Composition-dependent melting behaviour of NaxK55–x core–shell nanoalloys

Molecular dynamics simulations at constant temperature are performed to investigate melting-like transition in Na₁₃K₄₂, Na₁₉K₃₆ and Na₂₆K₂₉ nanoalloys using a second-moment-approximation tight-binding analytic potential to calculate the forces on the constituent atoms. A weighted histogram analysis method is employed to remove non-ergodicity issues due to the complex potential energy surface of these nanoalloys. The heat capacity shows three distinctive steps in melting for Na₁₃K₄₂, while Na₂₆K₂₉ and Na₁₉K₃₆ have two-step and one-step melting transition, respectively. The steepest descent method is used to quench the configurations in a given interval during the simulation and also study the isomerisation processes occurring at different temperatures. Analysing the configuration energies of quenched structures for the entire nanoalloy and the core atoms separately gives more details about the melting mechanism. The Lindemann parameter is also calculated at several temperatures during the simulation which shows a gradual increase for Na₁₃K₄₂ and Na₂₆K₂₉ while a sharp change is observed for Na₁₉K₃₆. These findings are in agreement with the multi-step nature of the phase transition in Na₁₃K₄₂ and Na₂₆K₂₉ and one-step melting of the Na₁₉K₃₆ magic composition.     

Patient-specific finite element analysis of popliteal stenting

Nitinol self-expanding stents are used for the endovascular management of peripheral artery diseases of the popliteal artery, which is located behind the knee joint. Unfortunately, the complex kinematics of the artery during the leg flexion leads to severe loading conditions, favouring the mechanical failure of the stent, calling for a specific biomechanical analysis. For this reason, in the present study we reconstruct by medical image analysis the patient-specific popliteal kinematics during leg flexion, which is subsequently exploited to compute the mechanical response of a stent model, virtually implanted in the artery by structural finite element analysis (FEA). The medical image analysis indicates a non-uniform configuration change of the artery during the leg flexion, leading to an increase of the vessel curvature above the knee. The computed mechanical response of the stent reflects the non-uniform configuration change of the artery as after the flexion the average stress is higher in the part of the stent located above the knee. Although the proposed analysis is limited to a case-study, it shows the capability of patient-specific FEA simulations to compute the mechanical response of a stent model subjected to the complex and severe loading conditions of the popliteal artery during leg flexion.