The purpose of this study was to determine contact area and mean and peak pressures in the healthy feline patellofemoral joint over the complete range of possible applied force. Furthermore, we wanted to improve upon the repeatability of previous measurements while maximizing the physiological relevance of the results obtained. The patellae and femora were secured in a loading frame approximati...

A method of incorporating surface roughness into theoretical calculations of surface forces is presented. The model contains two chief elements. First, surface roughness is represented as a probability distribution of surface heights around an average surface height. A roughness-averaged force is determined by taking an average of the classic flat-surface force, weighing all possible separation...

Virtual haptic interaction with simulated deformable bodies requires contact forces to be computed with reasonable approximations in real time. This paper makes use of St. Venant’s principle on concentrated loads, and Castigliano’s theory on deflection to show that when an elastic body is globally deformed, the point-force representation of a tool contact is a good approximation. However, when ...

Gecko-inspired microfibre arrays with 42 million polypropylene fibres cm(-2) (each fibre with elastic modulus 1 GPa, length 20 microm and diameter 0.6 microm) were fabricated and tested under pure shear loading conditions, after removing a preload of less than 0.1 N cm(-2). After sliding to engage fibres, 2 cm2 patches developed up to 4N of shear force with an estimated contact region of 0.44 c...

A new method for estimating the contact point in AFM force curves, based on a local regression algorithm, is presented. The main advantage of this method is that can be easily implemented as a computer algorithm and used for a fully automatic detection of the contact points in the approach force curves on living cells. The estimated contact points have been compared to those obtained by other p...

A procedure to build up a dynamical model of the gearbox with spur involute mesh is being described. The main attention is paid to the design technology of the cylindrical bodies elastic contact models. To track geometry of contact implicit equations of algebraic/transcendental or differential-algebraic type are being used. At the same time dynamical models of the bodies involved, gearwheels an...

Electrowetting on dielectric-coated electrodes involves two independently observable phenomena: (i) the well-known voltage dependence of the apparent contact angle and (ii) a central electromechanical force that can be exploited to move and manipulate small liquid volumes on a substrate. The electromechanical force does not depend upon field-mediated changes of the contact angle; it is operativ...

Admittance control approaches show significant promise in providing reliable force-guided assembly. An important issue in the development of these approaches is the specification of an appropriate admittance control law. This paper identifies procedures for selecting the appropriate admittance to achieve reliable planar force-guided assembly for single-point contact cases. A set of conditions t...