Premix (Finland)

Abstract Applied amino acid nutrition continues to provide new and meaningful solutions to support advancements in animal performance, health and sustainability. While there continues to be focus on how amino acid nutrition can be optimized for performance, there remains to be opportunity to optimize applied nutrition for the young pig in order to support the weaning transition. As alternatives for antibiotics and heavy metals continue to be explored, their success will in large part depend upon the successful application of amino acid nutrition. There are several complicating factors related to applying amino acid nutrition in the young pig. First, intestinal function at weaning is compromised, resulting in reduced digestive and absorptive capacity. From an amino acid nutrition standpoint, this can lead to increased N flow into the hindgut where it can be fermented into inflammatory irritants, resulting in diarrhea and poor growth. Second, ideal protein models for digestive health are scarce and often approaches of limiting lysine inclusion as a percent of crude protein are used as an alternative. Third, the application of amino acid nutrition is based upon digestibility values obtained from older animals. Review of the literature indicates that these are in excess of what the young pig can digest, further impacting the N flow to the ileum and hindgut. As we continue to apply amino acid nutrition at the commercial level, we must look for solutions to address these items while more basic work can be done to obtain the needed information on digestibility and requirements.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper will discuss an approach to surface quality optimization for adhesive bonded SMC assemblies. The use of designed experimentation methodology based on orthogonal arrays will be described as applied to assembly process parameters. Evaluation of results with a photographic process will be used to generate data for analysis. The analysis of this data will conclude this approach to surface quality optimization.</div>

Dynamic mechanical testing was used to qualitatively study the effects of various constituents of sheet molding compound (SMC) and bulk molding compound (BMC) materials, including unsaturated polyester resin, a chemical thickener (magnesium oxide), a filler (calcium carbonate), and glass fibers. Tests were designed to evaluate the influence of each constituent as it was added to the overall composition. The parameters tested were elastic shear modulus, viscous shear modulus, and complex viscosity as functions of frequency for non-cross-linked materials, and elastic shear modulus, viscous shear modulus, and damping as functions of temperature for cross-linked materials. The chemical thickener was observed to change the molecular weight of the polyester resin, as indicated by the appearance of a rubbery plateau in the viscoelastic spectrum, while cross-linking, filler, and glass fibers were observed to contribute heavily to the elastic shear modulus and temperature sensitivity.