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- Biasetti, Jacopo
(author)
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Physics of blood flow in arteries and its relation to intra-luminal thrombus and atherosclerosis
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Vascular pathologies such as Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) and atherosclerosis are complex vascular diseases involving biological, mechanical, and fluid-dynamical factors. This thesis follows a multidisciplinary approach and presents an integrated fluid-chemical theory of ILT growth and analyzes the shear-induced migration of red blood cells (RBCs) in large arteries with respect to hypoxia and its possible role in atherosclerosis. The concept of Vortical Structures (VSs) is employed, with which a theory of uid-chemically-driven ILT growth is formulated. The theory proposes that VSs play an important role in convecting and activating platelets in the aneurysmatic bulge. In particular, platelets are convected toward the distal aneurysm region inside vortex cores and are activated via a combination of high residence times and relatively high shear stress at the vortex boundary. After vortex breakup, platelets are free to adhere to the thrombogenic wall surface. VSs also convect thrombin, a potent procoagulant enzyme, captured in their core, through the aneurysmatic lumen and force its accumulation in the distal portion of the AAA. This framework is in line with the clinical observation that the thickest ILT is usually seen in the distal AAA region. The investigation of the fluid-dynamics in arteries led to the study of the shear-induced migration of RBCs in large vessels such as the abdominal aorta and the carotid artery. Marked RBCs migration is observed in the region of the carotid sinus and in the iliac arteries, regions prone to atherogenesis. This leads to the hypothesis that oxyhemoglobin availability can decrease in the near-wall region thus contributing to wall hypoxia, a factor implicated in atherosclerosis. The thesis proposes a new potential mechanism of ILT growth, driven by fluid and chemical stimuli, which can be used to study ILT progression over physiologically relevant timeframes and be used as a framework to test new hypotheses; the thesis also provides new insights on the oxyhemoglobin availability in the near-wall region with direct inuence on atherosclerosis.
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- Borodulina, Svetlana
(author)
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Micromechanical Behavior of Fiber Networks
- 2013
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Paper is used in a wide range of applications, each of which has specific requirements on mechanical and surface properties. The role of paper strength on paper performance is still not well understood. This work addresses the mechanical properties of paper by utilizing fiber network simulation and consists of two parts.In the first part, we use a three-dimensional model of a network of fibers to describe the fracture process of paper accounting for nonlinearities at the fiber level (material model and geometry) and bond failures. A stress-strain curve of paper in tensile loading is described with the help of the network of dry fibers; the parameters that dominate the shape of this curve are discussed. The evolution of network damage is simulated, the results of which are compared with digital speckle photography experiments on laboratory sheets. It is concluded that the original strain inhomogeneities due to the structure are transferred to the local bond failure dynamics. The effects of different conventional and unconventional bond parameters are analyzed. It has been shown that the number of bonds in paper is important and that the changes in bond strength influence paper mechanical properties significantly.In the second part, we proposed a constitutive model for a fiber suitable for cyclic loading applications. We based the development of the available literature data and on the detailed finite-element model of pulp fibers. The model provided insights into the effects of various parameters on the mechanical response of the pulp fibers. The study showed that the change in the microfibril orientation upon axial straining is mainly a geometrical effect and is independent of material properties of the fiber as long as the deformations are elastic. Plastic strains accelerate the change in microfibril orientation. The results also showed that the elastic modulus of the fiber has a non-linear dependency on a microfibril angle,with elastic modulus being more sensitive to the change of microfibril angle around small initial values of microfibril angles. These effects were incorporated into a non-linear isotropic hardening plasticity model for beams and tested in a fiber network in cycling loading application model, using the model we estimated the level of strains that fiber segments accumulate at the failure point in a fiber network.The main goal of this work is to create a tool that would act as a bridge between microscopic characterization of fiber and fiber bonds and the mechanical properties that are important in the papermaking industry. The results of this work provide a fundamental insight on mechanics of paper constituents in tensile as well as cyclic loading. This would eventually lead to a rational choice of raw materials in paper manufacturing and thus utilizing the environment in a balanced way.
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- Dahlberg, Carl F. O.
