Dental implants: Surface modification of cp-Ti using plasma spraying and the deposition of hydroxyapatite

The commercial pure titanium (cp-Ti) is currently being used with great success in dental implants. In this work we investigate how the cp-Ti implants can be improved by modifying the metal surface morphology, on which a synthetic material with properties similar to that of the inorganic part of the bone, is deposited to facilitate the bone/implant bonding. This synthetic material is the hydroxyapatite, HA, a calcium-phosphate ceramic. The surface modification consists in the application of a titanium oxide (TiO2) layer, using the thermal aspersion - plasma spray technique, with posterior deposition of HA, using the biomimetic method. The X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) and Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Fourier Transform (DRIFT) techniques have been used for characterizing phases, microstructures and morphologies of the coatings. The TiO2 deposit shows a mixture of anatase, rutilo and TiO2-x phases, and a porous and laminar morphology, which facilitate the HA deposition. After the thermal treatment, the previously amorphous structured HA coating, shows a porous homogeneous morphology with particle size of about 2-2.5 μm, with crystallinity and composition similar to that of the biological HA.

Tolerância de perdas de solo na bacia do rio Itiquira, Mato Grosso, Brasil

The geographic area of the present study corresponds to the basin of the Itiquira river high course (Figure 1), in the portion that extends from the tributaries of its source, in the east of the plateau Correntes/Itiquira, in the neighbourhoods the city of Alto Garç as, to the scarp of the São Jerônimo mountain range, toward the west of Itiquira, in the state of Mato Grosso, totalizing 5,361 km 2. The area is placed in the eastern part of the Alto Paraguai basin, in the western portion of the Paraná Sedimentary Basin plateau. Through GIS techniques, it was possible to asses total soil losses from the Itiquira river basin, considering the years of 1966, 1985 and 1996, being based on the Universal Soil Loss Equation. Thus, in 1966 the basin lost 201,546.94 ton of soil, with an average loss of 0.37 ton/ha/year. Considering that the total area of the Itiquira river basin is of 536,100 ha, while in 1985 the soil losses had passed to 1,760,833.40 ton, with an increase of approximately 8.5 times. The average of soil losses in 1985 was of 3.28 ton/ha/year. In 1996 the basin lost 1,662,043.24 ton, with a reduction of only 9.4% in relation to 1985 but, in relation the 1966, the increase continued in the order of 8 times. The average losses per hectare in this year was in the order of 3.10 ton/ha/year (Chart 1). The map of potential of the laminar erosion for 1966 (Figure 3), shows to the highest values in small areas, situated in the northeast of the area, in Alto Garças, with values between 10 the 20 ton/ha/year and some spots in sources of the Itiquira and Ariranha rivers, with values between 1 the 5 ton/ha/year. In a general way, however, the area presents low soil loss for laminar erosion in this year, with inferior values to 1 ton/ha/year. The higher class of erosion, over 10 ton/ha/year, occupied 2,947 ha in 1966. In the year of 1985 (Figure 4), the erosive process spread over the entire studied area, and the class of erosion over of 10 ton/ha/year, already started to occupy 78,437 ha, implying an increase of approximately 27 times in 19 years. A strong increment in the erosive process was noticed in the western part of the area, to along the BR-163 road, exactly where great areas of natural vegetation (open pasture) had been transformed in culture and pasture areas. In the north-eastern part of the area it was also noticed an increment in the erosive process in agreement with the increase of culture areas and reduction of the natural areas, but it was not of so intense form as in the western portion of the area. In the year of 1996 (Figure 5), the class of erosion over of 10 ton/ha/year had diminished for a total of 53.499 ha noticing a retraction of the erosive process in the western part of the area, alongside the BR-163 road. On the other hand, it occurred a strong increment in the northern part of the area, in the neighbourhoods of the city of Alto Garças, alongside the BR-364 road and part of the MT-040 road. In a general way, in the outskirts of the city of Itiquira, in the central part of the area, it was verified an increase of the amount of zones with erosion between 0-1 ton/ha/year, passing to the immediately superior class, of 1-3 ton/ha/year; scarce data of hydrosedimentology in the UHE Itiquira (1999), shows good agreement with the values gotten for the EUPS (Chart 2). Based on the hydric classification proposal for FAO (1967) (Chart 3), it is noticed that areas with high degree of erosion (> 50) in the analysed area are very restricted, occupying 493 ha in 1985 and 332 ha in 1996 (Chart 4). In 1996 appeared as isolated spots in the north of Itiquira and Alto Garças, however beyond limits of the Itiquira river basin. These areas require special cares in its use as agricultural areas. Aiming at identifying and indicating the areas of potential risk of erosion and that need implementation of conservation practices, it was elaborated the map of limit of tolerance to the soil losses. In 1966 (Figure 6), areas with soil losses over of the tolerable were restricted to small spots located in the eastern part of the area, occupying 0.43% of the total of the area; already in 1985 (Figure 7), this percentage passed to 5.86%, spreading for all the area; in 1996 (Figure 8) it is observed a fast reduction of the areas with soil losses over of the tolerance limit, passing 5.43% of the total of the area. All the areas with losses over of the tolerable value must be considered as risk areas and were done in these areas studies for implementation of conservation practices.

