Sharif Digital Repository

Various video applications such as mosaicing and object insertion require blending of image regions. The blending quality is often measured subjectively by considering the similarity of the blended image to each of the input images and the visibility of the seams among stitched regions. This paper presents a novel method to blend the moving objects in the related background mosaic based on an adaptive alpha blending method. In order to compute the best possible value for the alpha blending coefficient in dynamic mosaic updating, here we propose a fuzzy method based on relative speed and scale parameters of moving objects. Conducted experiments show that the proposed method improves the... 

A family of conformational rheological models for multi-component miscible polymer blends is developed using a modified form of the Poisson bracket formulation. Two conformation tensors called c1 and c2 are introduced to show the orientation of the first and the second components of a blend, respectively. The mobility tensor and the energy function for each blend component are expressed in terms of these conformation tensors. The interaction effects are also included by energy expressions. The predictions of this family of "volume-preserving" models are illustrated for a Hookean-type energy function and several expressions of the modified mobility tensors. The results are illustrated for... 

Biodegradable thermoplastic films suitable for use in food packaging were produced. These films were mainly based on thermoplastic starch. The major task included research into thermal conversion of starch in a compression molding process and also under high shear conditions in an extruder in the presence of suitable plasticizers. The destruction of crystalline structure resulted in amorphous structure with thermoplastic properties. Films were rather transparent but slightly brown in color and had a specific smell. The films showed sufficient plasticity and acceptable tensile strength and elongation. The effect of plasticizer content on the final properties of the film was investigated. The... 

Phase morphology, state of compatibility and various properties of blends of polycarbonate (PC) with bottle-grade and fibre-grade polyethylene terephthalate (BPET and FPET, respectively) were investigated. It was found that these blends have two-phase separated morphology with partial miscibility. Scanning electron micrographs revealed separated domains of PC-rich and PET-rich zones. PC domains appear spherical increasing in size from 2 μm for PC20/FPET80 up to about 5 μm for PC60/FPET40 blend. Further increase in PC content up to 80% caused phase inversion in which FPET appears as finely dispersed domains in continuous PC matrix. Tg of PC-rich phase decreased from 153 deg;C for pure PC down... 

In this study, polypropylene/clay nanocomposites were prepared by melt blending method and their thermal conductivity and the thermal conductivity of polypropylene/multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) nanocomposites were investigated and modeled. It is found that the thermal conductivity of the PP/Clay and PP/MWCNT nanocomposites is increased with increasing temperature. The thermal conductivity of the nanocomposites is improved due to incorporation of nanoclay and MWCNT compared with pure PP matrix  

Binary blends of recycled high-density polyethylene (R-HDPE) with poly(ethylene terephthalate) (R-PET) and recycled polystyrene (R-PS), as well as the ternary blends, i.e. R-HDPE/R-PET/R-PS, with varying amounts of the constituents were prepared by twin screw extruder. The mechanical, rheological, thermal, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses were utilized to characterize the samples. The results revealed that both R-HDPE/R-PET and R-HDPE/R-PS blends show phase inversion but at different compositions. The R-PET was found to have much higher influence on the properties enhancement of the R-HDPE compared to R-PS, but at the phase inverted situation, a significant loss in the tensile... 

The polycarbonate (PC)/thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) blend membranes were prepared by phase inversion process applied to membrane bioreactor (MBR) to investigate the fouling characteristics. The impact of TPU and poly (vinylpyrrolidone) PVP concentration in polymer dopes on membrane structure, morphology, and performance were studied. The flat sheet fabricated membranes were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), water contact angle (WCA), membrane surface roughness measurements and mechanical strength. The membrane performance was investigated at subcritical operating conditions. Pure water and critical flux through the fabricated membranes were measured for better... 

The morphology of a quaternary blend containing a diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA), a thermoplastic modifier (PMMA), a phase-separating curing agent (diaminodiphenylmethane, DDM), and a non-phase-separating curing agent (methylenebis(3-chloro-2,6-diethylaniline, MCDEA) was studied as a function of volume fraction of the thermoplastic modifier and fractional concentration of the curing agents in their mixture. It was found that using mixtures of curing agents a co-continuous morphology could be obtained at PMMA concentrations as low as 2.5 volume percent. Using FTIR spectroscopy it was proved that specific interactions are present between PMMA and individual amine curing agents. On the... 

In last decades, rubber-toughened polymer blends have been the object of considerable interest by many investigators, owing to their attractive mechanical as well as physical properties. Polypropylene (PP) is a type of polyolefin which can be toughened using rubber particles. In another paper [J. Appl. Polym. Sci., submitted for publication], the role of ethylene-propylene (EPR) particles on the deformation mechanism during tensile tests and the fracture mechanism under quasi-static loading tests has been investigated. This paper is instead focused on the role of EPR particles on the fracture mechanism under dynamic loading (impact properties) of EPR/PP blends. Blends with different weight... 

Ultrafiltration membranes were prepared from blend of the poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) with polyacrylonitrile (PAN) via phase inversion method induced by immersion precipitation. N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) and water were used as solvent and coagulant (non-solvent), respectively. The effect of blending ratio on the morphology and antifouling behavior of the prepared membranes was investigated. The performance of the membranes was evaluated by using cross flow filtration of pure water and buffered bovine serum albumin (BSA) solution as feed. Contact angle measurements indicated that the hydrophilicities of the PVDF/PAN membranes increased by increasing PAN concentration in the casting... 

