Modeling hyperelastic behavior of rubber: A novel invariant‐based and a review of constitutive models

A constitutive phenomenological model completing the Gent‐Thomas concept is carried out to formulate laws governing the hyperelastic behavior of incompressible rubber materials. It is shown that the phenomenological Gent‐Thomas model (1958) and the constrained chain model (1992) give similar precise results at small to moderate deformation. On the other hand, comparisons of the outcome of the proposed model with that of the molecular model from the combined concepts of Flory‐Erman and Boyce‐Arruda (2000), and with those of the phenomenological models of Ogden (1982), Yeoh‐Fleming (1997), Pucci‐Saccomandi (2002) and Beda (2005) are made. Residual inconveniences raised by attractive continuum models in rubber elasticity literature have been successfully overcome. Results from both the statistical and phenomenological mechanics concepts are compared with the data of some useful classical materials (rubbers of Treloar, Rivlin‐Saunders, Pak‐Flory and Yeoh‐Fleming). The results permit one to see salient equivalence of the two theories for a more reliable prediction of stress‐stretch response for all states of any mode of deformation. A complete and exhaustive analysis of the Mooney plot that combines small and very large extension‐compression has been quite essential in assessing the validity of models. A method of identification of material parameters is presented and data of the simple tension suffice for the determination of the parameter values. It is shown that the ordinary identification procedures, such as the usual least squares, a very much used numerical method in materials investigation, can be unsuitable in some cases of hyperelastic modeling. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 45: 1713–1732, 2007     

Identification of micro-scale calorimetric devices II

The miniaturized calorimetric devices furnish a reduced working flat surface and permits measurements with extremely low-mass quantities. The experimental sensitivity shows relevant position dependence with x-y surface coordinates and with z-distance. The device identification is realized via a 2-D model based in Fourier general equation. Using the Marquardt method the experimental flat surface device can be identified and the fitted parameters used to simulate the behavior of the experimental system. From the model, the effects of several dissipation configurations can be evaluated. Also, via the RC-analogy, a way to 3-D experimental devices is roughly described. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Corner spontaneous magnetization

Details are given of a new method allowing an exact calculation of the spontaneous magnetization in the corner as well as along the edge at an arbitrary distance of the corner for a rectangular planar Ising ferromagnet.     

Turbulence modelling of the shear layers in the trailing edge region of a modern rear-loaded airfoil at incidence

After carefull analysis in a turbulent zero-pressure gradient flow, various simple algebraic turbulence models were applied to the almost separated flow on the upperside of an airfoil at incidence. The Johnson-King and Horton non-equilibrium (or rate equation) models give clearly improved results.     

Design of high-capacity,reversible polymeric adsorbents for acidic gases

Polyethyleneimine (PEIM) samples crosslinked by a commercial epoxy resin (Epon 828) were prepared, and their adsorption capacity for acidic gases was studied. The swelling and deswelling characteristics of the crosslinked samples were also examined as part of this program. Reactivation of these adsorbents could be carried out by heat, or by a combination of heat and treatment in dilute alkalies.     

Exact ground state of the generalized three-dimensional Shastry-Sutherland model

We generalize the Shastry-Sutherland model to three dimensions. By representing the model as a sum of the semidefinite positive projection operators, we exactly prove that the model has exact dimer ground state. Several schemes for constructing the three-dimensional Shastry-Sutherland model are proposed. Received 20 February 2002 / Received in final form 27 May 2002 Published online 17 September 2002     

Multibody dynamics of aircraft occupants seated behind interior walls

To improve aircraft crash safety, conditions critical to occupants survival during a crash must be known. In view of the importance of this problem, studies of post-crash dynamic behavior of victims are necessary in order to reduce severe injuries. In this study, crash dynamics program SOM-LA/TA, incorporating a dynamic model of the human body with a finite element model of the seat structure was used. Modifications were performed in the program for reconstruction of an occupant's head impact with the interior walls or bulkhead. A viscoelastic-type contact force model was used to represent the compliance characteristics of the bulkhead. Correlated studies of analytical simulations with impact sled test results were accomplished. A parametric study of the coefficients in the contact force model was then performed in order to obtain the correlations between the coefficients and the Head Injury Criteria. A measure of optimal values for the bulkhead compliance and displacement requirements was thus achieved in order to keep the possibility of a head injury as little as possible. This information could in turn be used in the selection of suitable materials for the bulkhead, instrument panel, or interior walls of an aircraft.     

M/G/1/N vacation model with varying E-limited service discipline

We define and analyze anM/G/1/N vacation model that uses a service discipline that we call theE-limited with limit variation discipline. According to this discipline, the server provides service until either the system is emptied (i.e. exhausted) or a randomly chosen limit ofl customers has been served. The server then goes on a vacation before returning to service the queue again. The queue length distribution and the Laplace-Stieltjes transforms of the waiting time, busy period and cycle time distributions are found. Further, an expression for the mean waiting time is developed. Several previously analyzed service disciplines, including Bernoulli scheduling, nonexhaustive service and limited service, are special cases of the general varying limit discipline that is analyzed in this paper.     

Improved customer choice predictions using ensemble methods

In this paper various ensemble learning methods from machine learning and statistics are considered and applied to the customer choice modeling problem. The application of ensemble learning usually improves the prediction quality of flexible models like decision trees and thus leads to improved predictions. We give experimental results for two real-life marketing datasets using decision trees, ensemble versions of decision trees and the logistic regression model, which is a standard approach for this problem. The ensemble models are found to improve upon individual decision trees and outperform logistic regression.