Thermally developing forced convection of non-Newtonian fluids inside elliptical ducts

Laminar-forced convection inside tubes of various cross-section shapes is of interest in the design of a low Reynolds number heat exchanger apparatus. Heat transfer to thermally developing, hydrodynamically developed forced convection inside tubes of simple geometries such as a circular tube, parallel plate, or annular duct has been well studied in the literature and documented in various books, but for elliptical duct there are not much work done. The main assumptions used in this work are a non-Newtonian fluid, laminar flow, constant physical properties, and negligible axial heat diffusion (high Peclet number). Most of the previous research in elliptical ducts deal mainly with aspects of fully developed laminar flow forced convection, such as velocity profile, maximum velocity, pressure drop, and heat transfer quantities. In this work, we examine heat transfer in a hydrodynamically developed, thermally developing laminar forced convection flow of fluid inside an elliptical tube under a second kind of a boundary condition. To solve the thermally developing problem, we use the generalized integral transform technique (GITT), also known as Sturm-Liouville transform. Actually, such an integral transform is a generalization of the finite Fourier transform, where the sine and cosine functions are replaced by more general sets of orthogonal functions. The axes are algebraically transformed from the Cartesian coordinate system to the elliptical coordinate system in order to avoid the irregular shape of the elliptical duct wall. The GITT is then applied to transform and solve the problem and to obtain the once unknown temperature field. Afterward, it is possible to compute and present the quantities of practical interest, such as the bulk fluid temperature, the local Nusselt number, and the average Nusselt number for various cross-section aspect ratios.

Flow evolution of a metallic slurry during thixoextrusion of an automotive valve

The aim of this work is to characterize a metallic slurry (Al-4.5%Cu) flow during thixoforming of an automotive valve. The necessary globular structure was obtained by first inoculating the alloy with TIBAL (5%Ti, 1%B, Al - rest) at 750.0°C, and then reheating to a state between liquidus and solidus prior to thixoforming. Two metallic slurries, with a solid phase of approximately 86.1 and 78.2 percent, were used to generate different experimental flow patterns during the thixoforming process. The flow of the material into the die was observed for total, and partial displacement (2.7, 5.4, 7.5mm) of the punch. The first displacement shows formation of the valve rod. The patterns at each step of displacement of the punch were preserved by quenching in water, thus revealing the profile of the die fill and microstructural evolution. Degeneration of the globular phase was observed along the piece thixoextruded. Thixoextrusion forces versus time curves were generated for partial and full displacement of the punch. Porosity was visible along the billet prior to thixoforming. However, some areas show that the porosity gradually decreased to zero as the thixoextrusion pressure increased. Turbulent, transient and laminar flow are analyzed in this work.

Simulations of incompressible fluid flows by a least squares finite element method

In this work simulations of incompressible fluid flows have been done by a Least Squares Finite Element Method (LSFEM) using velocity-pressure-vorticity and velocity-pressure-stress formulations, named u-p-ω) and u-p-τ formulations respectively. These formulations are preferred because the resulting equations are partial differential equations of first order, which is convenient for implementation by LSFEM. The main purposes of this work are the numerical computation of laminar, transitional and turbulent fluid flows through the application of large eddy simulation (LES) methodology using the LSFEM. The Navier-Stokes equations in u-p-ω and u-p-τ formulations are filtered and the eddy viscosity model of Smagorinsky is used for modeling the sub-grid-scale stresses. Some benchmark problems are solved for validate the numerical code and the preliminary results are presented and compared with available results from the literature. Copyright © 2005 by ABCM.

Efeitos do parasitismo sobre a estrutura branquial de Leporinus macrocephalus Garavello e Britsk, 1988 (Anastomidae) e Piaractus mesopotamicus Holmberg, 1887 (Osteichthyes:Characidae).

This work described the lesions caused in different species of fish by gill parasites from fee-fishing at Guariba, State of São Paulo. The research was developed from april, 1997 to march to 1999, seeking to verified the kind tissues lesions from fish. Of these, forty and seven were Leporinus macrocephalus and fifty and five Piaractus mesopotamicus. About 87.2% of the L. macrocephalus, and 58.1% of the P. mesopotamicus were sponged by several species of parasites. The parasite most abundant in L. macrocephalus was Piscinoodinium pillulare, while monogenean, Trichodina sp and myxosporidian infected P. mesopotamicus. Severe gill lesions have been observed in L. macrocephalus and P. mesopotamicus caused by monogenean, P. pillulare e Trichodina sp. parasitism, such as intersticial hemorrhage, sub-epithelium edema, inflammation, epitelial hiperplasy in filaments and lamina, proliferation of mucosal cells and laminar fusion.

