Calculation of Hugoniot properties for shocked nitromethane based on the improved Tsien’s EOS

We have calculated the Hugoniot properties of shocked nitromethane based on the improved Tsien＇s equa- tion of state （EOS） that optimized by ＂exact＂ numerical molecular dynamic data at high temperatures and pressures. Comparison of the calculated results of the improved Tsien＇s EOS with the existed experimental data and the direct simu- lations show that the behavior of the improved Tsien＇s EOS is very good in many aspects. Because of its simple analytical form, the improved Tsien＇s EOS can be prospectively used to study the condensed explosive detonation coupling with chemical reaction.     

Uniqueness theorem and Hamilton’s principle in linear micropolar thermopiezoelectric/piezomagnetic continuum with two relaxation times

The constitutive laws are obtained for the linear micropolar thermopiezoelectric/piezomagnetic continuum with two relaxation times. A positive decreasing dissipative pyroelectric/pyromagnetic function is introduced and a uniqueness theorem is proved. The equation of motions and the boundary condition are obtained from a Hamilton’s type variational principle. Extended Hamilton’s principle is given.     

Computational and theoretical modeling of intermediate filament networks: Structure, mechanics and disease

Intermediate filaments,in addition to microtubules and actin microfilaments,are one of the three major components of the cytoskeleton in eukaryotic cells.It was discovered during the recent decades that in most cells,intermediate filament proteins play key roles to reinforce cells subjected to large-deformation,and that they participate in signal transduction,and it was proposed that their nanomechanical properties are critical to perform those functions.However,it is still poorly understood how the nanoscopic structure,as well as the combination of chemical composition,molecular structure and interfacial properties of these protein molecules contribute to the biomechanical properties of filaments and filament networks.Here we review recent progress in computational and theoretical studies of the intermediate filaments network at various levels in the protein’s structure.A multiple scale method is discussed,used to couple molecular modeling with atomistic detail to larger-scale material properties of the networked material.It is shown that a finer-trains-coarser methodology as discussed here provides a useful tool in understanding the biomechanical property and disease mechanism of intermediate filaments,coupling experiment and simulation.It further allows us to improve the understandingof associated disease mechanisms and lays the foundation for engineering the mechanical properties of biomaterials.     

Emission of dimers from the substrate during vacuum deposition of thin films

Emission of dimers from the substrate to the vapor medium during silver vapor deposition onto an ideal substrate is calculated. Dimers are demonstrated to form on the substrate owing to random collisions of atoms during their surface migration, and emission of dimers is caused by thermal fluctuations of the crystal lattice of the substrate. Calculations based on Langmuir’s modified model of sorption show that emission mainly occurs at the stage of filling of the first atomic layer on the substrate and in regimes of “condensation failure” when intense condensation does not occur even at high levels of supersaturation and nucleation frequency because of the low energy of bonding of vapor atoms with the substrate. A relation of emission of dimers to the intensity of condensation and condensate microroughness on the substrate is found.     

Droplet formation in quickly stretched liquid filaments

Film splitting necessarily occurs in roll coating and unwanted droplets can occur at high machine speeds when the resulting filaments break up. To study this ‘misting’ problem, an apparatus was designed and built to simulate filament fluid mechanics. The device creates a filament by elongating a liquid bridge and stretches the filament at a high and constant rate of acceleration to mimic coating machine kinematics. Filament breakup was observed using a high-speed video camera and the images were analyzed to yield droplet size and number. With Newtonian fluids, a single droplet formed at Ohnesorge (Oh) numbers less than 0.1 and more and smaller droplets were produced at Oh numbers above 0.1. Associative polymer solutions, prepared as weakly elastic fluids to represent industrial coatings, produced even more and smaller droplets, but only for Ohnesorge numbers in the range of 0.01 to 0.1.     

