Because of their high surface over volume ratio, the mechanical behavior of micrometer sized structures differs from that of usual macroscopic objects. Their surface plays a key role, and this property has been proposed to devise micromechanical sensors of environmental changes [1]. In particular, a significant effort has been put on the development of biological sensors [2], thus highlighting ...

A new contact bond model based on the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion has been implemented in PFC2D to reproduce the behaviour of frictional cohesive (c, φ) geomaterials. According to this model, the bond strength can be clearly divided into two distinct micromechanical contributions: an intergranular friction angle and a cohesive bond force. A parametric analysis has been run to validate the pr...

One of the most famous methods to predict the stiffness of short fiber composites is micromechanical modeling. In this study, a Representative Volume Element (RVE) of a beech wood flour natural composite has been designed and the orientation averaging approach has been utilized to predict its stiffness tensor. The novelty of this work is in finding the proper fiber orientation distribution func...

Self-healing cementitious materials with microcapsules are complex multiscale and multiphase materials. The random microstructure of these governs their mechanical transport behaviour. actual can be represented accurately a discrete lattice model, but computational restrictions mean that the size domain considered this approach is limited. By contrast, smeared approach, based on micromechanical...

Brownian motion of the hairs (stereocilia) of amphibian hair cells has been shown in experiments to be in the range of some nm. Our models of the Brownian motion of coupled harmonic oscillators with mechanical properties of stereocilia lead to similar displacements. Computer simulation shows that stochastic fluctuations enhance the encoding of low level acoustic signals. Stochastic resonance lo...

Herein we derive, under the micromechanical model we propose earlier (C. a complete set of for-mulae for the twelve material constants in the acoustoelastic constitutive equation for orthorhombic aggregates of cubic crystallites. We present also a second model and compare its predictions on the material constants with those of the rst model. Both these models lead to constitutive equations whic...