Pavement roughness causes pavement stress fluctuation along the road. However, the dynamic effects were not taken into account in most pavement design and studies. To investigate the influences of roadway roughness on pavement stresses, this study developed a coupled system consisting of a quarter-car model and an equivalent lump pavement model. The coupled system also incorporated measured road profiles. By means of transfer function in frequency domain, the deflections and stresses of pavements were computed in seconds. The results were validated with Westergaard's solutions satisfactorily. It was found that the critical roughness, which might cause extreme responses, is related to the vehicle speed and suspension of vehicles. The maximum tension at the bottom of pavements also depends on the size of bump. In addition, the study demonstrates the correlation between roughness index, IRI, and ISO roughness classifications. It was also found that disturbance due to model boundary affects simulation results significantly.

Shock absorption is one of the fundamental biomechanical functions of disc. The knowledge of the effect of fatigue loading, impact energy and contact period on the disc shock attenuation is important in clarifying the risk factors of back pain and evaluating the efficacy of novel disc prosthesis. The purpose of this study is to find the changes of shock attenuation of motion segment after fatigue loading, and the effect of impact energy and contact period on the disc shock attenuation pre and post fatigue loading.

The 3-unit porcine spinal motion segment was used for testing. The impact test was applied pre and post fatigue loading. Impact energy and contact period were controlled in the experiment. Shock attenuation properties, including the acceleration attenuation (AA) of disc, force transmissibility (FT) and phase delay of force (PDF) of motion segment, were calculated from the acceleration and force responses.

The results showed that the shock attenuation properties (acceleration attenuation and force transmissibility) decreased post fatigue. The disc acceleration attenuation was independent of impact energy and contact period. The disc acceleration attenuation was 0.78 (−1.06dB) pre fatigue and 1.04 (0.14dB) post fatigue. The force transmissibility of motion segment decreased post fatigue only during short contact period. The phase delay of force did not change significantly post fatigue.

We found that the fatigue loading decreased the disc shock attenuation. The disc was at higher risk of injury following fatigue loading even at a mild impact loading. The disc acceleration attenuation was invariant of impact energy and contact period, but decreased post fatigue. The disc acceleration attenuation is a good index to evaluate the degree of fatigue injury.

The effects of distinct properties during phase change on mass, momentum, energy, species, and magnetic field intensity transport in workpieces and electrodes in the course of heating, melting, cooling and freezing periods in AC (alternative current) resistance spot welding are realistically and extensively investigated. Resistance spot welding has been widely used in joining thin workpieces due to its light weight and easy manufacturing. This study accounts for electromagnetic force, heat generations at the electrode-workpiece interface and faying surface between workpieces, and dynamic electrical resistance taking the sum of temperature-dependent bulk resistance of the workpieces and contact resistances at the faying surface and electrode-workpiece interface. The contact resistance is a function of hardness, temperature, electrode force, and surface condition. Instead of dealing with specific materials, this work is a general dimensionless investigation of resistance spot welding of materials with different specific heat and thermal conductivity ratios subject to realistic working parameters. The computed results show that nugget formation is delayed and heat transfer is reduced by increasing solid-to-liquid thermal conductivity and liquid-to-solid specific heat ratio. The corresponding thermal fields and flow patterns are also presented.

The influence of both the Rossby number and the Hartmann number on the hydromagnetic stability of a thin liquid film flowing down along the surface of a vertical cylinder is investigated. The long-wave perturbation method is employed to solve for generalized nonlinear kinematic equations with a free film interface. The normal mode approach is used to compute the stability solution for the film flow. The modeling results indicate that the stability of the liquid film is enhanced by increasing the strength of the magnetic field or reducing the speed at which the cylinder rotates. By contrast, the flow becomes relatively more unstable as the cylinder radius is increased at larger values of the Rossby number. Notably, this finding is the opposite of that observed for film flows along a stationary vertical cylinder.

Green's function and complex function methods are used here to investigate the problem of the scattering of SH-wave by a cylindrical inclusion near interface in bi-material half-space. Firstly, Green's function was constructed which was an essential solution of displacement field for an elastic right-angle space possessing a cylindrical inclusion while bearing out-of-plane harmonic line source load at any point of its vertical boundary. Secondly, the bi-material media was divided into two parts along the vertical interface using the idea of interface “conjunction”, then undetermined anti-plane forces were loaded at the linking sections respectively to satisfy continuity conditions, and a series of Fredholm integral equations of first kind for determining the unknown forces could be set up through continuity conditions on surface. Finally, some examples for dynamic stress concentration factor of the cylindrical elastic inclusion are given. Numerical results show that dynamic stress concentration factor is influenced by interfaces, free boundary and combination of different media parameters.