An Experimental Study of the Dynamic Elasto-Plastic Contact Behavior of Dimer Metallic Granules

Studying the dynamic elasto-plastic contact behavior of dimer metallic granules, defined as contacting beads of either different size or material, is important for understanding the behavior of heterogeneous granular systems such as periodic or multi-phase systems. In this paper, the dynamic contact response of dimer bead pairs was experimentally studied using a split Hopkinson pressure bar apparatus. Two types of dimer combinations were subjected to dynamic loading: dimers with the same bead size but different materials (material dimers), and dimers of the same material but different size (size dimers). Dynamic elasto-plastic contact force-displacement curves, post mortem images of yielded contact area, residual contact deformation, and energy absorption during the impact process were measured in each case. It was found that the dynamic contact behavior of the material dimers is controlled by the material with lower yield strength, and can be well described by existing elasto-plastic contact models. In contrast, the size dimers show a complex deformation process that cannot be described by current theoretical models. It was also seen that the strain rate sensitivity of the material itself affects the dynamic yield process of size dimer pairs, and their radius ratio shows a linear effect on the residual deformation and energy transmitted ratio.     

An unstructured grid Reynolds stress model for separated turbulent flow simulations

Most of the turbulence models in the literature contain simplified assumptions which make them computationally inexpensive but of limited accuracy for the solution of separated turbulent flows. Dramatic improvements in computer processing speed and parallel processing make it possible to use more complete models, such as Reynolds Stress Models, for separated turbulent flow simulations, which is the focus of this work. The Reynolds Stress Model consists of coupling the Reynolds transport equations with the Favre–Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations, which results in a system of 12 coupled non-linear partial differential equations. The solutions are obtained by running the PUMA_RSM computational fluid dynamics code on unstructured meshes. The equations are solved all the way to the wall without using any wall functions. Results for high Reynolds number flow around a 6:1 prolate spheroid and a Bell 214ST fuselage are presented. For the prolate spheroid basic flow features such as cross-flow separation are simulated. Predictions of circumferential locations of cross flow separation points are in good agreement with the experiment. A grid refinement study is performed to improve the computations. The fine mesh solution predicted locations of primary and secondary separation points with errors of roughly 2° and 0°, respectively. Flow simulations around an isolated Bell 214ST helicopter fuselage were also performed. Predicted pressure and drag force correlate well with the wind tunnel data, with a less than 10% deviation from the experiment. Drag predictions also show relative speed of Reynolds Stress Model compared to Large Eddy Simulation to compute time averaged quantities. For numerical solutions parallel processing is applied with the MPI communication standard. The code used in this study is run on Beowulf clusters. The parallel performance of the code PUMA_RSM is analysed and presented.     

A New Derivation of Jeffery’s Equation

In this article, we present a modern derivation of Jeffery’s equation for the motion of a small rigid body immersed in a Navier–Stokes flow, using methods of asymptotic analysis. While Jeffery’s result represents the leading order equations of a singularly perturbed flow problem involving ellipsoidal bodies, our formulation is for bodies of general shape and we also derive the equations of the next relevant order.      

Viscoelasticity in inkjet printing

We investigate the effects of viscoelasticity on drop generation in inkjet printing. In drop-on-demand printing, individual ink ‘drops’ are ejected from a nozzle by imposed pressure pulses. Upon exiting the nozzle, the shape of each ‘drop’ is that of a nearly spherical bead with a long thin trailing ligament. This ligament subsequently breaks up under the Rayleigh instability, typically into several small droplets (known as satellite drops). These satellite drops can create unwanted splash on the target substrate and a reduction in printing quality. Satellite drops can potentially be eliminated by adding polymer to the ink; elastic stresses can act to contract the trailing ligament into the main drop before capillary breakup occurs. However, elasticity can also reduce the drop velocity and can delay or even prevent the break-off of the drop from the ink reservoir within the nozzle. To achieve optimal drop shape and speed, non-Newtonian parameters such as the polymer concentration and molecular weight must be chosen correctly. We explore this parameter space via numerical simulations, using the Lagrangian–Eulerian finite-element method of Harlen et al. (J Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech 60:81–104, 1995). Results are compared with experimental observations taken from real printheads.     

Large amplitude oscillatory elongation flow

A filament stretching rheometer (FSR) was used for measuring the elongation flow with a large amplitude oscillative elongation imposed upon the flow. The large amplitude oscillation imposed upon the elongational flow as a function of the time t was defined as where ε is the Hencky strain, is a constant elongational rate for the base elongational flow, Λ the strain amplitude (Λ ≥ 0), and Ω the strain frequency. A narrow molecular mass distribution linear polystyrene with a molecular weight of 145 kg/mol was subjected to the oscillative flow. The onset of the steady periodic regime is reached at the same Hencky strain as the onset of the steady elongational viscosity ( Λ = 0). The integral molecular stress function formulation within the ‘interchain pressure’ concept agrees qualitatively with the experiments.     

