhesive bonding of a carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite has been investigated. Wettability studies showed that plasma-treated specimens provide a significant increment in the surface energy, relative to untreated material. The surface modification resulted in significantly improved adhesion between the composite and an applied toughened acrylic adhesive; a considerable increase in fracture energy was observed following grit blasting and grit blasting plus silane treatments. Specimens treated with atmospheric plasma showed a slight increment in fracture energy, usually failing adhesively. The durability was tested using a wedge test. Specimens degreased and treated with atmospheric plasma showed the greatest crack growth and failed in an adhesive mode.

Effect of surface treatments on natural cork: surface energy, adhesion, and acoustic insulation

Cork is one of the finest natural materials with high acoustic insulation properties due to its porous structure. In addition, cork presents high water resistance due to its hydrophobic nature. In many applications, cork panels need to be bonded to other materials for manufacturing composite materials or agglomerated cork sheets. In this case, its lack of wettability becomes an important disadvantage. This paper aims to improve the wettability of cork by silanization, atmospheric plasma treatment, and vacuum plasma treatment. The processing conditions of the three treatments were optimized. The surface characterization was performed by surface energy, roughness, and attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy measurements. Pull-off adherence and peel tests were carried out to evaluate the performance of the treatments with an epoxy adhesive. Plasma treatment of cork plates could be a useful tool to enhance adhesion properties in the manufacturing process of cork sandwich panels or other applications where it could be joined to any material.

The Effect of Surface Treatment on the Behavior of Toughened Acrylic Adhesive/GRP(epoxy) Composite Joints

The surface modification and adhesive bonding of a bidirectional glass reinforced polymer (GRP) composite have been investigated. Wettability studies showed that grit-blasted and plasma-treated specimens provide a significant increment in the surface energy, relative to untreated material. The most effective treatment found was grit blasting. The surface modification resulted in significantly improved adhesion between the composite and the applied toughened acrylic adhesive; a considerable increase in failure strength and in fracture energy was observed following grit blasting and grit blasting plus silane treatment. Specimens treated with atmospheric plasma showed a reduction in mechanical properties, resulting in interfacial (adhesion) failure. The durability was tested using the wedge test. Specimens treated with atmospheric plasma showed a lower durability than the other surface treatments.

Determination of abscisic acid by cathodic stripping square wave voltammetry

In this paper a study is accomplished on behavior in a mercury electrode, of the phytohormone abscisic acid and of the conditions of accumulation in a HMDE. A mechanism is proposed of reduction based on its electrochemical behavior and proving the product of the reduction through mass spectrometry of bulks. A method is proposed for the determination of Abscisic acid (ABA) with a quantification limit of 58 ng ml(-1). The procedure is applied wing determination of ABA in pears through the combination of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with electrochemical quantification.

Voltamperometric determination of kinetin with a carbon paste modified electrode

Abstract The electrochemical behaviour of kinetin (6-furfurylaminopurine) on a carbon paste modified with OV-17 silicone electrode, is studied. The determination of kinetin is possible working in square wave voltammetric techniques, reaching limits of determination of 38.7 ng ml−1. The proposed method was successfully applied to determine the cytokinin in extracts of apples (previously spiked with kinetin) and the obtained results were in accordance with the results obtained with HPLC-UV.

Effect of EtOH/H2O Ratio and pH on Bis-Sulfur Silane Solutions for Electrogalvanized Steel Joints Based on Anaerobic Adhesives

A minimum hydrolysis time is required to get an adequate crosslinking between a silane film and a metallic substrate and that depends on the contents of silane, ethanol, and water in the silane solution. The objectives for this work are: 1) to study the effect of different ratios of ethanol/water on the hydrolysis time for a 1% bis-sulfur silane solution at pH 6, by attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy. The different solutions studied correspond to different ratios of silane/ethanol/water by volume. The study was done following appearance of the siloxane and silanol groups and the disappearance of the ethoxysilane groups. 2) Also studied was the adhesion and corrosion behaviour of bis-sulfur silane (bis[3-(bis[3-(triethoxysilyl)propyl]disulfide, DS) in solutions of ethanol/water at pH 4 and 6 and γ-methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (MPS) coatings obtained by a two-step process on galvanized steel samples. This coated surface was analysed by reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-RA), scanning electron miscroscopy (SEM), and polarization curves. Results obtained at pH 6 were compared with the ones for pH 4. Single lap shear tests were used to contrast the behaviour of anaerobic adhesives on electrogalvanized steel silanized samples. It was observed that higher hydrolysis time was necessary to get good adhesion behaviour if the solution was prepared at pH 4, while at pH 6 the best behaviour was observed for short hydrolysis times.

Mechanical and thermal behaviour of an acrylic bone cement modified with a triblock copolymer

The basic formulation of an acrylic bone cement has been modified by the addition of a block copolymer, Nanostrength® (NS), in order to augment the mechanical properties and particularly the fracture toughness of the bone cement. Two grades of NS at different levels of loading, between 1 and 10 wt.%, have been used. Mechanical tests were conducted to study the behaviour of the modified cements; specific tests measured the bend, compression and fracture toughness properties. The failure mode of the fracture test specimens was analysed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The effect of NS addition on the thermal properties was also determined, and the polymerisation reaction using differential scanning calorimetry. It was observed that the addition of NS produced an improvement in the fracture toughness and ductility of the cement, which could have a positive contribution by reducing the premature fracture of the cement mantle. The residual monomer content was reduced when the NS was added. However this also produced an increase in the maximum temperature and the heat delivered during the polymerisation of the cement.

Global fault detection in adhesively bonded joints using artificial intelligence

In general, non-destructive evaluation is applied to detect and localize structural faults using a signal with a wavelength smaller than the detected fault. But the method requires analyzing the object in numerous small sections to detect the damage. Non-invasive diagnosis methods for fault detection are used in different industrial sectors. In this work, the main focus is on global fault detection for structural mechanical components such as a bonded beam using artificial intelligence, i.e., neural nets. Therefore, the fault detection procedure requires only a global measurement in the structural component in operational conditions. An experimental setup using two aluminum beams bonded with an adhesive was used to simulate a bonded joint. Different sizes of adhesive surface simulate faults in the original adhesive joint. Thereafter, resonance frequency shifts in the Frequency Response Functions (FRFs) were used to detect structural faults. Damage in structures causes small changes in the structural resonances. Then, the FRFs were used as an input into an artificial supervised neural network. This work considers global non-destructive tests focused only on the soundness estimation of the system. The neural network involved is a supervised feed-forward network with Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation algorithm, which classifies the beams in four clusters. The classification consists in beam damaged or not damaged. If the beam is damaged the intensity of the fault is established.