The vascular vessel wall is constantly exposed to biomechanical forces, such as shear and tensile stress. Biomechanical forces are important for several physiological and pathological processes and have been shown to regulate a number of fundamental vascular functions, such as vascular tone and remodeling processes. The aim of the present thesis was to study the effects of biomechanical forces ...

Shear stress is a ubiquitous environmental cue experienced by stem cells when they are being differentiated or expanded in perfusion cultures. However, its role in modulating self-renewing stem cell phenotypes is unclear, since shear is usually only studied in the context of cardiovascular differentiation. We used a multiplex microfluidic array, which overcomes the limitations of macroperfusion...

The effects of catecholamines on longitudinal displacements and intramural shear strain of the arterial wall are unexplored. Therefore, the common carotid artery of five anaesthetized pigs was investigated using an in-house developed noninvasive ultrasonic technique. The study protocol included intravenous infusion of low-dose epinephrine (β-adrenoceptor activation), as well as intravenous bolu...

Interstitial fluid flow (IFF) within the extracellular matrix (ECM) produces low magnitude shear stresses on cells. Fluid flow-induced stress (FSS) plays an important role during tissue morphogenesis. To investigate the effect of low FSS generated by IFF on cells, we developed a microfluidic-based cell culture device that can generate multiple low shear stresses. By changing the length and widt...

The shear rheology of dense colloidal and granular suspensions is strongly nonlinear, as these materials exhibit shear-thinning and shear-thickening, depending on multiple physical parameters. We numerically study the rheology of a simple model of soft repulsive particles at large densities, and show that nonlinear flow curves reminiscent of experiments on real suspensions can be obtained. By u...

Using the infinitesimal theory of elasticity and analytical formulation, displacements and stresses based on the high-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) is presented for axisymmetric thick-walled cylinders made of functionally graded materials under internal and/or external uniform pressure. The material is assumed to be isotropic heterogeneous with constant Poisson’s ratio and radially varyi...

In this paper, a closed form solution for bending and free vibration analyses of simply supported rectangular laminated composite plates is presented. The static and free vibration behavior of symmetric and antisymmetric laminates is investigated using a refined first-order shear deformation theory. The Winkler–Pasternak two-parameter model is employed to express the interaction between the lam...

The finite element method is employed for the flexural-torsional linear buckling analysis of beams of arbitrarily shaped composite cross-section taking into account generalized warping (shear lag effects due to both flexure and torsion). The contacting materials, that constitute the composite cross section, may include a finite number of holes. A compressive axial load is applied to the beam. The...

In this paper, a refined plate theory is applied to investigate the free vibration analysis of functionally graded nanocomposite sandwich plates reinforced by randomly oriented straight carbon nanotube (CNT). The refined shear deformation plate theory (RSDT) uses only four independent unknowns and accounts for a quadratic variation of the transverse shear strains across the thickness, and satis...