• Restorative Dentistry and Endodontics
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• 제38권4호
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• pp.204-209
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• 2013

Objectives: The objective of this in vitro study was to evaluate and compare the cytotoxicity of four different root canal sealers i.e. Apexit Plus (Ivoclar Vivadent), Endomethasone N (Septodont), AH-26 (Dentsply) and Pulpdent Root Canal Sealer (Pulpdent), on a mouse fibroblast cell line (L929). Materials and Methods: Thirty two discs for each sealer (5 mm in diameter and 2 mm in height) were fabricated in Teflon mould. The sealer extraction was made in cell culture medium (Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium, DMEM) using the ratio 1.25 $cm^2/mL$ between the surface of the sealer samples and the volume of medium in a shaker incubator. Extraction of each sealer was obtained at 24 hr, 7th day, 14th day, and one month of interval. These extracts were incubated with L929 cell line and 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay was done. Two-way ANOVA for interaction effects between sealer and time and Post-hoc multiple comparison using Tukey's test across all the 16 different groups were used for statistical analysis. Results: Apexit Plus root canal sealer was significantly less toxic than other sealers (p < 0.05) and showed higher cellular growth than control. Endomethasone N showed mild cytotoxicity. AH-26 showed severe toxicity which became mild after one month while Pulpdent Root Canal Sealer showed severe to moderate toxicity. Conclusions: Apexit Plus was relatively biocompatible sealer as compared to other three sealers which were cytotoxic at their initial stages, however, they became biocompatible with time.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제25권1호
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• pp.97-104
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• 2020

Due to the superior properties of nanoparticles, using them has been increased in concrete production technology. In this study, the effect of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles on the mechanical and smart properties of concrete was studied. At the first, the ZnO nanoparticles are dispersed in water using shaker, magnetic stirrer and ultrasonic devices. The nanoparticles with 3.5, 0.25, 0.75, and 1.0 volume percent are added to the concrete mixture and replaced by the appropriate amount of cement to compare with the control sample without any additives. In order to study the mechanical and smart properties of the concrete, the cubic samples for determining the compressive strength and cylindrical samples for determining tensile strength with different amounts of ZnO nanoparticles are produced and tested. The most important finding of this paper is about the smartness of the concrete due to the piezoelectric properties of the ZnO nanoparticles. In other words, the concrete in this study can produce the voltage when subjected to mechanical load and vice versa it can induce the mechanical displacement when subjected to external voltage. The experimental results show that the best volume percent for ZnO nanoparticles in 28-day samples is 0.5%. In other words, adding 0.5% ZnO nanoparticles to the concrete instead of cement leads to increases of 18.70% and 3.77% in the compressive and tensile strengths, respectively. In addition, it shows the best direct and reverse piezoelectric properties. It is also worth to mention that adding 3.5% zinc oxide nanoparticles, the setting of cement is stopped in the concrete mixture.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• 제5권2호
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• pp.225-237
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• 2018

The difficulties of satellite vibration testing are due to the commonly expressed qualification requirements being incompatible with the limited performance of the entire controlled system (satellite + interface + shaker + controller). Two features cause the problem: firstly, the main satellite modes (i.e., the first structural mode and the high and low tank modes) are very weakly damped; secondly, the controller is just too basic to achieve the expected performance in such cases. The combination of these two issues results in oscillations around the notching levels and high amplitude beating immediately after the mode. The beating overshoots are a major risk source because they can result in the test being aborted if the qualification upper limit is exceeded. Although the abort is, in itself, a safety measure protecting the tested satellite, it increases the risk of structural fatigue, firstly because the abort threshold has been already reached, and secondly, because the test must restart at the same close-resonance frequency and remain there until the qualification level is reached and the sweep frequency can continue. The beat minimum relates only to small successive frequency ranges in which the qualification level is not reached. Although they are less problematic because they do not cause an inadvertent test shutdown, such situations inevitably result in waiver requests from the client. A controlled-system analysis indicates an operating principle that cannot provide sufficient stability: the drive calculation (which controls the process) simply multiplies the frequency reference (usually called cola) and a function of the following setpoint, the ratio between the amplitude already reached and the previous setpoint, and the compression factor. This function value changes at each cola interval, but it never takes into account the sensor signal phase. Because of these limitations, we firstly examined whether it was possible to empirically determine, using a series of tests with a very simple dummy, a controller setting process that significantly improves the results. As the attempt failed, we have performed simulations seeking an optimum adjustment by finding the Least Mean Square of the difference between the reference and response signal. The simulations showed a significant improvement during the notch beat and a small reduction in the beat amplitude. However, the small improvement in this process was not useful because it highlighted the need to change the reference at each cola interval, sometimes with instructions almost twice the qualification level. Another uncertainty regarding the consequences of such an approach involves the impact of differences between the estimated model (used in the simulation) and the actual system. As limitations in the current controller were identified in different approaches, we considered the feasibility of a new controller that takes into account an estimated single-input multi-output (SIMO) model. Its parameters were estimated from a very low-level throughput. Against this backdrop, we analyzed the feasibility of an LQG control in cancelling beating, and this article highlights the relevance of such an approach.