Most real-world events stimulate multiple sensory modalities simultaneously. Usually, the stiffness of an object is perceived haptically. However, auditory signals also contain stiffness-related information, and people can form impressions of stiffness from the different impact sounds of metal, wood, or glass. To understand whether there is any interaction between auditory and haptic stiffness ...

We illustrate the flow behaviour of fluids with isotropic and anisotropic microstructure (internal length, layering with bending stiffness) by means of numerical simulations of silo discharge and flow alignment in simple shear. The Cosserat theory is used to provide an internal length in the constitutive model through bending stiffness to describe isotropic microstructure and this theory is cou...

a relationship based on the modified couple stress theory is developed to investigate the flexural sensitivity of an atomic force microscope (afm) with assembled cantilever probe (acp). this acp comprises a horizontal cantilever, two vertical extensions and two tips located at the free ends of the extensions which form a caliper. an approximate solution to the flexural vibration problem is obta...

Dhiraj Nahar, Thomas Sugar, Paul Fussell Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Arizona State University Tempe, AZ-85281 Abstract: In this paper, we are solving two inverse design problems. We first determine the desired Cartesian stiffness matrix for each contact in a multi-contact grasp by solving an optimization problem. Secondly given the desired stiffness matrix, K, for each contact, we desi...

We present a composite material with embedded sensing and actuation that can perform permanent shape changes by temporarily varying its stiffness and applying an external moment. Varying stiffness is a complementary approach to actuator-chain based approaches that can be accomplished using a large variety of means ranging from heat, electric field or vacuum. A polycaprolactone (PCL) bar provide...

BACKGROUND Musculotendinous stiffness provides an estimate of resistance to joint perturbation, thus contributing to joint stability. Females demonstrate lesser hamstring stiffness than males, potentially contributing to the sex discrepancy in anterior cruciate ligament injury risk. However, it is unclear if the sex difference in hamstring stiffness is due to differences in muscle size or to in...

A finite strain model for the mechanical degradation of composite materials with multiple families of fine reinforcing fibers is developed and studied. At any instant of time the matrix material may or may not be degrading with all, some, or none of the interpenetrating fibers also undergoing degradation. This multi-component description of damage is governed by coupled differential equations w...

Previous work by the authors [1, 2] investigated the influence of fibre fracture, due to impact, on tensile stiffness. The work presented in this paper extends this study by exploring the compressive stiffness reduction. The extent of fibre fracture, fibre deformation and matrix crushing all have a significant role in defining this stiffness reduction over the pristine material. This data will ...

Lung fibrosis is currently thought to stem from an aberrant wound healing response after recurring (micro) injuries in the lung epithelium, together with disrupted crosstalk between epithelial and stromal cells. An important factor abnormal deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM). In this review, we extend view ECM summarize how structural organization degradation contributes (perpetuation of)...