Merry Christmas

Hi all,

Wish you a merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Ho ho ho... family time. ;)

- Cheers

Accident

I met with an accident while I was working at the a of EMPA, Switzerland.
Two of my fingers were squeezed between the cover of a kneader, accidentally loosing the grip of the cover.

So I will be out of work until 5th Jan 2009. Sad about that. Will be alone at home. :(

Fibers

Fibers can be made of any material like ceramics, glass, polymers, metals, etc..
They have a huge impact on the modern technology. If emphasized one can say that it can strengthen a composites having fibers in a matrix.

Fiberglass is the most common and a very old application of fibers. Fiberglass is a composite with polymer matrix with glass fiber and thus the name given fiberglass or glass fiber.

Instead of these glass fibers, fibers of others materials mentioned above also can be used to make different materials with different properties and will change the way of the world that exist today.

Extrusion of Ceramics

Extrusion is one of the main process and an old process for materials engineers. With extrusion you can make intricate shapes with a plastic paste. Even ceramics can be processed using this method. Someone could think that it is only be done to plastics, but as mentioned above metals and ceramics can also be extruded.

Type of extruder
1. Ram type extruder
2. Screw type extruder

Ceramic extrusion (Considering ram type extruder)
To extrude ceramic into a required shape, one must formulate and create a paste according to his/her requirements. The person should think about its plasticity, viscosity, thixotropy, etc. (basically the rheology of the paste) and the pressure it needs to do a good extrusion, the speed of the extrusion, etc.. It is seen that if there is not enough pressure there will be defects on the extruded parts and also all the other parameters are also very important for the quality of the final product.

--cheers

After a long time

Hello Everyone,

I am now doing my internship in Empa, Switzerland. It is a great company which does lot of researches attached to the industry. It's a really new experience for me.
More things later.

Have fun. :-)

Facing to the exam...

Got a bit relief from the exam. But it still going on. 5 subjects to be written. :-)

Characterization of Materials as I have mentioned earlier too, is really an interesting subject. Quantum theories are really interesting. I love quantum world. Someone who loves quantum mechanics, he/she really should improve skills on mathematics on which I should also have to concentrate.

-cheers

Studying for the semester end examination...

It is a tough semester with all the non-academic work and the work load of the semester. Exam will be started on 15th September.

So concentrating on the exam. Therefore I will not be able to update till the exam ends. :-) But sometimes I will put some interesting notes here. So check back.

-cheers

Colored Gold

White gold and yellow gold are the most common types of gold colors used in jewelry making. But did you know that, various other colors of gold are also available and some of these colors may surprise you.

For example, have you heard of purple gold, or black gold and even blue gold? It is quite likely that you might have never heard of these gold colors. Here are the details of the various gold colors used in gold jewelry production in recent times.

However these attractive gold colors have some disadvantages over normal carat gold alloys. Read this complete report before you make any decision on ordering colored gold jewels.

Welcome Ceremony (MT Nite 2008)

The ceremony for welcoming juniors was perfectly done at the "Rock House". Everyone appreciated. Mr. Palitha Peris, our dear lecturer, sang a song giving everyone a big expression. :-)

Really feel good all about it. Decorations in which I mostly worried about was finished greatly by Sampath, souvenirs by Madhawa and the memento by our dear girls. A great work done. Thank you all. :-)

Mid Term Tests

Mid term tests will be held during next 2 or 3 weeks. Hence, will be busy to be online. :-(

Welcome Ceremony for Juniors

Since we are the level III students, there is a tradition of welcoming the juniors to the department to level II. It will be held on 21st August and the place will be the "Rock House".

Organizing is really enjoying and give really good experience to life. Interacting with other people is the most important thing. Communication should be such that, the organizer should be able to get any work done from others. :-)

Project Announced...

Glazes used in traditional ceramic applications have become a very long way from the old days. They are now a fashion in the society to obtain such products with attractive types of glazes to express their level in the society.

Within the types of glazes, crystalline glazes are very expensive due its attractiveness and the difficulty to obtain the correct type of glaze.

What is crystalline glaze?
It is a glaze in which the glaze is matured appearing the crystals of it inside the glaze giving very pleasing appearance to the surface. This is very difficult to obtain technically.

