Papers by Author: Chee Yoon Yue

Abstract: The major challenge for producing and manufacturing risers for oil and gas production is to make them light weight so as to reduce the operational cost and improve the overall system requirements to make them an attractive option for marine and offshore industries. In the current research, the composite and metal-composite pipes (1) GFRP only (2) Al-GFRP and (3) PE-GFRP have been manufactured using filament winding machine operated using CADFIL and CADWIND CNC packages. The use of liners (Al and PE) has ensured the fluid tightness and collapse resistance of the pipe system. Small prototype pipes are manufactured based on optimized pipe design parameters for collapse under external pressure and burst under internal pressure using ANSYS 13 FEA analysis software. Experiments are conducted to verify the axial and hoop compressive strengths of the pipes with analytical results. The details of pipe manufacturing process using filament winding machine, simulation procedure to optimize the pipe parameters and validation of the simulation results with experimental results are the focal points of the current work.

Abstract: The fabrication of polymer based microfluidic devices using the hot embossing technique and their surface modification for easy fluid flow through the devices has been a growing field of research. During hot embossing, the replication fidelity on polymer substrate not only depends on the processing parameters such as temperature, pressure and time but also on their chemical structure which affects their thermo-dependent viscoelastic properties. For copolymers such as cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) which comprises ethylene and norbornene units, such properties depend on their relative ethylene and norbornene content. We report in this paper, a systematic study of replication fidelity and surface modification on COC polymer with varying norbornene content from 65 to 82 wt%. Replication fidelity which includes the surface morphology and cross-section profiles of the microchannel were characterized using SEM and Confocal microscope respectively. The modified surface was evaluated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR spectroscopy) and water contact angle measurement. It was observed that in hot embossing, higher norbornene content contributed to good replication fidelity at identical experimental conditions. Furthermore, it was observed that with increase in norbornene content, the grafting efficiency decreases resulting in poor surface modification.

Abstract: The effects of compatibilization and mould geometry on the fibrillation of liquid crystalline polymer were investigated in this study. The blend is composed of polycarbonate (PC) and LC5000, a thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer consisting of 80/20 wt% of hydroxybenzoic acid and poly(terephthalate). The effect of compatibilization was investigated by studying the morphological properties of injection moulded plaques and significant enhancement in the fibrillation of LCP was observed in the moulded samples after addition of the compatibilizer. The effect of mould geometry was studied by comparing results obtained from three types of specimens, namely, specimens cut from large rectangular plaques, moulded rectangular bar specimens and molded dog-bone specimens. It was found that mould geometry had a direct influence on the magnitude of the elongational and shear stresses in the melt during molding and thus affected the degree of LCP fibrillation. Moreover, it was observed that the constriction at the “neck” of the dogbone geometry actually facilitated development of LCP fibre in the blend by increasing shear stress during moulding and promoting LCP fibre coalescence.