TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis T1 - Extracting the spectral density function of a binary composite without a priori assumptions N2 - The spectral representation separates the contributions of geometrical arrangement (topology) and intrinsic constituent properties in a composite. The aim of this Brief Report is to present a numerical algorithm based on the Monte Carlo integration and constrained least-squares methods to resolve the spectral density function for a given system. The numerical method is verified by testing it on the well-known Maxwell Garnett expression. Later, it is applied to a well-studied rock-and-brine system to instruct its utility. The presented method yields significant microstructural information in improving our understanding of how microstructure influences the macroscopic behavior of composites without any intricate mathematics Y1 - 2005 SN - 1098-0121 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis T1 - Numerical calculations of effective elastic properties of two cellular structures N2 - Young's moduli of regular two-dimensional truss-like and eye-shaped structures are simulated using the finite element method. The structures are idealizations of soft polymeric materials used in ferro-electret applications. In the simulations, the length scales of the smallest representative units are varied, which changes the dimensions of the cell walls in the structures. A power-law expression with a quadratic as the exponent term is proposed for the effective Young's moduli of the systems as a function of the solid volume fraction. The data are divided into three regions with respect to the volume fraction: low, intermediate and high. The parameters of the proposed power-law expression in each region are later represented as a function of the structural parameters, the unit-cell dimensions. The expression presented can be used to predict a structure/property relationship in materials with similar cellular structures. The contribution of the cell-wall thickness to the elastic properties becomes significant at concentrations > 0.15. The cell-wall thickness is the most significant factor in predicting the effective Young's modulus of regular cellular structures at high volume fractions of solid. At lower concentrations of solid, the eye-shaped structure yields a lower Young's modulus than a truss-like structure with similar anisotropy. Comparison of the numerical results with those of experimental data for poly(propylene) show good aggreement regarding the influence of cell-wall thickness on elastic properties of thin cellular films Y1 - 2005 SN - 0022-3727 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis T1 - Structure-property relationship in dielectric mixtures: application of the spectral density theory N2 - This paper presents numerical simulations performed on dielectric properties of two-dimensional binary composites. The influence of structural differences and intrinsic electrical properties of constituents on the composite's overall electrical properties is investigated. The structural differences are resolved by fitting the dielectric data with an empirical formula and by the spectral density representation approach. At low concentrations of inclusions (concentrations lower than the percolation threshold), the spectral density functions are delta-sequences, which corresponds to the predictions of the general Maxwell-Garnett (MG) mixture formula. At high concentrations of inclusions (close to the percolation threshold) systems exhibit non-Debye-type dielectric dispersions, and the spectral density functions differ from each other and that predicted by the MG expression. The analysis of the dielectric dispersions with an empirical formula also brings out the structural differences between the considered geometries, however, the information is not qualitative. The empirical formula can only be used to compare structures. The spectral representation method on the other hand is a concrete way of characterizing the structures of the dielectric mixtures. Therefore, as in other spectroscopic techniques, a look-up table might be useful to classify/characterize structures of composite materials. This can be achieved by generating dielectric data for known structures by using ab initio calculations, as presented and emphasized in this study. The numerical technique presented here is not based on any a priori assumption methods Y1 - 2005 SN - 0022-3727 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis T1 - Signs of low frequency dispersions in disordered binary dielectric mixtures (fifty-fifty) N2 - Dielectric relaxation in disordered dielectric mixtures is presented by emphasizing the interfacial polarization. The obtained results coincide with and cause confusion with those of the low frequency dispersion behaviour. The considered systems are composed of two phases on two-dimensional square and triangular topological networks. We use the finite element method to calculate the effective dielectric permittivities of randomly generated structures. The dielectric relaxation phenomena together with the dielectric permittivity values at constant frequencies are investigated, and significant differences of the square and triangular topologies are observed. The frequency dependent properties of some of the generated structures are examined. We conclude that the topological disorder may lead to the normal or anomalous low frequency dispersion if the electrical properties of the phases are chosen properly, such that for 'slightly' reciprocal mixture-when sigma(1) >> sigma(2), and epsilon(1) < epsilon(2)-normal, and while for 'extreme' reciprocal mixture-when sigma(1) >> sigma(2), and epsilon(1) << epsilon(2)-anomalous low frequency dispersions are obtained. Finally, comparison with experimental data indicates that one can obtain valuable information from simulations when the material properties of the constituents are not available and of importance Y1 - 2004 SN - 0022-3727 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis A1 - Furlani, M. A1 - Mellander, B. E. T1 - Resolving distribution of relaxation times in poly(propylene glycol) on the crossover region N2 - In this article, a recently developed numerical technique [E. Tuncer and S. M. Gubanski, IEEE Trans. Dielectr. Electr. Insul. 