(author)
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On the Role of Interfaces in Small Scale Plasticity
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The strong evidence for a size dependence of plastic deformation in polycrystalline metalsis the basis for the research presented in this thesis. The most important parameter for this, and arguably also the most well known, is the grain size. As the size of the grains in a microstructure is decreased the yield stress increases. This is known as the Hall–Petch relation and have been confirmed for a large number of materials and grain sizes. Other structural dimensions may also give rise to a similar strengthening effect, such as the thickness of films and surface coatings, the widths of ligaments and localization zones and the diameter of thin wires, to mention a few. The work presented in this thesis is shown to be able to model these effects.Size dependent plastic deformation have here been modeled in a continuum mechanical setting by an extension of the standard theory of solid mechanics. Specifically, the work in this thesis is formulated in terms of the higher order strain gradient plasticity (SGP) theory presented by Gudmundson [Gudmundson, P., 2004. A unified treatment of strain gradient plasticity. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 52]. This allows size dependent plasticity phenomena to be modeled and a yield stress that is proportional to the inverse of the geometric dimension of the problem is predicted.The ability to model interfaces have been of specific importance to the work presented here. The state at internal interface is shown, via a physically motivated constitutive description, to be of great importance to capture size effects. The surface energy at grain boundaries is shown to influence both the local and the macroscopic behavior. At the smallest scales an additional deformation mechanism have been introduced at the internal boundaries. This allowed the strengthening trend associated with decreasing grains size to be halted, in qualitative agreement with reported experiments on the behavior of ultrafine and nanocrystalline polycrystals. In the later part of the thesis the focus is aimed at modeling grains structures to bring some insight into the different regions of deformation mechanisms in relation to grainsize and interface strength. A deformation mechanism map for polycrystals is suggested based on the results from structures with both hexagons and log-normal size distributed Voronoi tessellations, and the implication of a statistical variation in grain size have been explored.A finite element implementation of the theory have been developed that is a fully implicit backward-Euler algorithm with tangent operators consistent with the stress update scheme, which give excellent convergence properties and is numerically very stable. Higher order finite elements have been implemented for modeling of both bulk material and internal interfaces. A plane strain version have been used to model metal-matrix composites and explore the implication of some of the more exotic features of the theory.
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- Dersjö, Tomas, 1981-
(author)
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Methods for reliability based design optimization of structural components
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Cost and quality are key properties of a product, possibly even the two most important. Onedefinition of quality is fitness for purpose. Load-bearing products, i.e. structural components,loose their fitness for purpose if they fail. Thus, the ability to withstand failure is a fundamentalmeasure of quality for structural components. Reliability based design optimization(RBDO) is an approach for development of structural components which aims to minimizethe cost while constraining the probability of failure. However, the computational effort ofan RBDO applied to large-scale engineering problems has prohibited it from employment inindustrial applications. This thesis presents methods for computationally efficient RBDO.A review of the work presented on RBDO algorithms reveals that three constituentsof an RBDO algorithm has rendered significant attention; i ) the solution strategy for andnumerical treatment of the probabilistic constraints, ii ) the surrogate model, and iii) theexperiment design. A surrogate model is ”a model of a model”, i.e. a computationally cheapapproximation of a physics-based but computationally expensive computer model. It is fittedto responses from the physics-motivated model obtained via a thought-through combinationof experiments called an experiment design.In Paper A, the general algorithm for RBDO employed in this work, including the sequentialapproximation procedure used to treat the probabilistic constraints, is laid out. A singleconstraint approximation point (CAP) is used to save computational effort with acceptablelosses in accuracy. The approach is used to optimize a truck component and incorporatesthe effect that production related design variables like machining and shot peening have onfatigue life.The focus in Paper B is on experiment design. An algorithm employed to construct anovel experiment design for problems with multiple constraints is presented. It is based onan initial screening and uses the specific problem structure to combine one-factor-at-a-timeexperiments to a several-factors-at-a-time experiment design which reduces computationaleffort.In Paper C, a surrogate model tailored for RBDO is introduced. It is motivated by appliedsolid mechanics considerations and the use of the first order reliability method to evaluate theprobabilistic constraint. An optimal CAP is furthermore deduced from the surrogate model.In Paper D, the paradigm to use sets of experiments rather than one experiment at atime is challenged. A new procedure called experiments on demand (EoD) is presented. TheEoD procedure utilizes the core of RBDO to quantify the demand for new experiments andaugments it by a D-optimality criterion for added robustness and numerical stability.
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