Introduction Fiber-reinforced composites, today, are used in variety of applications ranging from replacements for steel reinforcement in concrete, jackets for retrofit of columns, and externally bonded reinforcement for the rehabilitation of deteriorating structural systems, to use in all composite structures such as building frames and even bridge decks.1 The fibers used are mainly steel fibers, carbon fibers and polymer fibers. …

Introduction Persistence of plastics in the environment, the shortage of landfill space, the depletion of petroleum resources, concerns over emissions during incineration, and entrapment by and ingestion of packaging plastics by fish, fowl and animals have spurred efforts to develop biodegradable/biobased plastics.1 Biocomposites have been the subject of international research since at least the mid-1990s and a number of practical applications …

Introduction Acrylic fiber is one of the important fibers which have been dominating the textile field because of its superior quality like light weight, soft feel and warmth retaining characteristics.1 Cationic dyes can readily be applied to acrylic fibers and adsorbed by acrylic fibers to give Langmuir type of isotherms.2 The dyes are bonded to the acidic or anionic sites present in …

Introduction The most famous models used for deriving the interaction potential are the two–center shell model,1-3 the energy density formalism,4-7 the proximity method8 and the double folding model.9 Recently, the double folding model was developed in two ways .The first is the calculation of its exchange part using finite range NN force. This development produces some computational difficulties if the non diagonal densities, …

Introduction Pitting is an extremely hazardous corrosion type. While causing relatively low metal losses, it disables large metal structures and renders inoperative expensive constructions. Thus, great effort was always under- taken to control pitting. The problem of pitting theory may be divided into three interrelated but, nevertheless, autonomous parts: origination of pits, i.e., their nucleation; interaction of the pits formed, their …

Introduction Silicon (Si) is the workhorse in the semiconductor industry because of its high-density electronic functionality. It is technologically leading material due to economy of scale and integration. Bulk Si is centro-symmetric and indirect band gap (1.12 eV) semiconductor and is ideal for room temperature operations. The other advantage with silicon oxide (SiO2) is that allows tremendous processing flexibility to …

Introduction In the past twenty years, materials research and development (R&D) has shifted from monolithic to composite materials, adjusting to the global need for reduced weight, low cost, quality, and high performance in structural materials.1 The demand for new materials with higher specifications led to the concept of combining different materials in an integral-composite one. Such composite materials result in performance …