Our team started the project to find a formula of a crystallized glaze for a ceramic body to identify a perfect formula for a given body while minimizing the cost of production.

(More details will be published very soon - Literature survey is going on)

Characterization of Materials

When engineering applications are considered such as powder metallurgy, advanced ceramics the body preparation is very critical step. Especially in ceramics, the powder preparation, compaction, characterization and processing is very important.

Among these steps, characterization is the analysis of materials in which we try to gather knowledge about a materials or identify a material. This is a very important step in engineering applications. Using that we can improve the quality of the products.

Metallurgy

Metallurgy is the field of metals, in which we study about how to make alloys and how to extract metals from the earth, mould making, powder preparation and so many things. Joining of materials is the other subject that is combined with metallurgy and also other subjects such as polymer and ceramics.

Nanotechnology Consumer Products

Nanotechnology is becoming the most commonly discussed technology and is now applied for various consumer products. With this technology, the lifetime and the quality of the products will be increased. Following are some of existing products produced using nanotechnology.

Scratching Surfaces
Nano car wax that fills in those tiny cracks more effectively and gives a shinier vehicle. There are also nano products available to keep eye-wear and other optical devices cleaner, dryer, and more durable.

Clothing World
pants that repel water and won’t stain shirts and shoe inserts that keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and nano socks that don’t “stink” due to the inclusion of nanotech materials (nanosized sliver particles)

Multimedia
Nano-ceramic coatings are being utilized on photo quality picture paper to deliver sharper, higher quality “homemade” digital photo reproductions on your ink jet printer.

Electronics
Nanotechnology has enabled arcade size video games of yesteryear like Pong, Frogger, and PacMan to be replaced with very sophisticated home Playstations, X-Boxes, and Game Cubes that play “life like” Madden 2005, Grand Theft Auto, and Halo 2 video games.
Faster and more powerful computers, palm pilots (blackberries), flash drives, digital cameras and displays, cell phones, LCDs, LEDs, MP3’s, electronic ink displays, thin film batteries, and flexible electronics, etc...

Medicine
The biotech world also has many real world applications currently in use or under development that are, or will be, affecting our quality of life. Bandages embedded with silver nanoparticles are coming of age in the wound healing arena. And We now have drug delivery via a patch. A variety of time release thin films are now utilized on implantations into the human body (for example screws, joints, and stents) and these films are affecting the long term effectiveness of these devices.

These are very few nanotech applications. More can be found here

The Mock Presentation

The presentations will be held next week. The presentation is created. using a great open source tool. It is called LaTeX - Beamer. Using this tool someone can create astonishing presentations, which will be pdf format. Professional themes and good looking free fonts can be found. The presentation that I have created about nanotechnology is linked here.
     Introduction to Nanotechnology
(The document should be viewed in full screen mode)

Microsoft PowerPoint is the most common and popular software for making presentations. PowerPoint 2007 is little different from Office 2003, but it is only the interface. The easy access ribbon menu is the most important thing. The underlying system is almost the same. Anyone can access the old looking interface when he/she wants to adjust something that is not on the ribbon. But it has some cool templates to create presentations and glassy looking fonts. :-)

(But I Prefer Open Source Software)

Interesting Event

Rather than publishing information only about materials engineering, it is good to put some departmental information on the blog too, as I feel.

Today it is announced that there will be some presentations under skill development module and I am nominated to do a mock presentation to motivate the others and give them an idea about how to prepare a presentation. I am glad that I got that opportunity.

So What I am going to do? :-) As I am always inspired by the term nanotechnology, I am going to present some basics of nanotechnology.

- cheers

The Art of Glaze

In the ceramic technology subject, glazes is one of components that drew my attention. The study of formulation, preparation and application of glazes is very interesting. So I thought to put some general ideas about glazes of traditional ceramic industry.

Glazes are very important to the traditional ceramic industry. It sometimes gives the vitreous properties to the body and sometimes, art to the body. In either case in enhances the cost of the product.

When the importance is considered, the appearance of a ceramic product is very important even the cost is elevated with the application of the glaze. Sometimes the product is decorated with a single color and in some cases it is decorated with a texture. Most of pottery are decorated with textured glazes, while some wall tiles and floor tiles are colored glazed.

