Publications by authors named "Ana Ines Fernandez"

The presence of plastics in the automotive industry is increasingly significant due to their lightweight nature, which contributes to reducing fuel consumption and CO emissions while improving versatility and mechanical properties. Polypropylene (PP) and other polyolefins are among the most commonly used materials, especially for components such as bumpers. The use of composite materials, i.

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Multi-layer silicone composites are commonly used to mold deformable silicone vocal folds replicas. Nevertheless, so far the stress-strain characterisation of such composite specimens is limited to their effective Young's modulus (up to 40 kPa) characterising the elastic low-strain range, i.e.

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Nowadays, the incorporation of nanoparticles into thermal fluids has become one of the most suitable strategies for developing high-performance fluids. An unconventional improvement of thermo-physical properties was observed with the addition of 1% wt. of nanoparticles in different types of fluids, such as molten salts, allowing for the design of more thermally efficient systems using nanofluids.

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The use of adequate thermal energy storage (TES) systems is an efficient way to achieve thermal comfort in buildings reducing the cooling and heating demand. Besides, deploy phase change materials (PCM) to meet and enhance the TES needs is highly effective and widely studied. In this paper, a study of the degradation of two fatty acids is presented, capric and myristic acids, in order to evaluate whether their thermo-physical properties are affected throughout time during service.

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Within the thermal energy storage field, one of the main challenges of this study is the development of new enhanced heat storage materials to be used in the building sector. The purpose of this study is the development of alkali-activated cements (AACs) with mechanical properties to store high amounts of heat. These AACs incorporate wastes from industrial glass process as well as microencapsulated phase change materials (mPCMs) to improve the thermal inertia of building walls, and accordingly respective energy savings.

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Reusing by-products is an important strategy to ensure the preservation of natural capital and climate change mitigation. This study aimed at evaluating the potential of cork granulates, a by-product of winery industry, as an organic carbon (OC) source for the treatment of hydroponic wastewaters. First, chemical characterization was performed and discussed.

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A method for preparing and characterizing microencapsulated phase change materials (MPCM) was developed. A comparison with a commercial MPCM is also presented. Both MPCM contained paraffin wax as PCM with acrylic shell.

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