1,721,032 research outputs found
Dilatational and shear waves in poro-vioscoelastic media
No full textDynamic elastography methods are being developed for quantitatively and noninvasively mapping the viscoelastic properties of biological tissue that are often altered by disease and injury, as well as response to treatment. This involves inducing mechanical wave motion that also can be affected by the multiphase porous nature of the tissue, whether it be consideration of blood perfusion in the vascular network found in many regions of interest, or consideration of air movement in the complex bronchial tree within the lungs. Elastographic mapping requires reconstructing material properties based on interpretation of the measured wave motion. Reconstruction methods that explicitly incorporate poroelastic behavior are an active area of development. In the present article the equivalence of two theoretical approaches to modeling poroelastic behavior is demonstrated specifically in the frequency domain using parameter values that span the range expected in vivo for analysis of blood and air infused regions. The two methods are known as (1) the mixture or biphasic formulation and (2) the poroelastic approach. The case of acoustic wave propagation in the lungs is specifically addressed by comparison of analytical predictions to recently reported experimental measurements. Establishing and validating this equivalence of theoretical approaches not only strengthens our fundamental understanding of the relevant physics, but also may lead to improved numerical methods for simulation and elastography reconstruction
Effect of the anisotropic permeability in the frequency dependent properties of the superficial layer of articular cartilage
Full text linkArticular cartilage is a tissue of fundamental importance for the mechanics of joints, since it provides a smooth and lubricated surface for the proper transfer of loads. From a mechanical point of view, this tissue is an anisotropic poroviscoelastic material: its characteristics at the macroscopic level depend on the complex microscopic architecture. With the ability to probe the local microscopic features, dynamic nanoindentation test is a powerful tool to investigate cartilage mechanics. In this work we focus on a length scale where the time dependent behaviour is regulated by poroelasticity more than viscoelasticity and we aim to understand the effect of the anisotropic permeability on the mechanics of the superficial layer of the articular cartilage. In a previous work, a finite element model for the dynamic nanoindentation test has been presented. In this work, we improve the model by considering the presence of an anisotropic permeability tensor that depends on the collagen fibers distribution. Our sensitivity analysis highlights that the permeability decreases with increasing indentation, thus making the tissue stiffer than the case of isotropic permeability, when solicited at the same frequency. With this improved model, a revised identification of the mechanical and physical parameters for articular cartilage is provided. To this purpose the model was used to simulate experimental data from tests performed on bovine tissue, giving a better estimation of the anisotropy in the elastic properties. A relation between the identified macroscopic anisotropic permeability properties and the microscopic rearrangement of the fiber/matrix structure during indentation is also provided
Extruded ceramic microelectrodes for biomedical applications obtained from pre-ceramic polymeric precursors
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Elastic properties of glass-ceramic scaffolds through nanoindentation tests and microCT-based finite element models
No full textNature-inspired orientation-dependent toughening mechanism for TPMS ceramic architectures
No full textTriply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMSs) have been extensively studied in many fields of engineering, including bone tissue scaffolds. Recent advancements in manufacturing have enabled the three-dimensional printing of ceramic porous architectures; however, their intrinsic brittleness limits its practical applications. It has been observed that the ossicles of the knobby starfish exhibit a mineralized TPMS structure with lattice distortions (i.e., dislocations), which effectively deviate the crack propagation and enhance the fracture energy. In this article, the aforementioned toughening mechanism has been introduced in a TPMS architecture. We employed finite element models to analyze the effective mechanical properties of the structures under compression, both in the elastic and post-elastic regimes. Our analysis reveals that the introduction of the dislocation induces variations in both elastic and fracture properties of the structures. With particular reference to the fracture behavior, a suitable oriented edge dislocation is able to alter the crack nucleation and propagation, resulting in a tougher structure. Both the elastic and fracture phenomena can be enhanced or reduced by changing the dislocation density
Modelling of the frequency response to dynamic nanoindentation of soft hydrated anisotropic materials: Application to articular cartilage
No full textDynamic nanoindentation is a novel nanomechanical testing that is being increasingly used to characterize the frequency response of viscoelastic materials and of soft hydrated biological tissues at the micrometric and nanometric length scales. This technique is able to provide more information than those obtained by simple indentation; however, its interpretation is still an open issue for complex materials such as the case of anisotropic biological tissues that generally have a high water content. This work presents a numerical model to characterize the frequency response of poro-elastic tissues subjected to harmonic indentation loading with particular regard to the effect of geometrical characteristic lengths (i.e. penetration depth and indenter radius) and to the effect of tissue anisotropy. The analysis is performed by a frequency domain finite element axi-symmetric model of harmonic spherical indentation. Under the basic hypotheses of poro-elastic response of the material and of strain-independent isotropic permeability, this work shows that anisotropic properties of the tissue can be obtained from one single dynamic indentation experiment. In particular, we show that anisotropy of the tissue is a necessary property to correctly predict the experimental frequency response in terms of drained to undrained ratio and of tangent of phase lag. Copyright © 2012 Tech Science Press
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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