Thermoplastics under voltages are used in diverse applications ranging from insulating cables to organic capacitors. Electromechanical instabilities have been proposed as a mechanism that causes electrical breakdown of thermoplastics. However, existing experiments cannot provide direct observations of the instability process, and existing theories for the instabilities generally assume thermopl...

We investigate the question of stability of a solid thin film which experiences external interactions such as van der Waals forces from a contacting surface or forces from an external electric field. Both perfectly elastic and viscoelastic material behaviours are considered in linear stability analysis performed here. These analyses indicate that for sufficiently soft (shear modulus between 1 a...

The modern biomechanical two-phase poroelastic model of bone tissue is presented. Bone tissue is treated in this model as a porous elastically deformed solid filled with a viscous newtonian fluid. Traditional one-phase biomechanical model of bone tissue, which is characterized by the Young modulus and the Poisson's coefficient, is still valid and it can be treated as an approximate model in com...

This paper analyzes how feasible it is to use electric arc furnace slag as coarse aggregate, and blast furnace dust as fine aggregate in the manufacture of hot asphalt concrete for roads. Three mixtures were designed using the Ramcodes methodology, the M1 mixture of control with conventional materials, the M2 mixture replacing 50% and the M3 mixture replacing 100% of the conventional aggregates...

Solution to the problem of a spherical balloon made out of an electroactive polymer which is subjected to coupled mechanical and electrical excitations is determined. It is found that for certain material behaviors instabilities that correspond to abrupt changes in the balloon size can be triggered. This can be exploited to electrically control different actuation cycles as well as to use the b...

Typically, the elastic and electrical properties of composite materials are strongly microstructure dependent. So it comes as a nice surprise to come across exact formulae for effective moduli that are universally valid no matter what the microstructure. Such exact formulae provide useful benchmarks for testing numerical and actual experimental data, and for evaluating the merit of various appr...

A tubular composite structure that is built of two materials, characterized by different Young moduli, is analysed in this paper. The Young's modulus of one of these materials can be controlled by external conditions e.g., magnetic or electric field, temperature etc. The geometry of the reinforcement is based on typical auxetic re-entrant honeycomb cellular structure. The influence of this exte...

2014 Magnetic and electric birefringence experiments have been performed on microemulsions of Na octylbenzene sulfonate (OBS)-pentanol-decane-water (with 0.3 % NaCl), in the homogeneous liquid region of the pseudo-ternary diagram. The Cotton-Mouton constant is related qualitatively to the structure of the microemulsion. It is discussed in terms of magnetic orientation of anisotropic rigid objec...