How mechanical forces are sensed remains largely mysterious. The forces that gate prokaryotic and several eukaryotic channels were found to come from the lipid membrane. Our survey of animal cells found that membrane force foci all have cholesterol-gathering proteins and are reinforced with cholesterol. This result is evident in overt force sensors at the tips of stereocilia for vertebrate hear...

Article history: Received 5 February 2008 Available online 12 August 2008 This work is dedicated to the memory of Professor Liviu Librescu

~This report presents the first stage of an investigation of the response to random noise of a stiffened cylinder, representing an aircraft fuselage, including an analysis of the lower modes of such a cylinder. Preliminary investigations suggested that assumptions and approximations which are valid for the uniform, i.e., unstiffened, shell are not necessarily valid for a shell with heavy stiffe...

Abstract Stiffened shells and plates are widely used in engineering. Their performance is highly influenced by the arrangement, or layout, of stiffeners on base shell plate geometric features, topology, these stiffeners. Moreover, modular design beneficial, since it allows for increased quality control mass production. In this work, a method developed that simultaneously optimizes topology thei...

In this work, the longitudinal residual stresses that arise from FSW processes were measured by means of the Contour Method. These residual stresses were then introduced into a numerical simulation model based on the Finite Element Method (FEM), and their effect on the buckling collapse load of aluminium stiffened panels was assessed. The sensitivity of the models to initial geometrical imperfe...