Besides the biology, stresses and strains within the tissue greatly influence the location of damage initiation and mode of failure in an intervertebral disk. Finite element models of a functional spinal unit (FSU) that incorporate reasonably accurate geometry and appropriate material properties are suitable to investigate such issues. Different material models and techniques have been used to ...

Aluminum alloy sheets have several advantages such as the lightweight, high-specific strength and recycling efficiency. Therefore, aluminum alloy sheets in sheet forming have been used in various areas as automotive components and so forth. During the process of sheet forming, wrinkling which is caused by compression stress might occur and the formability of sheets was affected by occurrence of...

We examine the phase behaviour of colloidal suspensions of hard board-like particles (HBPs) as a function of their shape anisotropy, and observe a fascinating spectrum of nematic, smectic, and columnar liquid-crystalline phases, whose formation is entirely driven by excluded volume effects. We map out the phase diagram of short and long HBPs by gradually modifying their shape from prolate to ob...

The residual resistivity ρ in metals caused by wedge disclination dipoles is studied in the framework of the Drude formula. It is shown that ρ ∼ L −p with p = 3 for biaxial and p = 2 for uniaxial dipoles (L is a size of dipole arm).

Orientational ordering of a homogeneous mixture of uniaxial liquid crystalline (LC) molecules and magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) is studied using the Lebwohl-Lasher lattice model. We consider cases where NPs tend to be oriented perpendicularly to LC molecules due to elastic forces. We study domain-type configurations of ensembles, which are quenched from the isotropic phase. We show that for larg...

We discuss the problem of rototranslational diffusion of a rigid biaxial molecule dissolved in a uniaxial smectic liquid crystal phase. We examine distorted rod and disk like molecules and show how biaxiality and rototranslational coupling can produce significant effects on some of the correlation functions and spectral densities most useful in analyzing experimental observables.

Microscopic expressions for the elastic constants of binary liquid crystalline mixtures composed of short rigid uniaxial molecules are derived in the thermodynamic limit at small distorsions and a small density. Uniaxial and biaxial nematic phases are considered. The expressions involve the one-particle distribution functions and the potential energy of two-body short-range interactions. The th...

Lightweighting materials (e.g., advanced high strength steels, aluminum alloys etc.) are increasingly being used by automotive companies as sheet metal components. However, accurate material models are needed for wider adoption. These constitutive material data are often developed by applying biaxial strain paths with cross-shaped (cruciform) specimens. Optimizing the design of specimens is a m...

Cathodoluminescence CL measurements of the ground-state excitonic transition of vertically stacked GaN /AlN quantum dots QDs exhibited an in-plane linear polarization anisotropy in close proximity to microcracks. Microcracks form as a result of a mismatch of the thermal expansion coefficient between the GaN /AlN layers and the Si 111 substrate. In close proximity to the cracks, the layers are f...