An analysis of subgrid-resolved scale interactions with use of results from direct numerical simulations

Subgrid nonlinear interaction and energy transfer are analyzed using direct numerical simulations of isotropic turbulence. Influences of cutoff wave number at different ranges of scale on the energetics and dynamics have been investigated. It is observed that subgrid-subgrid interaction dominates the turbulent dynamics when cut-off wave number locates in the energy-containing range while resolved-subgrid interaction dominates if it is in the dissipation range. By decomposing the subgrid energy transfer and nonlinear interaction into ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ groups according to the sign of triadic interaction, we find that individually each group has very large contribution, but the net of them is much smaller, implying that tremendous cancellation happens between these two groups.     

Stabilizing the unstable periodic orbits of a chaotic system using model independent adaptive time-delayed controller

In this paper we deal with the control of chaotic systems. Knowing that a chaotic attractor contains a myriad of unstable periodic orbits (UPO’s), the aim of our work is to stabilize some of the UPO’s embedded in the chaotic attractor and which have interesting characteristics. First, using the input-to-state linearization method in conjunction with a time-delayed state feedback, we design a control signal that can achieve stabilization. Next, an adaptive time-delayed state feedback is proposed which shows at once efficiency and simplicity and circumvents the construction complexity of the first controller. Finally, we propose a reduced order sliding mode observer to estimate the necessary states for the design of an adaptive time delayed state feedback controller. This last controller has one main advantage, it in fact achieves UPO stabilization without using the system model. The efficacy of the proposed methods is illustrated by numerical simulations onto Chua’s system.     

Optimal design of a torsional shaft system using Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle

Optimal problems are investigated in the present work in order to control the natural frequencies of a torsional shaft system including the total weight constraint and effects of tuned mass dampers. Maier objective functional is used. Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle is employed to derive necessary optimality conditions of the optimal problems. Numerical simulations are performed to study effects of tuned mass dampers on controlling natural frequencies as well as minimizing the system’s weight. Advantages of the proposed method are also discussed.     

Micromechanical modeling of linear viscoelastic behavior of heterogeneous materials

Study of effective behavior of heterogeneous materials, starting from the properties of the microstructure, represents a critical step in the design and modeling of new materials. Within this framework, the aim of this work is to introduce a general internal variables approach for scale transition problem in linear viscoelastic case. A new integral formulation is established, based on the complete taking into account of field equations and differential constitutive laws of the heterogeneous problem, in which the effects of elasticity and viscosity interact in a representative volume element. Thanks to Green’s techniques applied to space convolution’s term, a new concentration relation is obtained. The step of homogenization is then carried out according to the self-consistent approximation. The results of the present model are illustrated and compared with those provided by Hashin’s and Rougier’s ones, considered as references, and by internal variables models such as those of Weng and translated fields.     

Friction and forced convective heat transfer in a sintered porous channel with obstacle blocks

This work experimentally studies the flow characteristics and forced convective heat transfer in a sintered porous channel that filled with sintered copper beads of three average diameters ( 0.830, and 1.163 mm). The pressure drop and the local temperature measurements can be applied to figure out the distributions of the friction coefficient and the heat transfer coefficient. Three sintered porous channels differ in the arrangement of obstacle blocks. Model A has no obstacle. Models B and C have five obstacle blocks facing down and up, respectively, in a sintered porous channel. The range of experimental parameters, porosity, heat flux, and effect of forced convection are 0.370 ≤ ɛ ≤ 0.385, q=0.228, 0.872, 1.862 W/cm², and 200 ≤ Re _d ≤ 800. The permeability and inertia coefficient of each of the three sintered porous channels are analyzed. The results for Model A agree with those obtained by previous investigations in C _f distribution. The heat transfer of Model C exceeds that of Model A by approximately 20%. Finally, a series of empirical correlation equations were obtained for practical applications and engineering problems.     