Micropropagação de babosa (Aloe vera L.)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Características ultraestruturais do segmento abdominal da aorta de rato albino

The objective of the present research was to investigate the ultrastructural peculiarities of the aortic wall of the rat. Seven young adult rats were used, from which fragments of the infrarenal abdominal aorta were collected. After collection, the vascular segments were fixed and sent for analysis by scanning electron microscope. The elastic lamellae appear interposed with smooth muscular fibers; this pattern was verified mainly at the medial layer structure. Among the mural elements a well defined interrelationship was established through connective lamellae of the arterial wall. The collagen lamellae mainly provided anchoring among the elastic and smooth muscular constituents. The intimal layer showed special ultrastructural features, such as a non-continuous inner elastic lamina presented in certain sites of the vascular wall, followed by endothelial pores. This mural pattern of the abdominal aorta provided support to vascular functions such as shrinkage among the laminar composition of the arterial layers, also acting in mechanical properties of the vascular wall, such as viscoelasticity and contractility - essential actions to blood vessel hemodynamics.

The use of molecular spectra simulation for diagnostics of reactive flows

The C 2 * radical is used as a system probe tool to the reactive flow diagnostic, and it was chosen due to its large occurrence in plasma and combustion in aeronautics and aerospace applications. The rotational temperatures of C 2 * species were determined by the comparison between experimental and theoretical data. The simulation code was developed by the authors, using C++ language and the object oriented paradigm, and it includes a set of new tools that increase the efficacy of the C 2 * probe to determine the rotational temperature of the system. A brute force approach for the determination of spectral parameters was adopted in this version of the computer code. The statistical parameter c 2 was used as an objective criterion to determine the better match of experimental and synthesized spectra. The results showed that the program works even with low-quality experimental data, typically collected from in situ airborne compact apparatus. The technique was applied to flames of a Bunsen burner, and the rotational temperature of ca. 2100 K was calculated.

Atmospheric plasma treatment of carbon fibers for enhancement of their adhesion properties

Plasma processing of carbon fibers (CFs) is aimed to provide better contact and adhesion between individual plies without decrease in the CF mechanical resistance. This paper deals with surface modification of CFs by an atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) for enhancing the adhesion between the CF and the polymeric matrix. The scanning electron microscopy of the treated samples revealed many small particles distributed over entire surface of the fiber. These particles are product of the fiber surface etching during the DBD treatment that removes the epoxy layer covering as-received samples. The alteration of the CF surface morphology was also confirmed by the Atomic force microscopy (AFM), which indicated that the CF roughness increased as a result of the plasma treatment. The analysis of the surface chemical composition provided by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed that oxygen and nitrogen atoms are incorporated onto the surface. The polar oxygen groups formed on the surface lead to the increasing of the CF surface energy. The results of interlaminar shear strength test (short beam) of CFs/polypropylene composites demonstrated a greater shear resistance of the composites made with CFs treated by DBD than the one with untreated fibers. Both the increase in surface roughness and the surface oxidation contribute for the enhancement of CF adhesion properties. © 2012 IEEE.

Evaluation of weather influence on mechanical and viscoelastic properties of polyetherimide/carbon fiber composites

In order to investigate how environmental degradation affects the mechanical and thermal performance of polyetherimide/carbon fiber laminates, in this work different weathering were conducted. Additionally, dynamic mechanical analysis, interlaminar shear strength tests and non-destructive inspections were performed on this composite before and after being submitted to hygrothermal, UV radiation and thermal shock weathering. According to our results, hygrothermally aged samples had their glass transition temperature and elastic and storage moduli reduced by plasticization effect. Photooxidation, due to UV radiation exposure, occurred only on the surface of the laminates. Thermal shock induced a reversible stress on the composite's interface region. The results revealed that the mechanical behavior can vary during weather exposure but since this variation is only subtle, this thermoplastic laminate can be considered for high-performance applications, such as aerospace. © The Author(s) 2013.

Caracterização de sintomas visuais de deficiência de macronutrientes em alface

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Ensaios comparativos de mistura asfáltica pré-misturado a frio com adição de borracha de pneu

Pós-graduação em Ciência e Tecnologia de Materiais - FC

Aplicação da transformada integral e da transformação conforme na solução de uma classe de problemas difusivo-convectivos em domínios de geometrias não-convencionais

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Um panorama sobre roll waves em escoamentos laminares e turbulentos com superfície livre

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)