Matrix stiffness is a well-established instructive cue in two-dimensional cell cultures. Its roles in morphogenesis in 3-dimensional (3D) cultures, and the converse effects of cells on the mechanics of their surrounding microenvironment, have been more elusive given the absence of suitable methods to quantify stiffness on a length-scale relevant for individual cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) in...

In order to improve the performance of a magnetically levitated (maglev) axial flow blood pump, three-dimensional (3-D) finite element analysis (FEA) was used to optimize the design of a hybrid magnetic bearing (HMB). Radial, axial, and current stiffness of multiple design variations of the HMB were calculated using a 3-D FEA package and verified by experimental results. As compared with the or...

Flexible pins eliminate the need for straddle mounting, and therefore enable the maximum possible number of planets to be used for any particular epicyclic ratio of power transmission systems. Having more planet gears will significantly increase the input torque density. In this type of design, the pin stiffness and position tolerances are important parameters as they affect the dynamic perform...

Deformation of partially composite beams under distributed loading and free vibrations of partially composite beams under various boundary conditions are examined in this paper. The weak-form quadrature elementmethod, which is characterized by direct evaluation of the integrals involved in the variational description of a problem, is used. One quadrature element is normally sufficient for a par...

We use a mixed 3-dimensional variational principle to derive 2-dimensional equations for an anisotropic plate-like piezoelectric body and one-dimensional equations for an anisotropic beam-like piezoelectric body. The formulation accounts for double forces without moments which may change the thickness of the plate and deform the cross-section of the rod. The dependence of the bending rigidities...

In the field of human-machine interaction mechanical impedance has become well implement. However, in humanvehicle interaction there is a variant environment when drivin a vehicle, thus apart from cooperating with human, an impedance is needed to adapt to the variant environment. But as being a second order mass-viscosity-stiffness model with fixed parameters, for mechanical impedance it is dif...

Single-track railway bridges are susceptible of experiencing high levels vertical acceleration on the deck that may be dangerously accentuated at resonance. This is especially critical for short-to-medium span simply supported bridges. problem can compromise safety trains and increase maintenance costs track. The main objective this work to investigate influence ballasted track dynamic behaviou...

For non-rigid registration, the objects in medical images are usually treated as a single deformable body with homogeneous stiffness distribution. However, this assumption is invalid for certain parts of the human body, where bony structures move rigidly, while the others may deform. In this paper, we introduce a novel registration technique that models local rigidity of pre-identified rigid st...

Degrees of freedom which are Lagrange multipliers anse in the finite element approximation of mixed vanational problems. When these degrees of freedom are "local", the intioduction of a small perturbation {conespondinq hv duality to a penalty function) enables the élimination of these unknouns at the element level We fitst examine this method in the continuons case and show that the solution of...

Control-based continuation (CBC) is a means of applying numerical continuation directly to a physical experiment for bifurcation analysis without the use of a mathematical model. CBC enables the detection and tracking of bifurcations directly, without the need for a post-processing stage as is often the case for more traditional experimental approaches. In this paper, we use CBC to directly loc...