In this paper different failure mechanisms which yield cumulative damage are investigated through two types of hazard rate functions. They have been studied during the past two decades. Type A was developed early by assuming the hazard rate as a function of reliability. There are two kinds of trend, one follows the negative logistic decay model, the other the negative Gompertz decay. Some modifications are suggested according to the failure tendency and convenience of fittings. Type B is developed recently by assuming the hazard rate as a function of the expected operation time, T, which is defined as the integration of reliability over the time, normalized by the mean-time-between-failure. In both types the proposed hazard rates grow with the time monotonically. Typical examples are taken to examine these models, meanwhile the comparisons with the Weibull-typed distribution are also made. The results show that the most of proposed relations are successful in the expression of cumulative damage phenomenon, especially the Type B is a better choice even compared with the Weibull-typed description in some respects. The advantages of the models are discussed based on the physical meanings involved in the parameters.

In this study, a novel inflatable belt-type clamp is introduced and its performance is verified. Finite element simulations are performed to compare the performance of three different aorta clamping systems. In every case, the aorta is modeled as a simple hollow cylinder made of linearly elastic material. For a traditional surgical clamp in which the jaws remain inclined to one another as they close around the aorta, the maximum normal stress within the aorta wall is found to be 806kPa. It is shown that the numerical results are in good qualitative agreement with the experimental results obtained using a pressure sensitive film. The simulation results for a modified clamp in which the jaws remain parallel during the clamping operation show that the maximum normal stress is reduced to 222kPa. However, two regions of maximum stress are induced within the aorta wall. Finally, the numerical results for a novel inflatable belt-type clamp show that the maximum normal stress is equal to approximately 221kPa. In contrast to the modified clamp, the stress is uniformly distributed around the perimeter of the aorta, and thus the risk of aortic dissection is significantly reduced.

In this paper, a new algorithm is proposed to solve the velocity and temperature fields in the thermal boundary layer flow over a semi-infinite flat plate. Both the flow and heat transfer solutions are calculated accurately by the Laplace Adomian decomposition method, Padé approximant and the optimal design concept. The Laplace Adomian decomposition method (LADM) is a combination of the numerical Laplace transform algorithm with the Adomian decomposition method (ADM). A hybrid method of the LADM combined with the Padé approximant, named the LADM-Padé approximant technique, is introduced to solve the thermal boundary layer problems directly without any small parameter assumptions, linearizatons or transformations of the boundary value problems to a pair of initial value problems. The LADM-Padé approximant solutions here in are given to show the accuracy in comparison with different method solutions.

A kinematics model of the ship wake in the presence of surface waves, generated by wind is presented. It was found that the stationary wave structure behind the ship covered a wedge region with the 16.9° half an angle at the top of the wake and only divergent waves are present in a ship wake for co propagating wind waves. Wind waves field directed at some nonzero angle to the ship motion can cause essential asymmetry of the wake and compressing of its windward half. The extension of Whitham-Lighthill kinematics theory of ship wake for the intermediate sea depth is also presented. The ship wake structure essentially depends from the Froude (Fr) number based on the value of the sea depth and ship velocity. For Froude number less than unit both longitudinal and cross waves are presented in the wake region and Kelvin wake angle increased with Fr. For Fr > 1 wake angle decreased with Froude number and finally only divergent waves are presented in the very narrow ship wake.

The temporal/spatial evolution processes of the flow pattern, velocity distribution, and wall shear stress of pulsatile water flows in the arch of 180o turn-around tubes with/without stenosis were experimentally studied by using the particle image velocimetry (PIV). Three transparent tubes made of glass were used: A tube without stenosis in the arch, a tube with a 25% stenosis at the inner wall of arch, and a tube with a 50% stenosis at the inner wall of arch. Here the percentage of stensis denoted the ratio between the stenosis height to inner diameter of arch in the diametral cross section across mid-arch of the central plane. The flow was provided by a pump which approximately simulated the pulsatile pressure waves of human heart beats. The systole to diastole time period ratio is set at 35%:65%. The Womersley parameter, Dean number, and time-averaged Reynolds number were 14, 2348, and 3500, respectively. In the arch of the turn-around tube without stenosis, no boundary layer separation was found during the systolic phase. The reverse flow and recirculation bubble appeared in the arch only during the diastolic phase. The inner wall of the arch experienced lower wall shear stress during the diastolic phase due to the formation of recirculation bubble and secondary flow. In the arch with stenosis, the boundary layer separated from the inner wall and formed a recirculation bubble downstream the stenosis during the systolic phase. Lower stenosis (25%) did not cause drastic variation of the wall shear stresses. At higher stenosis (50%), however, the wall shear stress around the inner wall downstream the stenosis became extraordinarily low, whereas the wall shear stress around the upstream region of the outer wall of the downstream branch of the tube became anomalously large.

