Nucleation kinetics,growth and hardness parameters of l-alanine alaninium picrate (LAAP) single crystals

Amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of proteins and are gaining importance due to their interesting optical behavior. l-alanine is an amino acid which dissolves in water and it can react with other acids to form new compounds. In this work, l-alanine is mixed with picric acid to prepare l-alanine alaninium picrate (LAAP) salt. Solubility and metastable zone width were measured for LAAP salt and induction period was measured at different supersaturation ratios. The critical nucleation parameters were evaluated based on the classical theory of homogeneous nucleation. Using the optimized nucleation parameters, single crystals of LAAP salt were grown by slow evaporation technique. XRD and FTIR studies were carried out to understand structural and molecular formation of the crystal. Microhardness measurements were performed on the grown LAAP crystal and various parameters such as work hardening constant, stiffness constant, yield strength, resistance pressure and corrected hardness were evaluated. Nonlinear optical behavior of the sample was analyzed.     

Elastic and photo-elastic characteristics of laser crystals potassium rare-earth tungstates KRE(WO4)2, where RE = Y,Yb, Gd and Lu

The elastic and photo-elastic characteristics of four laser crystals KY(WO₄)₂, KGd(WO₄)₂, KYb(WO₄)₂, and KLu(WO₄)₂ are presented. The first pair was reported early, and the last two materials have been investigated for the first time. The full matrix of elastic constants of these monoclinic crystals has been determined. Also, acousto-optical figure of merit for all the basic geometries of isotropic diffraction has been measured. It is proved that potassium rare-earth tungstates has rather good acousto-optical properties and particularly can take place of fused silica in technical applications required high power laser radiation. All the results demonstrate good prospect of these optically bi-axial laser crystals for development of new effective acousto-optical devices.     

Propagation behavior of elastic waves in one-dimensional piezoelectric/piezomagnetic phononic crystal with line defects

Using a stiffness matrix method, we in- vestigate the propagation behaviors of elastic waves in one-dimensional （1D） piezoelectric/piezomagnetic （PE/PM） phononic crystals （PCs） with line defects by calculating energy reflection/transmittion coefficients of quasi-pressure and quasi-shear waves. Line defects are created by the re- placement of PE or PM constituent layer. The defect modes existing in the first gap are considered and the influences on defect modes of the material properties and volume fraction of the defect layers, the type of incident waves, the location of defect layer and the number of structural layers are discussed in detail. Numerical results indicate that defect modes are the most obvious when the defect layers are inserted in the middle of the perfect PCs; the types of incidence wave and material properties of the defect layers have important effects on the numbers, the location of frequencies and the peaks of defect modes, and the defect modes are strongly de- pendent on volume fraction of the defect layers. We hope this paper will be found useful for the design of PE/PM acoustic filters or acoustic transducer with PCs structures.     

Mean stress dependent nonlinear hyperelasticity coupled with damage stiffness degradation. A thermodynamical approach

Porous materials, such as geomaterials, exhibit a behaviour dependent on the confining pressure. The aim of this paper is to study the degradation of the elastic stiffness of mean stress dependent materials, due to the deterioration of the microstructure during loading.Continuum damage mechanics offers a framework to model this rigidity deterioration. In addition to the concept of effective stress, a choice has to be made between two widely used hypotheses, the principle of strain equivalence and the principle of equivalent elastic energy, in order to build a complete modelling framework.A mean stress dependent hyperelastic formulation is used to ensure a conservative behaviour, and associated to the two previous damage modelling assumptions, whose effects are compared. This allows for mean stress dependent elasticity to be reproduced, with elastic moduli increasing with mean stress while decreasing with damage.     

Stretchability and compliance of freestanding serpentine-shaped ribbons

High-performance stretchable electronics have to utilize high-quality inorganic electronic materials such as silicon, oxide or nitride dielectrics, and metals. These inorganic materials usually crack or yield at very small intrinsic strains, for example, 1%, whereas bio-integrated electronics are expected to at least match the stretchability of bio-tissues (20%) and deployable structure health monitoring networks are expected to expand from wafer scale (several centimeters) to cover macroscopic structures (several meters). To minimize strains in inorganic materials under large deformation, metallic and ceramic films can be patterned into serpentine-shaped ribbons. When the ribbon is stretched, some sections of the ribbon can rotate and/or buckle to accommodate the applied displacement, leaving much smaller intrinsic strain in the materials compared to the applied strain. The choice of the shape of the serpentine depends on systematic studies of the geometric variables. This paper investigates the effect of serpentine shapes on their stretchability and compliance through theoretical, numerical, and experimental means. Our closed-form curved beam solutions, FEM results, and experimental measurements have found good agreement with one another. Our results conclude that in general, the narrower ribbon, the larger arc radius and arc angle, and the longer arm length will yield lower intrinsic strain and effective stiffness. When the arm length approaches infinite, the stretchability can be enhanced by several orders. A few unexpected behaviors are found at arc angles that are close to straight bars. With additional practical constraints such as minimum ribbon width and finite overall breadth, the optimal serpentine shape can be accurately determined using our closed-form analytical solution.     

