The critical state of a granular material made rounded tetrahedral particles is studied through DEM simulations triaxial compressions. A minimum number 7,500 first obtained as the representative volume element (RVE) for present simulations. Then, macroscopic line (CSL) shown to be increasing in (stress, density) space low confining pressures. Such an unexpected behaviour explained by existence ...

In this study, the effect of confining pressure on the crack growth behavior in a highly filled elastomer was investigated. The material under investigation contains 86% by weight of hard particles embedded in a rubbery matrix. The specimens were tested at a constant strain rate under a confining pressure. Two confining pressures, 3.45 MPa and 6.9 MPa, and two types of loading, monotonically in...

BACKGROUND Compressive mechanical stress produced during growth in a confining matrix limits the size of tumor spheroids, but little is known about the dynamics of stress accumulation, how the stress affects cancer cell phenotype, or the molecular pathways involved. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We co-embedded single cancer cells with fluorescent micro-beads in agarose gels and, using confoc...

The recovery stress of martensitic shape-memory alloy [SMA] wires can be used to confine concrete, and the confining effectiveness of the SMA wires was previously proved through experimental tests. However, the behavior of SMA wires under recovery stress has not been seriously investigated. Thus, this study conducted a series of tests of NiTiNb martensitic SMA wires under recovery stress with v...

We construct a family of smooth, almost self-dual, non-thermalized SU(2) gauge field configurations, and measure the average of the fundamental, adjoint and spin 3 2 representation Wilson loops on them. We get area law in all three cases. We also study thermalised configurations at β = 2.325 after cooling. The ratio of string tension in the spin j representation over that in the fundamental, st...

An elastic-plastic model was developed to describe the deformation and permeability of fractured rocks under confining pressure. Elastic and elastic-plastic contact models were used in the model to analyze the deformations of a representative element containing a single fracture under various confining pressures. The present work utilized elements from contact mechanics and viscous flows to der...

We stress that a natural solution of the μ problem requires two ingredients: a symmetry that would enforce μ = 0 as well as the occurence of a small breaking parameter that generates a nonzero μ. It is suggested that both the Peccei-Quinn symmetry and the spontaneously broken R symmetry may be the sources of the needed μ term in the minimal supersymmetric standard model provided that they are s...