Viscoelastic Material Models of Polypropylene for Thermoforming Applications

Polypropylene (PP), a semi-crystalline material, is typically solid phase thermoformed at temperatures associated with crystalline melting, generally in the 150° to 160°Celsius range. In this very narrow thermoforming window the mechanical properties of the material rapidly decline with increasing temperature and these large changes in properties make Polypropylene one of the more difficult materials to process by thermoforming. Measurement of the deformation behaviour of a material under processing conditions is particularly important for accurate numerical modelling of thermoforming processes. This paper presents the findings of a study into the physical behaviour of industrial thermoforming grades of Polypropylene. Practical tests were performed using custom built materials testing machines and thermoforming equipment at Queen′s University Belfast. Numerical simulations of these processes were constructed to replicate thermoforming conditions using industry standard Finite Element Analysis software, namely ABAQUS and custom built user material model subroutines. Several variant constitutive models were used to represent the behaviour of the Polypropylene materials during processing. This included a range of phenomenological, rheological and blended constitutive models. The paper discusses approaches to modelling industrial plug-assisted thermoforming operations using Finite Element Analysis techniques and the range of material models constructed and investigated. It directly compares practical results to numerical predictions. The paper culminates discussing the learning points from using Finite Element Methods to simulate the plug-assisted thermoforming of Polypropylene, which presents complex contact, thermal, friction and material modelling challenges. The paper makes recommendations as to the relative importance of these inputs in general terms with regard to correlating to experimentally gathered data. The paper also presents recommendations as to the approaches to be taken to secure simulation predictions of improved accuracy.

Radiation-Pressure Acceleration of Ion Beams from Nanofoil Targets: The Leaky Light-Sail Regime

A new ion radiation-pressure acceleration regime, the "leaky light sail," is proposed which uses sub-skin-depth nanometer foils irradiated by circularly polarized laser pulses. In the regime, the foil is partially transparent, continuously leaking electrons out along with the transmitted laser field. This feature can be exploited by a multispecies nanofoil configuration to stabilize the acceleration of the light ion component, supplementing the latter with an excess of electrons leaked from those associated with the heavy ions to avoid Coulomb explosion. It is shown by 2D particle-in-cell simulations that a monoenergetic proton beam with energy 18 MeV is produced by circularly polarized lasers at intensities of just 10(19) W/cm(2). 100 MeV proton beams are obtained by increasing the intensities to 2 x 10(20) W/cm(2).

A new algorithm for spectral and spatial reconstruction of proton beams from dosimetric measurements

We report on a new algorithm developed for the dosimetric analysis of broad-spectrum, multi-MeV laser-accelerated proton beams. The algorithm allows the reconstruction of the proton beam spectrum from radiochromic film data. This processing technique makes dosimetry measurements a viable alternative to the use of track detectors for spatially and spectrally resolved proton beam analysis. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Production of ion beams in high-power laser-plasma interactions and their applications

Energetic ion beams are produced during the interaction of ultrahigh-intensity, short laser pulses with plasmas. These laser-produced ion beams have important applications ranging from the fast ignition of thermonuclear targets to proton imaging, deep proton lithography, medical physics, and injectors for conventional accelerators. Although the basic physical mechanisms of ion beam generation in the plasma produced by the laser pulse interaction with the target are common to all these applications, each application requires a specific optimization of the ion beam properties, that is, an appropriate choice of the target design and of the laser pulse intensity, shape, and duration.

Guiding of Relativistic Electron Beams in Solid Targets by Resistively Controlled Magnetic Fields

Guided transport of a relativistic electron beam in solid is achieved experimentally by exploiting the strong magnetic fields created at the interface of two metals of different electrical resistivities. This is of substantial relevance to the Fast Ignitor approach to fusion energy production [M. Tabak et al., Phys. Plasmas 12, 057305 (2005)], since it allows the electron deposition to be spatially tailored-thus adding substantial design flexibility and preventing inefficiencies due to electron beam spreading. In the experiment, optical transition radiation and thermal emission from the target rear surface provide a clear signature of the electron confinement within a high resistivity tin layer sandwiched transversely between two low resistivity aluminum slabs. The experimental data are found to agree well with numerical simulations.

Ultrafast Melting of Carbon Induced by Intense Proton Beams

Laser-produced proton beams have been used to achieve ultrafast volumetric heating of carbon samples at solid density. The isochoric melting of carbon was probed by a scattering of x rays from a secondary laser-produced plasma. From the scattering signal, we have deduced the fraction of the material that was melted by the inhomogeneous heating. The results are compared to different theoretical approaches for the equation of state which suggests modifications from standard models.

Examination of the physical state of chlorhexidine within viscoelastic, bioadhesive semisolids using Raman spectroscopy

This study examined the effects of polymeric components on the physical state of chlorhexidine within bioadhesive, semisolid formulations using Raman spectroscopy. Semisolid formulations were prepared in which chlorhexidine base (CHX, 5%w/w, particle size

Dosimetry and spectral analysis of a radiobiological experiment using laser-driven proton beams

Laser-driven proton and ion acceleration is an area of increasing research interest given the recent development of short pulse-high intensity lasers. Several groups have reported experiments to understand whether a laser-driven beam can be applied for radiobiological purposes and in each of these, the method to obtain dose and spectral analysis was slightly different. The difficulty with these studies is that the very large instantaneous dose rate is a challenge for commonly used dosimetry techniques, so that other more sophisticated procedures need to be explored. This paper aims to explain a method for obtaining the energetic spectrum and the dose of a laser-driven proton beam irradiating a cell dish used for radiobiology studies. The procedure includes the use of a magnet to have charge and energy separation of the laser-driven beam, Gafchromic films to have information on dose and partially on energy, and a Monte Carlo code to expand the measured data in order to obtain specific details of the proton spectrum on the cells. Two specific correction factors have to be calculated: one to take into account the variation of the dose response of the films as a function of the proton energy and the other to obtain the dose to the cell layer starting from the dose measured on the films. This method, particularly suited to irradiation delivered in a single laser shot, can be applied in any other radiobiological experiment performed with laser-driven proton beams, with the only condition that the initial proton spectrum has to be at least roughly known. The method was tested in an experiment conducted at Queen's University of Belfast using the TARANIS laser, where the mean energy of the protons crossing the cells was between 0.9 and 5 MeV, the instantaneous dose rate was estimated to be close to 10(9) Gy s(-1) and doses between 0.8 and 5 Gy were delivered to the cells in a single laser shot. The combination of the applied corrections modified the initial estimate of dose by up to 40%.

Focusing Dynamics of High-Energy Density, Laser-Driven Ion Beams

The dynamics of the focusing of laser-driven ion beams produced from concave solid targets was studied. Most of the ion beam energy is observed to converge at the center of the cylindrical targets with a spot diameter of 30 mu m, which can be very beneficial for applications requiring high beam energy densities. Also, unbalanced laser irradiation does not compromise the focusability of the beam. However, significant filamentation occurs during the focusing, potentially limiting the localization of the energy deposition region by these beams at focus. These effects could impact the applicability of such high-energy density beams for applications, e. g., in proton-driven fast ignition.