Dynamic vibration control devices provided with inertance, such as Tuned Inerter Dampers, Mass Damper Inerters or Liquid Column Inerters, have been shown in numerous numerical studies to superior mitigation performance compared conventional devices, Dampers. One possible way produce this inertance effect is by means of a moving fluid. In study, the dynamic fluid inerter analyzed experimentally....

Single molecule experiments on bacteriophages show an exponential scaling for the dependence of mobility on the length of DNA within the capsid. It has been suggested that this could be due to the “capstan mechanism” – the exponential amplification of friction forces that result when a rope is wound around a cylinder as in a ship’s capstan. Here we describe a desktop experiment that illustrates...

In complex, multicomponent systems, polymers often undergo phase transitions between distinct conformations. This paper reports a millimeter-scale granular model of coil-to-globule transitions: one “polymer” chain—a cylinders-on-a-string “pearl necklace”—and many spheres, all shaken on a horizontal surface. It is possible to describe the behavior of this granular system by using formalisms gene...

Generation of force in skeletal muscle tissue depends on both chemical and mechanical phenomena. In this work, considering the kinetics of cross bridges, a one dimensional model has been proposed for predicting the isometric force according to the intracellular calcium ion distribution. Introduction The different ways of skeletal muscle activation lead to the formation of cross bridges (XB) acc...

We present a model of the mechanical and fluid forces associated with exudative retinal detachments where the retinal photoreceptor cells separate, typically from the underlying retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). By computing the total fluid volume flow arising from transretinal, vascular and RPE pump currents, we determine the conditions under which the subretinal fluid pressure exceeds the max...

Due to their small size molecular systems are often overdamped and they are affected by significant fluctuations due to thermal forces. In this paper we investigate the effect of overdamping on a simple mechanical model of myosin II, the motor protein responsible for muscle contraction. We demonstrate that this model, based on the experimentally observed shape of the protein’s subdomains, is co...

This paper focuses on methods of constructing of reduced-order models of mechanical systems which preserve the Lagrangian structure of the original system. These methods may be used in combination with standard spatial decomposition methods, such as the Karhunen–Loève expansion, balancing, and wavelet decompositions. The model reduction procedure is implemented for three-dimensional finite-elem...

INTRODUCTION Ligaments are composed of elastin and collagen fibers embedded in a matrix of water, proteoglycans, glycolipids and fibroblasts. Their main function is to guide and to restrain joint motion in order to maintain joint stability. The joint stability is seriously affected when ligament injuries, such as seconddegree and third-degree sprains, occur. The treatment and prevention of thes...