Prediction of elastic strain recovery of a formed steel sheet considering stiffness degradation

The aim of this work is to show first, how the springback of a steel sheet drawn part is affected by the stiffness degradation, as it results from the damage evolved during forming process, and second, to build a respective modeling approach to take this degradation into account. For the consideration of the orthotropic elastic properties degradation we develop an approach, based on the Mori-Tanaka theory, where damage is considered by inclusion of ellipsoidal cavities. The respective void shape evolution is proposed to be identified with the measurements of elastic modulus in two perpendicular directions during the uniaxial tensile test of a flat specimen at different loading stages. The proposed approach is coupled with the Gurson-Tvergaard-Needleman (GTN) plastic potential, though it could be substituted by almost any other continuum damage model. At the end the presented approach is experimentally validated by a simple springback test, developed by authors. A very good agreement between by calculation predicted and measured springback amount is observed.     

On prestress stiffness analysis of bolt-plate contact assemblies

Bolt connections are among the most important connections used in structures. The stiffnesses of the bolt and of the connected members are the primary qualities that control the lifetime of the connection. The stiffness of the bolt can be estimated rather easily, in contrast to the member stiffness, but with finite element (FE) and contact analysis, it is possible to find the stiffness of the member. In the case of many connections and for practical applications, it is not suitable to make a full FE analysis. The purpose of the present paper is to find simplified expressions for the stiffness of the member, including the case when the width of the member is limited. The calculation of the stiffness is based on the FE, including the solution to the contact problem, and we express the stiffness as a function of the elastic energy in the structure, whereby the definition of the displacements related to the stiffness is circumvented. The contact analysis is performed using a method where iterations are not necessary, and the results are compared to alternative available results. New practical formulas for the stiffnesses are suggested.     

The mechanism of stiffness increase phenomenon of a rubbing disk

The phase characteristic of a disk rubbing with a ring supported elastically is investigated and used to explain the mechanism of stiffness increase phenomenon. As long as the rubbing is maintained, the averaged phase difference between the disk and the rotating mass on the disk is defi- nitely less than π/2. When the rubbing finishes, the phase difference quickly approaches to 7r. This behavior is inde- pendent of the physics parameters of the rubbing system. The theoretical results are qualitatively verified with experiments.     

Derivation of a universal estimate for the stiffness of carbon nanotubes

An algorithm has been developed based on numerical simulation to relate physical geometry to the Young’s modulus of symmetric and asymmetric single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). A large number of finite element results for the stiffness of SWCNTs has been categorized into three main classes (i.e., armchair, zigzag and chiral) and the best curve fitting function has been obtained to describe the relation between the geometry of SWCNTs and their stiffness. For two standard configurations of carbon nanotubes (i.e., armchair and zigzag), four equations referring to geometry parameters (n, m) and diameter (d) have been introduced. To find the size dependence of asymmetric nanotubes, three-dimensional surfaces of stiffness (E(n, m)) have been used. However, since the stiffness of asymmetric nanotubes depends upon n and m, it was impossible to define any diameter dependency. To account for the hidden mechanical behavior of asymmetric SWCNTs, a new physical factor (CF) was introduced as the major novelty in this work. The proposed CF converts any asymmetric geometry (n, m) into a value between 0 and 1. The CF for a chiral nanotube can imply the percentage of similarity in its mechanical properties to the two standard symmetric configurations. Based on the CF concept, a new equation is derived to predict the Young’s modulus of asymmetric carbon nanotubes based on the symmetric prediction of standard models. The new physical factor (CF) which is developed in this study can be useful for the characterization of SWCNTs and the selection of all configurations.     

Correction of stiffness and mass matrices utilizing simulated measured modal data

Measured and analytical data are unlikely to be equal due to measured noise, model inadequacies and structural damage, etc. It is necessary to update the physical parameters of analytical models for proper simulation and design studies. Starting from simulated measured modal data such as natural frequencies and their corresponding mode shapes, this study presents the equations to update the physical parameters of stiffness and mass matrices simultaneously for analytical modelling by minimizing a cost function in the satisfaction of the dynamic constraints of orthogonality requirement and eigenvalue function. The proposed equations are straightforwardly derived by Moore–Penrose inverse matrix without using any multipliers. The cost function is expressed by the sum of the quadratic forms of both the difference between analytical and updated mass, and stiffness matrices. The results are compared with the updated mass matrix to consider the orthogonality requirement only and the updated stiffness matrix to consider the eigenvalue function only, respectively. Also, they are compared with Wei’s method which updates the mass and stiffness matrices simultaneously. The validity of the proposed method is illustrated in an application to correct the mass and stiffness matrices due to section loss of some members in a simple truss structure.