Ultrafiltration membranes were prepared from blend of the poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) with polyacrylonitrile (PAN) via phase inversion method induced by immersion precipitation. N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc) and water were used as solvent and coagulant (non-solvent), respectively. The effect of blending ratio on the morphology and antifouling behavior of the prepared membranes was investigated. The performance of the membranes was evaluated by using cross flow filtration of pure water and buffered bovine serum albumin (BSA) solution as feed. Contact angle measurements indicated that the hydrophilicities of the PVDF/PAN membranes increased by increasing PAN concentration in the casting... 

Polymeric materials generally suffer from a low resistance to various types of surface mechanical damage, among which scratch is a prominent example. While several attempts have been made to assess the scratch resistance and its relationship with the bulk mechanical properties in simple polymeric systems, the available research on the polymeric blends is scarce. This study attempts to fill this gap by studying the link between the scratch resistance and mechanical properties in a ternary polymeric nanocomposite, which has proved to feature superior and tunable mechanical properties. For this aim, blends of polypropylene and polyamide 6 were prepared using melt blending with two different... 

Barrier properties of the biaxial oriented polypropylene (BOPP) films are the most important properties in food packaging industry. In this study different compatibilizers and materials were examined in order to find an appropriate blend composition to minimize the oxygen permeability of the films. It was observed that using organoclay and nanocomposits have positive effect on the oxygen permeability although the kind of compatibilizer is important. Through all evaluated materials the PVA (Poly(vinyl alcohol)) and MA (Maleic Anhydride) were the most successful selection for this goal. The BOPP film blended by PVA achieved the lowest oxygen transfer rate (300 cc 20 μm/m2 24 h atm) in compared... 

The binary powder blending technique (BPBT) was employed in production of anisotropic (Nd, MM)2(Fe, Co, Ni)14B-type sintered magnets (MM: denotes a Misch-metal). The composition of the master alloy was close to the stoichiometric Nd2Fe14B compound, while the sintering aid (SA) had a composition of MM38.1Co46.4Ni15.4. The magnets were made by blending different ratios of the master alloy and the sintering aid. The corrosion behavior of these magnets was compared with that of the Nd17Fe75B8 base alloy by potentiodynamic polarization measurements in H2SO4 solution. By decreasing the amount of Nd-rich grain boundary phases and substitution of some Fe atoms by Co and Ni, an improvement in the... 

Understanding the co-crystallization behavior of ternary polyethylene (PE) blends is a challenging task. Herein, in addition to co-crystallization behavior, the rheological and mechanical properties of melt compounded high density polyethylene (HDPE)/low density polyethylene (LDPE)/Zeigler − Natta linear low density polyethylene (ZN-LLDPE) blends have been studied in detail. The HDPE content of the blends was kept constant at 40 wt% and the LDPE/ZN-LLDPE ratio was varied from 0.5 to 2. Rheological measurements confirmed the melt miscibility of the entire blends. Study of the crystalline structure of the blends using DSC, wide angle X-ray scattering, small angle X-ray scattering and field... 

The current study investigates the effect of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) addition on morphology and antifouling properties of poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) asymmetric flat ultrafiltration (UF) membranes. The membranes are prepared via phase inversion method induced by immersion precipitation at different PVC/PAN blending ratio up to 40 wt% PAN. Also, membranes with blending ratio of PVC/ PAN:70/30, which showed the highest water flux and flux recovery ratio, were used for membrane preparation with 4 wt% of Polyethylene glycol (PEG) addition in four different molecular weight, 600 Da, 1,000 Da, 6,000 Da and 20,000 Da, which was used as pore former and hydrophilic polymeric additive. The performance... 

Recently, membrane fouling has been one of the most important issues in the field of membrane technology. In this regard, TiO2 nanoparticles blended with polymeric membranes have shown to improve fouling performance. In this study, a new PVDF/PAN/TiO2 ultrafiltration blend membrane was prepared via phase inversion by dispersing TiO2 nanoparticles in the PVDF/PAN casting solutions. The effect of different concentrations of TiO2 on the characteristics of membranes (i.e., morphology, hydrophilicity, permeation performance, and antifouling properties) was investigated. Results of scanning electron microscopy analysis showed the finger-like pores and macrovoids decrease due to the presence of... 

Nylon 6 and 66 were toughened with EPDM-g-MA and SEBS-g-MA and steadystate rheological behaviour of rubbers, nylons and their blends and mechanical properties of nylons and their rubber-toughened blends were investigated. The EPDM maleic grafting preparation was performed In the framework of this study where SEBS-g-MA was obtained from a commercial source. The results showed the ultratoughened SEBS-g-MA blends, whereas EPDM blends under the same blending conditions did not show a significant improvement in toughness. In case of EPDM toughened blends an average of some micrometers was observed for the dispersed EPDM particles. Impact and tensile properties of the toughened blend with 20% of... 

In this study, a two-layer feed-forward neural network was constructed and applied to determine a mapping associating mix design and testing factors of cement-nano silica (NS)-rice husk ash ternary blended concrete samples with their performance in conductance to the water absorption properties. To generate data for the neural network model (NNM), a total of 174 field cores from 58 different mixes at three ages were tested in the laboratory for each of percentage, velocity and coefficient of water absorption and mix volumetric properties. The significant factors (six items) that affect the permeability properties of ternary blended concrete were identified by experimental studies which were:... 

In the extended finite element method (FEM), the transition elements between the enriched and standard elements, which are generally referred as the blending, or partially enriched elements, are often crucial for a good performance of the local partition of unity enrichments. In these elements, the enrichment function cannot be reproduced exactly due to the lack of a partition of unity, and blending elements produce unwanted terms into the approximation that cannot be compensated by the standard final element part of the approximation. In this paper, some optimal X-FEM-type methods reported in literature are employed to study the performance of blending elements in large plastic deformation...