A molecular mechanics approach for analyzing tensile nonlinear deformation behavior of single-walled carbon nanotubes

In this paper, by capturing the atomic information and reflecting the behaviour governed by the nonlinear potential function, an analytical molecular mechanics approach is proposed. A constitutive relation for single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT’s) is established to describe the nonlinear stress-strain curve of SWCNT’s and to predict both the elastic properties and breaking strain of SWCNT’s during tensile deformation. An analysis based on the virtual internal bond (VIB) model proposed by P. Zhang et al. is also presented for comparison. The results indicate that the proposed molecular mechanics approach is indeed an acceptable analytical method for analyzing the mechanical behavior of SWCNT’s. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10121202, 90305015 and 10328203), the Key Grant Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (0306) and the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (HKU 7195/04E).     

Experimental and numerical studies on interactions of a spherical flame with incident and reflected shocks

Observations are presented from experiments and calculations where a laminar spherical CH4/air flame is perturbed successively by incident and reflected shock waves. The experiments are performed in a standard shock tube arrangement, in which a high-speed shadowgraph imaging system is used to record evolutions of the flame. Numerical simulations are conducted by using second-order wave propagation algorithms, based on two-dimensional axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations with detailed chemical reactions. Qualitative agreements are obtained between the experimental and numerical results. Under actions of incident shock waves, Richtmyer-Meshkov instability responsible for the flame deformation is induced in the flame, and the distoned flame takes a barrel shape. Then, under subsequent actions of the shock wave reflected from a planar wall, the flame takes an inclined non-symmetrical kidney shape in a symmetric cross section, which means a mushroom-like shape of the flame comes finally into being. The vorticity direction in the ring cap has been altered by the reflected shock＇s action, which makes the head of the mushroom-like flame extend quickly to the side wall.     

On the nature of the relaxation time,the Maxwell–Cattaneo and Fourier law in the thermodynamics of a continuous medium,and the scale effects in thermal conductivity

We present the theory of space–time elasticity and demonstrate that it is the extended reversible thermodynamics and gives the coupled model of thermoelasticity and heat conductivity and involves traditional thermoelasticity. We formulate the generally covariant variational model’s dynamic thermoelasticity and heat conductivity in which the basic kinematic and static variables are unified tensor objects (subject, matter). Variation statement defines the whole set of the initial-boundary problems for the 4D vector governing equation (Euler equation), the spatial projections of which define motion equations and the time projection gives the heat conductivity equation. We show that space–time elasticity directly implies the Fourier and the Maxwell–Cattaneo laws of heat conduction. However, space–time elasticity is richer than classical thermoelasticity, and it advocates its own equations of motion for coupled thermoelasticity. Moreover, we establish that the Maxwell–Cattaneo law and Fourier law can be defined for the reversible processes as compatibility equations without introducing dissipation. We argue that the present framework of space–time elasticity should prove adequate to describe the thermoelastic phenomena at low temperatures for interpreting the results of molecular simulations of heat conduction in solids and for the optimal heat and stress management in the microelectronic components and the thermoelectric devices.     

On study of nonclassical problems of fracture and failure mechanics and related mechanisms

Nonclassical problems of fracture and failure mechanics that have been analyzed by the author and his collaborators at the S. P. Timoshenko Institute of Mechanics (Kiev, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) during the past forty years are considered in brief. The results of the analysis are presented in a form that would be quite informative for the majority of experts interested in various fundamental and applied aspects of fracture and failure problems including the identification of related mechanisms. This paper was prepared on invitation of the Editorial Board of the journal “Annals. The European Academy of Sciences” and may be considered as an Extended Pascal Medal Lecture (The 2007 Blaise Pascal Medal in Materials Sciences of the EAS) This is an updated edition of the author’s lecture prepared at the invitation of the Annals—The European Academy of Sciences Magazine on the occasion of awarding him the 2007 Blaise Pascal Medal in Materials Sciences by the EAS. The author’s speech at the award ceremony at the General Assembly of the Academy has already been published in International Applied Mechanics [75]. The electronic version of the paper in Annals has been prepared; this issue of Annals is to be published as a book. The paper includes an additional section and extended list of references [41–99]. Published in Prikladnaya Mekhanika, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 3–40, January 2009.