Giving appearance to the product is one effect of the glaze. But there are some important technical factors which improve the quality of the product.
1. Vitreous
   Some products are used in wet conditions such as floor tiles and wall tiles for a bathroom. So it does not allow water to pass through the tile, which will get deformed (due to moisture absorption) and the lifetime of the tile will be reduced. Sometimes it will allow water to pass through the wall and make it appear on the other side of the wall. The vitreous (non-porous) glaze will prevent this from happening.

2. Strength
   The body along is a pressed and fired body which has a high strength. When the glaze is applied on the top of the fired body, it will also reinforce the body and elevate the strength of the product.

Glazes are very important in the traditional ceramic industry and so that the study of that is also important.

Glazes and Glaze Preparation

Glazes are the substances, which are generally used to cover the top part of the tiles (generally). If we consider wall tiles the top part, which we can see as a glossy layer is called the glaze. Actually glaze is a layer of glass and it can be defined as,

"A thin continuous layers of glass, fusion bonded to the ceramic body"

Glazes are usually prepared according to a formula, which is predetermined in accordance with the ceramic body.

Preparation
1. Raw materials are weighed according to the batch formula.
2. Grind the batch in a ball mill.
3. Adjust the density, viscosity and particle size distribution.
4. Finally sieve the batch before using.

Density, viscosity and particle size distribution are the main factors that govern the properties of the materials.

Shape Memory Alloys (SMA)

Shape memory alloys (SMA's) are metals, which exhibit two very unique properties, pseudo-elasticity, and the shape memory effect.

What is Pseudo-elasticity?
This is also called superelasticity. This is an elastic response in the materials in which, under mechanical stresses, it deforms to high strains (~10%) and when the stress is removed it gains the original shape.

What is Shape Memory Effect?
Shape-memory materials are stimuli-responsive materials. They have the capability of changing their shape upon application of an external stimulus. It is called the shape memory effect.

These materials are used for various engineering, high technology applications such as military, medical, safety and robotics.

- cheers

Advanced Ceramics

So many things have been changed with the new subjects. I am creating a new enthusiasm towards the field of ceramics, because of some attractive things I gather from studies. Advanced is one of the great field in which I would love to wander.

What are advanced ceramics?
We have dealt with lot of traditional ceramics. Even in our old houses, we can find number of traditional ceramic applications such as jugs, sources and cups, pots, etc...

With the development of new technologies including micro and nano technologies, the applications of ceramics became more advanced. Since, past few decades, they have been using for various applications.

Applications of advanced ceramics?
These are ceramics, which are used for engineering applications with high accuracy. These can be categorized into various areas according to the application.
1. Electroceramcis
* Capacitor dielectric
* Piezoelectric ceramics
* Magnetic ceramics
* Optical ceramics
* Conductive ceramics
* Electronic substrate and package ceramics
2. Advanced structural ceramics
* Nuclear ceramics
* Bioceramics
* Wear-resistant ceramics
* Automotive ceramics

There will be more details in near future on the blog

-cheers

Back After Some Time...

Hi,
Couldn't interact with the blog in past few days (almost a month) :-)
Hope to see you people around and in the new semester there are astonishing subjects that I do. Some of those are advanced ceramics, joining of materials and Characterization of materials. Learning serious things regarding materials engineering. I feel what a materials engineer can do and how they are going to change the world :-)

-cheers

Classification of Alloys

Alloys are very important materials, which give the ability to various industries to develop high strength, durable and attractive consumer products such as alloy wheels.

Alloys are classified into several groups. In the figure I have presented a narrowed classification.

The Dawn of a New Era

As the first technical post I thought to talk about a new technology, which will change the way of things will emerge.

Nanotechnology
It is the technology in which things are considered in nano scale. What is this nano-scale? It is the scale of 10-9.

Approaches
1. Top down
Here, the things will be created by breaking down the things into small portions like making a statue chipping off the unnecessary parts from the bulk.

2. Bottom up
It is the process of making things from atoms arranging them as the creator wants.

Here, the we can have limitless power of creating things using nanotechnology.