The role of transient rheology in polymeric sintering

The initial theory of Frenkel and Eshelby for the coalescence of drops in air (or sintering) of Newtonian fluids, which equated the work of surface tension to the work done by viscous stresses while assuming biaxial extensional flow kinematics, was extended to the case of time-dependent material functions using the Upper Convected Maxwell (UCM) model. A numerical scheme was developed to solve the ordinary differential equations (ODE) for the stresses, which are embedded in the ODE based on the mechanical energy balance. Initial conditions required to solve the set of non-linear ODEs were obtained from visualization experiments of the coalescing drops as the theory for elastic contact gave unrealistically high values of the initial neck radius. The transient model predicted that coalescence was accelerated by increasing the relaxation time, the opposite relationship of what was predicted by the steady-state UCM formulation, and was capable of quantitatively predicting the experimental coalescence rates at times when viscoelasticity was important.     

Numerical analysis of stress distribution in the upper arm tissues under an inflatable cuff: Implications for noninvasive blood pressure measurement

An inflatable cuff wrapped around the upper arm is widely used in noninvasive blood pressure measurement. However, the mechanical interaction between cuff and arm tissues, a factor that potentially affects the accuracy of noninvasive blood pressure measurement, remains rarely addressed. In the present study, finite element (FE) mod-els were constructed to quantify intra-arm stresses generated by cuff compression, aiming to provide some theoretical evi-dence for identifying factors of importance for blood pressure measurement or explaining clinical observations. Obtained results showed that the simulated tissue stresses were highly sensitive to the distribution of cuff pressure on the arm sur-face and the contact condition between muscle and bone. In contrast, the magnitude of cuff pressure and small variations in elastic properties of arm soft tissues had little influence on the efficiency of pressure transmission in arm tissues. In par-ticular, it was found that a thickened subcutaneous fat layer in obese subjects significantly reduced the effective pres-sure transmitted to the brachial artery, which may explain why blood pressure overestimation occurs more frequently in obese subjects in noninvasive blood pressure measurement.     

Existence and multiplicity results for periodic solutions of nonlinear difference equations

We use Brouwer degree to prove existence and multiplicity results for the periodic solutions of some nonlinear second-order and first-order difference equations. We obtain, in particular upper and lower solutions theorems, Ambrosetti–Prodi type results and sharp existence conditions for nonlinearities which are bounded from below or above.     

Hölder continuity and upper estimates of solutions to vector quasiequilibrium problems

In this paper, we establish the Hölder continuity of solution mappings to parametric vector quasiequilibrium problems in metric spaces under the case that solution mappings are set-valued. Our main assumptions are weaker than those in the literature, and the results extend and improve the recent ones. Furthermore, as an application of Hölder continuity, we derive upper bounds for the distance between an approximate solution and a solution set of a vector quasiequilibrium problem with fixed parameters.     

决策信息系统中的拓扑学方法

在决策信息系统中引入拓扑结构,借助拓扑学的基本概念(拓扑、内部和闭包等)研究决策问题,用它们刻画决策信息系统中的一些重要概念(决策协调集、决策约简集、下近似协调集、下近似约简集、上近似协调集、上近似约简集),并利用它们把这些重要概念推广到最一般的情况,建立起相应的约简理论.     

The method of upper and lower solutions for diffraction problems of quasilinear elliptic reaction-diffusion systems

The aim of this paper is to show the existence of solutions of the n-dimensional diffraction problem for weakly coupled quasilinear elliptic reaction-diffusion system. The coefficients of the equations under consideration are allowed to be discontinuous. We extend the method of upper and lower solutions for reaction-diffusion equations with continuous coefficients to the elliptic diffraction problem. An application of these results is given to the steady-state problem of Lotka-Volterra cooperation model with two cooperating species.     

Conformal upper bounds for the eigenvalues of the Laplacian and Steklov problem

In this paper, we find upper bounds for the eigenvalues of the Laplacian in the conformal class of a compact Riemannian manifold (M,g). These upper bounds depend only on the dimension and a conformal invariant that we call “min-conformal volume”. Asymptotically, these bounds are consistent with the Weyl law and improve previous results by Korevaar and Yang and Yau. The proof relies on the construction of a suitable family of disjoint domains providing supports for a family of test functions. This method is interesting for itself and powerful. As a further application of the method we obtain an upper bound for the eigenvalues of the Steklov problem in a domain with C¹ boundary in a complete Riemannian manifold in terms of the isoperimetric ratio of the domain and the conformal invariant that we introduce.     

Extremal graph characterization from the bounds of the spectral radius of weighted graphs

We consider weighted graphs, where the edge weights are positive definite matrices. The eigenvalues of a graph are the eigenvalues of its adjacency matrix. We obtain a lower bound and an upper bound on the spectral radius of the adjacency matrix of weighted graphs and characterize graphs for which the bounds are attained.