Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, Inc.

University of Texas System

University System of Maryland

John J Lesko

Judy Smith Riffle

Stephen V Davis

Benny D Freeman

Ronald W Armstrong

Shreya Roy-Choudhury

Eui Soung Jang

Nikhil Verghese

Norman Broyles

Ozma R Lane

Gurtej S Narang

Amin Daryaei

Trevor Schumacher

Described herein are water desalination membranes and methods of desalinating water. Sulfonated poly(arylene ether) polymers are also disclosed, including those comprising one or more sulfonate groups at various points along the polymer chain. The polymers may be used as at least a portion of a water desalination membrane. The polymers described herein are useful for preventing transport of aqueous ionic species (e.g., Naand Cl) across a membrane made from the polymers while allowing water to pass. Chlorine-stable polymers are described, as well as polymers exhibiting good performance for rejecting monovalent cations in the presence of polyvalent cations.

Sulfonated poly(arylene ether) membranes with high monovalent salt rejection even in the presence of mixed salt feeds that contain multivalent salts

Composite material having carbon fibers embedded in a polymeric matrix comprising a thermoset resin, where the carbon fibers are precoated with a sizing agent comprising a saturated polyurethane or polyhydroxyether before being embedded in the resin. The invention also contemplates processes for making this composite material and intermediate products thereof.

Composites of thermosetting resins and carbon fibers having

Disclosed is a method and apparatus of indentation testing of variable types of specimens which includes mounting an indenter member onto a thermally expandable member, mounting the specimen to be tested on a pedestal, loading the specimen with the indenter member by thermally expanding the thermally expandable member and measuring applied force to and displacement of the specimen so as to determine the hardness or other material properties of the specimen. The indenter member is thermally insulated from the thermally expandable member prior to thermally expanding the thermally expandable member. The thermal expansion driven indentation system in the present invention allows for controlled application of precise and continuous reproducible loads to produce stress-strain plots. Continuous indentation testing with this system has yielded results which correlate well to Rockwell fixed load hardness tests on standard test blocks. Further, efforts in drawing relationships with tensile results have shown support for the use of continuous indentation testing for the generation of local material properties.

Thermal expansion driven indentation stress-strain system

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Blacksburg, VA, United States of America

John J Lesko