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This paper aims to study the wear properties of electron beam melted Ti6Al4V (EBM-Ti6Al4V) in simulated body fluids for orthopedic implant biomedical applications compared with wrought Ti6Al4V (Wr-Ti6Al4V).

Wear properties of EBM-Ti6Al4V compared with Wr-Ti6Al4V against ZrO₂ and Al₂O₃ have been investigated under dry friction and the 25 Wt.% newborn calf serum (NCS) lubricated condition using a ball-on-disc apparatus reciprocating motion. The microstructure, composition and hardness of the samples were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction and a hardness tester, respectively. The contact angles with 25 Wt.% NCS were measured by a contact angle apparatus. The wear parameters, wear 2D and 3D morphology were obtained using a 3D white light interferometer and SEM.

EBM-Ti6Al4V yields a higher contact angle than the Wr-Ti6Al4V with the 25 Wt.% NCS. EBM-Ti6Al4V couplings exhibit lower coefficients of friction compared with the Wr-Ti6Al4V couplings under both conditions. There is only a slight difference in the wear resistance between the Wr-Ti6Al4V and EBM-Ti6Al4V alloys. Both Wr-Ti6Al4V and EBM-Ti6Al4V suffer from similar friction and wear mechanisms, i.e. adhesive and abrasive wear in dry friction, while abrasive wear under the NCS condition. The wear depth and wear volume of the ZrO₂ couplings are lower than those of the Al₂O₃ couplings under both conditions.

This paper helps to establish baseline bio-tribological data of additively manufactured Ti6Al4V by electron beam melting in simulated body fluids for orthopedic applications, which will promote the application of additive manufacturing in producing the orthopedic implant.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the contact-consistent object poses during contact-rich manipulation tasks based only on visual sensors.

The method follows a four-step procedure. Initially, the raw object poses are retrieved using the available object pose estimation method and filtered using Kalman filter with nominal model; second, a group of particles are randomly generated for each pose and evaluated the corresponding object contact state using the contact simulation software. A probability guided particle averaging method is proposed to balance the accuracy and safety issues; third, the independently estimated contact states are fused in a hidden Markov model to remove the abnormal contact state observations; finally, the object poses are refined by averaging the contact state consistent particles.

The experiments are performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The results show that the method can achieve smooth and accurate pose estimation results and the estimated contact states are consistent with ground truth.

This paper proposes a method to obtain contact-consistent poses and contact states of objects using only visual sensors. The method tries to recover the true contact state from inaccurate visual information by fusing contact simulations results and contact consistency assumptions. The method can be used to extract pose and contact information from object manipulation tasks by just observing the demonstration, which can provide a new way for the robot to learn complex manipulation tasks.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of elevated temperature on mechanical and physical properties of concrete specimens obtained by substituting the river sand with copper slag (CS) at proportions of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. The specimens were heated in an electric furnace up to 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600 C and kept at these temperatures for 2 h duration. After the specimens were cooled in the furnace, mass loss, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), compressive strength, split tensile strength (STS), flexural strength (FS) and modulus of elasticity (MOE) values were determined. No spalling occurred in the specimens after subjected to elevated temperature. The surface cracks were observed only in specimens exposed to 600 C. The maximum reduction in compressive strength and STS at 600C is 50.3% and 36.39% for referral mix (NC), 18% and 16% for specimens with 100% CS (MCS4). The reduction in MOE of specimens is observed to be high as copper slag content increases with increasing temperature. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) studies are carried out to examine the changes in micro-structures of specimens after exposed to elevated temperatures.

After casting of concrete specimens, it is cured for 28 days. After attainment of 28 days age, the concrete specimens is taken out from the curing tank and allowed to dry for 2 days to remove any moisture content in the specimens to prevent explosive spalling during the time of heating. The prepared concrete specimen is subjected to temperatures of 100^°C, 200^°C, 300^°C, 400^°C, 500^°C and 600^°C up to 2 h duration. The physical test, mechanical test and SEM studies are carried out after cooling of specimens to room temperature (RT). The quality of concrete specimens is measured by conducting UPV test after cooling to RT.

The post-thermal strength properties of concrete specimens with copper slag contents are higher than referral mix concrete. The reduction of MOE of concrete specimens is more with incremental in copper slag content with increase in temperatures. Furthermore, the quality of concrete specimens is ranging from “good to medium” up to 500C temperatures based on UPV test.

In this research work, the natural sand is fully replaced with copper slag materials in the concrete mixes. The post-thermal strength properties like residual compressive strength, residual STS, residual FS and residual MOE is higher than referral mix after subjected to elevated temperature conditions. Higher density and toughness properties of copper slag materials will contribute to concrete strength. The effect of elevated temperature is more on MOE of concrete specimens having higher copper slag contents when comparing to specimens compressive strength.