8, 310 (2001)] is applied to poly(propylene glycol) (PPG) complex dielectric data to extract more information about the molecular relaxation processes. The method is based on a constrained-least-squares (C-LSQ) data fitting procedure together with the Monte Carlo method. We preselect the number of relaxation times with no a priori physical assumption, and use the Debye single relaxation as "kernel," then the obtained weighting factors at each MC step from the C-LSQ method builds up a relaxation time spectrum. When the analysis is repeated for data at different temperatures a relaxation image is created. The obtained relaxation are analyzed using the Lorentz (Cauchy) distribution, which is a special form of the Levy statistics. In the present report the beta and alpha relaxations are resolved for the PPG. A comparison of the relaxations to those earlier reported in the literature indicate that the presented method provides additional information compared to methods based on empirical formulas. The distribution of relaxation times analysis is especially useful to probe the crossover region where the alpha and beta relaxations merge and the results show that the relaxation after the crossover region at higher temperatures is Arrhenius-type as the beta relaxation. Moreover, this relaxation is more likely to be the continuation of the beta relaxation, but with a different activation energy. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics Y1 - 2004 SN - 0021-8979 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis A1 - Lang, Sidney B. T1 - Numerical extraction of distributions of space-charge and polarization from laser intensity modulation method N2 - The Fredholm integral equation of the laser intensity modulation method is an ill-conditioned problem with multiple solutions. An approach based on an application of the Monte Carlo technique and a least-squares solver is developed and tested on simulated data containing both Gaussian and white noise. Good agreement between the original polarization and the estimated one was found. The influences of bin size and spacing, and errors in material properties, are discussed. It is shown that the presented approach is an alternative to other data analysis techniques in the literature based on regularization algorithms. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics Y1 - 2005 SN - 0003-6951 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis A1 - Wegener, Michael T1 - Elastic properties of highly anisotropic thin poly(propylene) foams N2 - In this letter, elastic properties of highly anisotropic cellular poly(propylene) films are reported. The material shows peculiar elastic properties compared to other foams in the literature. The data is displayed as the relative Young's modulus E*/E-s versus relative density rho*/rho(s). Almost all the data from the literature are located on the region E*/E-s = (rho*/rho(s))(n) with 1 less than or equal to n less than or equal to 6. The introduced material on the other hand has lower relative Young's modulus at high relative densities, n greater than or equal to 6. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved Y1 - 2004 SN - 0167-577X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis A1 - Wegener, Michael A1 - Frubing, Peter A1 - Gerhard, Reimund T1 - Origin of temperature dependent conductivity of alpha-polyvinylidene fluoride N2 - The conductivity of alpha-polyvinylidene fluoride is obtained from dielectric measurements performed in the frequency domain at several temperatures. At temperatures above the glass-transition, the conductivity can be interpreted as an ionic conductivity, which confirms earlier results reported in the literature. Our investigation shows that the observed ionic conductivity is closely related to the amorphous phase of the polymer. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics Y1 - 2005 SN - 0021-9606 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis A1 - Wegener, Michael A1 - Gerhard, Reimund T1 - Modeling electro-mechanical properties of layered electrets : application of the finite-element method N2 - We present calculations on the deformation of two- and three-layer electret systems. The electrical field is coupled with the stress-strain equations by means of the Maxwell stress tensor. In the simulations, two-phase systems are considered, and intrinsic relative dielectric permittivity and Young's modulus of the phases are altered. The numerically calculated electro-mechanical activity is compared to an analytical expression. Simulations are performed on two- and three-layer systems. Various parameters in the model are systematically varied and their influence on the resulting piezoelectricity is estimated. In three-layer systems with bipolar charge, the piezoelectric coefficients exhibit a strong dependence on the elastic moduli of the phases. However, with mono-polar charge, there is no significant piezoelectric effect. A two-dimensional simulation illustrated that higher piezoelectric coefficients can be obtained for non-uniform surface charges and low Poisson's ratio of phases. Irregular structures considered exhibit low piezoelectric activity compared to two-layer structures. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 SN - 0304-3886 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tuncer, Enis A1 - Wegener, Michael A1 - Gerhard, Reimund T1 - Distribution of relaxation times in alpha-phase polyvinylidene fluoride N2 - In this paper, a recently developed numerical method to analyze dielectric-spectroscopy data is applied to alpha-phase polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). The numerical procedure is non-parametric and does not contain any of the extensively used empirical formulas mentioned in the literature. The method basically recovers the unknown distribution of relaxation times of the generalized dielectric function representation by simultaneous application of the Monte Carlo integration method and of the constrained least-squares optimization. The relaxation map constructed after the numerical analysis is compared to a-phase PVDF data presented in the literature and results of the parametric analysis with a well- known empirical formula. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved Y1 - 2005 SN - 0022-3093 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wegener, Michael A1 - Bergweiler, Steffen A1 - Wirges, Werner A1 - Pucher, Andreas A1 - Tuncer, Enis A1 - Gerhard, Reimund T1 - Piezoelectric two-layer stacks of cellular polypropylene ferroelectrets : transducer response at audio and ultrasound frequencies N2 - Piezoelectric cellular polypropylene films, so-called ferroelectrets, are assembled in a stack with two active transducer layers. The stack is characterized with respect to its linear and quadratic response in a frequency range from 1 kHz to 80 kHz. A relatively smooth frequency response in the sound-pressure level is found for the individual layers as well as for both layers driven in phase. The piezoelectric response of the two-layer stack is twice the response of an individual layer over a rather broad frequency range. Furthermore, the influence of the preparation conditions on the resonance frequency and the effect of the quadratic distortion on the radiated sound are investigated both for the individual transducer films in the stack and for the stack system as a whole Y1 - 2005 SN - 0885-3010 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wegener, Michael A1 - Tuncer, Enis A1 - Gerhard, Reimund A1 - Bauer, Siegfried T1 - Elastic properties and electromechanical coupling factor of inflated polypropylene ferroelectrets Y1 - 2006 SN - 1-4244-0547-5 ER -