---

In this paper, we investigate the effect of nano-CaCO3 on water absorption and tribological properties of polyamide-6. To this end, nanocomposites based on polyamide-6 blend, containing 1 to 5 phr of nano-CaCO3, and 1 phr of maleated polyamide (PA-g-MAH) as compatibilizer, are prepared via melt compounding followed by injection molding. The wear testing of each of the prototypes is carried out under identical conditions. Then, the morphology is studied using scanning electron microscopy. The addition of nano-CaCO3 particles with compatibilizer increases the wear resistance and reduces the water absorption. The results of experiments indicate that minimum wear rate is achieved by adding 1 phr of nano-CaCO3 with compatibilizer which is nearly 4 times less than pure PA6. Furthermore, the presence of nano-CaCO3 together with PA-g-MAH lowers the amount of water absorption as high as 32% wt in compare to pure PA6. In addition to these, this fact is also emerged that effect of compatibilizer is prominent on uniform distribution of the nano-CaCO3 particles among polyamide matrix that it leads to improve the tribological properties of the nanocomposite prototypes in the wear test.

---

Ultrasonic Phased Arrays are an emerging technology in nondestructive testing and evaluation. Some important factors affecting on the performance of these probes include, positioning elements in probe, number of elements, distance between two elements, elements length, and time delays to excite probe elements. The type of linear phased array probes is a prevailing type in which elements placed side by side and longitudinally. In this paper based on analyzing the existent laws in design and performance of the phased array probes related to the propagation of ultrasonic waves, an improved dimensional design for ultrasonic linear phased array probes, as well as improvement of the sequence of time delays to excite the probe elements are done. In order to evaluate the performance of the probe with improved design in comparison with a similar ordinary probe, an ultrasonic phased array test is simulated using FEM-based ABAQUS software. By numerical simulations, the performance of the probe with improved design versus the ordinary probe for propagating the guided waves in a thin square aluminum plate is compared. In first part, the attenuation coefficient of the received signals of reflected wave is evaluated, and in second part, the performance of the probes for radial scanning is compared. Results of both simulations confirm that the performance of the probe with improved design is much better than the similar ordinary one. Specially, the probe with improved design propagates the ultrasonic waves with the maximum head wave energy, and steers them with higher accuracy towards a determined direction.

---

Locomotion regulation of a robot according to path conditions is one of the main interests in the robotics, because it enables the robot to move in unknown environments. This can be realized using inspiration from the human and animals' bio-mechanism in generating various motion patterns called central pattern generator (CPG). These motion patterns are called “gaits” and changing between the motion patterns is called “gait transition”. Many models have been proposed to model CPGs and used for trajectory generating of various mobile robots. In this paper, a type of CPG network called 4-cell CPG model is studied to generate the rhythmic signals of the ankle joints in a bipedal locomotion gaits. This model is composed of four coupled identical cells whose internal dynamics is described by the Morris-Lecar nonlinear differential equations and the couplings between the cells follow the diffusive type. The generation of various locomotion gaits depends on the adjustment of the phase differences between rhythmic signals produced by the cells. The phase differences, in-turn, are obtained via properly adjusting the coupling weights between the cells. Here, we exploit a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) to find the best set of coupling weights for maximally approaching the desired phase differences of the primary bipedal gaits of walk, run, two-legged jump, and two-legged hop. Also, some secondary bipedal gaits, especially one that called “hesitation walkˮ, are obtained by symmetry breaking bifurcations of the primary gaits. The “hesitation walkˮ has already predicted in [28], however the authers could not generate it.