Analytical investigations on the contact problems between two homogeneous and isotropic soft bodies were performed to simulate the contact of human buttocks and seat cushions. The cushion materials’ Poisson’s ratio were allowed to be negative. The human buttocks were modeled as an ideal sphere with radius 15 cm, and assumed to have a low Young’s modulus and a Poisson’s ratio close to 0.5. These...

This study uses atomic force microscopy (AFM) force-deformation (F-Δ) curves to investigate for the first time the Young's modulus of a phospholipid microbubble (MB) ultrasound contrast agent. The stiffness of the MBs was calculated from the gradient of the F-Δ curves, and the Young's modulus of the MB shell was calculated by employing two different mechanical models based on the Reissner and e...

Ball impact has long been used as a repeatable source of stress waves in solids. The amplitude and frequency content of the waves are a function of the force-time history, or force pulse, that the ball imposes on the massive body. In this study, Glaser-type conical piezoelectric sensors are used to measure vibrations induced by a ball colliding with a massive plate. These measurements are compa...

We examine the validity of Hertz's linear elastic theory for central collisions of spheres using a viscoelastic model. This model explains why Hertz's theory is accurate in predicting the collision time and maximum contact area even when 40% of the kinetic energy is lost due to viscous dissipation. The main reason is that both the collision time and maximum contact area have a very weak depende...

A generalization of the classical Hertz-Knudsen and Schrage laws for the evaporation mass and energy fluxes at a liquid-vapor interface is derived from kinetic theory and a simple model for a velocity dependent condensation coefficient. These expressions, as well as the classical laws and simple phenomenological expressions, are then considered for the simulation of recent experiments [Phys. Re...

 In practice, clearances in the joints are inevitable due to tolerances, and defects arising from design and manufacturing. In the presence of clearance at a joint, a mechanism gains some additional, uncontrollable degrees of freedom which are the source of error. Moreover, joints undergo wear and backlashes and so cannot be used in precision mechanisms. In this study, the dynamic behaviour of ...

Experimental studies were performed using high-fidelity broadband Glaser-NIST conical transducers to quantify stress waves produced by the elastic collision of a tiny ball and a massive plate. These sensors are sensitive to surface-normal displacements down to picometers in amplitude, in a frequency range of 20 kHz to over 1 MHz. Both the collision and the resulting transient elastic waves are ...

We study the stability of the quantum-critical point for itinerant ferromagnets commonly described by the Hertz-Millis-Moriya (HMM) theory. We argue that in D</=3 long-range spatial correlations associated with the Landau damping of the order parameter field generate a universal negative, nonanalytic |q|((D+1)/2) contribution to the static magnetic susceptibility chi(s)(q,0), which makes HMM th...