Many currently produced plastic automotive parts use glass fiber reinforced plastic for enhanced strength and reduced vehicle weight. Apart from glass fiber, there are many manufacturing process factors concerning the production of the glass fiber reinforced plastic parts and their characteristics. This paper employed Taguchi's method, a correlation analysis, and an axiomatic design to study the optimizing process for glass fiber-reinforced plastic parts. The major factors affecting the characteristics of the plastic-based automotive parts were determined, and the optimal conditions for the parts were deduced.

Objectives: It was known that workers in synthetic leather company are mainly co-exposed to dimethylformamide(DMF) with methyl ethyl ketone(MEK) or toluene(TOL) instead of a single dimethylformamide. This study was examined to the physico-chemical properties in single DMF and binary mixture DMF with MEK or TOL. Materials: Physico-chemical properties were measured by Korean and American Standard Test Methods. Results: Boiling point, specific gravity and flash point in single DMF were significantly higher than binary mixture DMF with MEK or TOL and such difference was dependent on the mixing ratio of MEK and TOL, and low explosion limit in binary mixture DMF with TOL was only significantly lower than single DMF. However, Reid vapor pressure had significantly higher in binary mixture DMF with MEK or TOL compared with single DMF. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that the binary mixture DMF with MEK or TOL synergistically increases volatilization of DMF. It was concluded that the interaction between DMF and MEK and/or TOL might play a key role in the volatilization process of DMF under environmental conditions of workplace.

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− We investigated experimentally the properties of dust explosion through lycopodium particle clouds in a duct to provide the fundamental knowledge. Propagating dust flames in the vertical duct of 120 cm height and 12 cm square cross-section were observed by digital video camera and flame front is visualized using by PIV(Particle Image Velocimetry) system. As the result, when the same average dust concentration existed in the vertical duct, downward flame propagation was faster than the upward flame propagation, its rate increased with dust concentration in 300g/m 3 . Post flames were caused by the ignition of unburned particles which flowed into the rear region of flame from passage between flame and duct wall, and they generated regardless of duct condition. Also, it was found that appearance frequency of post flames during dust flame propagations increased with the increase of dust concentration.