The stability analysis of a thin micropolar fluid flowing on a rotating circular disk is investigated numerically. The target is restricted to some neighborhood of critical value in the linear stability analysis. First, a generalized nonlinear kinematic model is derived by the long wave perturbation method. The method of normal mode is applied to the linear stability. After the weakly nonlinear dynamics of a film flow is studied by using the method of multiple scales, the Ginzburg-Landau equation is determined to discuss the necessary condition in terms of the various states of subcritical stability, subcritical instability, supercritical stability, and supercritical explosion for the existence of such flow pattern. The modeling results indicate that the rotation number and the radius of circular disk play the significant roles in destabilizing the flow. Furthermore, the micropolar parameter K serves as the stabilizing factor in the thin film flow.

Variational principle is an important principle in engineering discipline. This principle is suitable for simple problems where an analytical expression can be determined, but there are many practical problems where the classical variational principle is practically impossible to be applied. In this paper, the authors will try to demonstrate that the variational principle can be replaced by the use of modern artificial intelligence based optimization method (harmony search method) which can be applied to much more complicated problems. Two different improved harmony search algorithms are proposed in this paper. The new algorithms differ from the original algorithm in that: (1) The harmonies are rearranged into several pairs and the better pairs are used to develop several new harmonies; (2) Different probabilities are assigned to different harmonies. The robustness of the proposed methods is demonstrated by using three difficult examples, and the sensitivities of the related optimization parameters are investigated through statistical orthogonal analysis.

In this study, the failure behavior of two parallel pinned/bolted composite joints was investigated, experimentally. The laminated composite plates were produced from glass fibers and epoxy matrix. During the tests, various joint geometries and ply orientations were considered to decide the optimum joint geometry and suitable stacking sequence of the laminated composite plates for two parallel pinned/bolted joints. For these reasons, the distance from the free edge of the plate to hole diameter ratio (E/D) was changed from 1 to 5, the distance between two parallel holes to hole diameter ratio (K/D) was selected as 2 and 5, the distance from the lateral edge of the plate to hole diameter ratio (N/D) was taken as 2 and 3. The laminated plates were composed from 8 laminas to stuck onto together with three different orientations as [0°2 / 30°2]s, [0°2 / 45°2]s and [0°2 / 60°2]s. The experiments involved both pinned and bolted joint. Experimental results indicate that failure behaviors of pinned/bolted composite joints are strictly influenced from both orientations of laminated plates and geometrical parameters.

In this paper, the basic finite element formulation of a newly developed family of variable thickness, curved, C(0) continuity Mindlin-Reissner model curved beam elements which include shear deformation and rotatory inertia effects is presented. The accuracy, convergence and efficiency of these newly developed curved beam elements are explored through a series of analyses of arch structures and the results are compared with those obtained by other analytical and numerical methods. The comparisons show that the method yields very good results with a relatively small number of elements.

In this paper, a response integral quantity method is proposed. This technique provides a quantitative characterization of system responses and can assist the role of the traditional stroboscopic technique (Poincaré section method) in observing bifurcations and chaos of the nonlinear oscillators. We numerically analyze and identify the chaos and subharmonic responses in the forced coupled Duffing's oscillators in which we find that chaotic behaviors and high-order subharmonic responses exist. Due to the signal response contamination of system, it is difficult to identify the high-order responses of the subharmonic motion because of the sampling points on Poincaré map being very close to each other. Even the system responses are subject to misjudgments. The simulation results, however, show that the highorder subharmonic and chaotic responses and their bifurcations can be observed effectively.

The method of fundamental solutions (MFS) and domain decomposition method (DDM) are employed to solve the water-wave diffraction by a thin porous vertical breakwater of semi-infinite extent. Based on the linearized theory of water waves, the problem can be reduced to a boundary value problem with degenerate boundary. In contrast to other mesh dependent numerical method, the MFS is easier and more efficient to handle degenerate boundary value problems. Various incident wave angles and porous parameters are included to validate the power of the proposed numerical scheme. The present results demonstrate the MFS is sufficiently accurate and feasible to be used to predict water-wave diffraction by a thin permeable breakwater by comparing with literature.