The objective of this paper is to explore the potential strength and serviceability implications of metallic foams, specifically steel foam, utilized as a thin-walled channel structural member. A typical advantage sought in the selection of a thin-walled member is minimal weight. However, the stability of the thin walls and the related limit states constrains the extent to which weight minimiza...

In a recent paper we examined a model of an arch bridge with viscous damping subjected to a sinusoidally varying central load. We showed how this yields a useful archetypal oscillator which can be used to study the transition from smooth to discontinuous dynamics as a parameter, alpha, tends to zero. Decreasing this smoothness parameter (a non-dimensional measure of the span of the arch) change...

Submitted for the MAR14 Meeting of The American Physical Society Instability and Wave Propagation in Structured 3D Composites NARGES KAYNIA, NICHOLAS X. FANG, MARY C. BOYCE, Massachusetts Inst of Tech MIT — Many structured composites found in nature possess undulating and wrinkled interfacial layers that regulate mechanical, chemical, acoustic, adhesive, thermal, electrical and optical function...

The elasticity and mechanical stability of empty and filled viral capsids under external force loading are studied in a combined analytical and numerical approach. We analyze the influence of capsid structure and chirality on the mechanical properties. We find that generally skew shells have lower stretching energy. For large Föppl-von Kármán numbers gamma (gamma approximately 10(5)), skew stru...

This paper presents a generalized formulation for the problem of buckling optimization of anisotropic, radially graded, thin-walled, long cylinders subject to external hydrostatic pressure. The main structure to be analyzed is built of multi-angle fibrous laminated composite lay-ups having different volume fractions of the constituent materials within the individual plies. This yield to a piece...

This paper investigates the relationship between mechanical behaviors and shape of corrugated fiberboard by means of buckling analysis, which is done by FEM (Finite Element Method). Firstly, after analyzing the structure of corrugated fiberboard a single-wall corrugated fiberboard model was built. The buckling load was measured in the ideal condition by linear buckling analysis (eigenvalue buck...