Sharif Digital Repository

In this study, injectable PEG-based hydrogels containing Laponite particles with mechanical and structural properties close to the natural articular cartilage are introduced. The nanocomposites are fabricated by imide ring opening reactions utilizing synthesized copolymers containing PEG blocks and nanoclay through a two-step thermal poly-(amic acid) process. Butane diamine is used as nucleophilic reagent and hydrogels with interconnected pores with sizes in the range of 100–250 µm are prepared. Improved viscoelastic properties compared with the conventional PEG hydrogels are shown. Evaluation of cell viability utilizing human mesenchymal stem cells determines cytocompatibility of the... 

In this paper, employing the Hencky strain, viscoelastic-viscoplastic response of self-healing materials is investigated. Considering the irreversible thermodynamics and using the effective configuration in the Continuum Damage-Healing Mechanics (CDHM), a phenomenological finite strain viscoelastic-viscoplastic constitutive model is presented. Considering finite viscoelastic and viscoplastic deformations, total deformation gradient is multiplicatively decomposed into viscoelastic and viscoplastic parts. Due to mathematical advantages and physical meaning of Hencky strain, this measure of strain is employed in the constitutive model development. In this regard, defining the damage and healing... 

The secondary flow of PTT fluids in rectangular cross-sectional plane of microchannels under combined effects of electroosmotic and pressure driving forces is the subject of the present study. Employing second-order central finite difference method in a very refined grid network, we investigate the effect of electrokinetic and geometric parameters on the pattern, strength and the average of the secondary flow. In this regard, we try to illustrate the deformations of recirculating vortices due to change in the dimensionless Debye–Hückel and zeta potential parameters as well as channel aspect ratio. We demonstrate that, in the presence of thick electric double layers, significant alteration... 

In this paper, the forced vibrations of the fractional viscoelastic beam with the Kelvin-Voigt fractional order constitutive relationship is studied. The equation of motion is derived from Newton’s second law and the Galerkin method is used to discretize the equation of motion in to a set of linear ordinary differential equations. For solving the discretized equations, the radial basis functions and Sinc quadrature rule are used. In order to show the effectiveness and accuracy of this method, some test problem are considered, and it is shown that the obtained results are in very good agreement with exact solution. In the following, the proposed numerical solution is applied to exploring the... 

The aero-thermo-elastic stability of layered cylindrical shells with viscoelstic cores is investigated. The Donnell's shell theory for the outer layers and the first order shear deformation theory for the viscoelastic layer are employed in conjunction with the von Karman-Donnell kinematic nonlinearity to construct the model. The pre-stresses and pre-deformations arisen from the temperature rise and static aerodynamic pressure are first determined by solving the nonlinear thermo-elastic equilibrium equations using by an exact analytical method. The results are then used in the linear aeroelastic stability equations and analyzed with the Galerkin's procedure to determine the supersonic flutter... 

Supersonic aeroelastic instability of a three-layered sandwich beam of rectangular cross section with an adaptive magneto-rheological fluid (MRF) core layer is investigated. The panel is excited by an airflow along it's longitudinal direction. The problem formulation is based on classical beam theory for the face layers, magnetic field dependent complex modulus approach for viscoelastic material model and the linear first-order piston theory for aerodynamic pressure. The classical Hamilton's principle and the assumed mode method are used to set up the equations of motion. The validity of the derived formulation is confirmed through comparison with the available results in the literature. The... 

Master curves of asphalt binders and mixtures have been traditionally used to evaluate their rheological behavior in the linear viscoelastic range. Different analytical models are available to describe the master curves of bituminous binders and mixtures. No models are currently considered universal for all modeling purposes. In this research, the general structure and capabilities of some of the most commonly used analytical models were investigated. Then, based on the patterns of phase angle master curves of ten neat and modified asphalt binders, four groups of master curve shapes were defined. The goodness of fit of the models for the different groups of master curves was used to develop... 

Axon is an important part of the neuronal cells and axonal microtubules are bundles in axons. In axons, microtubules are coated with microtubule-associated protein tau, a natively unfolded filamentous protein in the central nervous system. These proteins are responsible for cross-linking axonal microtubule bundles. Through complimentary dimerization with other tau proteins, bridges are formed between nearby microtubules creating bundles. Formation of bundles of microtubules causes their transverse reinforcement and has been shown to enhance their ability to bear compressive loads. Though microtubules are conventionally regarded as bearing compressive loads, in certain circumstances during... 

Axon is a filament in neuronal system and axonal microtubules are bundles in axons. In axons, microtubules are coated with microtubule-associated protein tau, a natively unfolded profuse filamentous protein in the central nervous system. These proteins are responsible for the cross-linked structure of the axonal microtubule bundles. Through complimentary dimerization with other tau proteins, bridges are formed to nearby microtubules to create bundles. The transverse reinforcement of microtubules by cross-linking to the cytoskeleton has been shown to enhance their ability to bear compressive loads. Though microtubules are conventionally regarded as bearing compressive loads, in certain... 

The simulation results on viscoelastic fluid flows i sudden expansion geometry with different expansion ratios are presented. Oldroyd-B, linear Phan-Thien-Tanner (L-PTT) and Finitely Extensible Nonlinear Elastic (FENE-P) based constitutive equations were applied in two-dimensional Cartesian coordinates. The governing equations in transient and fully developed regions were solved using open source software called OpenFOAM. The flow patterns, including velocity profiles, shear stresses and first normal stress differences in some horizontal and vertical sections are illustrated. In addition, effects of the fluid type, flow dynamics and expansion ratio on the flow and vortex patterns in... 

In this study, a nonlinear poroelastic model of intervertebral disc as an infrastructure was developed. Moreover, a new element was defined consisting a disc (Viscoelastic Euler Beam Element) and a vertebra (Rigid Link) as a unit element. Using the new element, three different viscoelastic finite element models were prepared for lumbar motion segment (L4/L5). Prolonged loading (short-term and long-term creep) and cyclic loading were applied to the models and the results were compared with results of in vivo tests. Simplification of the models by using the new element leads to reduction of the runtime of the models in dynamic analyses to few minutes without losing the accuracy in the results  

With the success of in vitro single-molecule force measurements obtained in recent years, the next step is to perform quantitative force measurements inside a living cell. Optical traps have proven excellent tools for manipulation, also in vivo, where they can be essentially non-invasive under correct wavelength and exposure conditions. It is a pre-requisite for in vivo quantitative force measurements that a precise and reliable force calibration of the tweezers is performed. There are well-established calibration protocols in purely viscous environments; however, as the cellular cytoplasm is viscoelastic, it would be incorrect to use a calibration procedure relying on a viscous environment.... 

The objective of this study is to develop a general finite element formulation associated with an incremental adaptive procedure which established for thermoviscoelastic stress analysis of orthotropic cylinders made of polymers. This paper concerned with development of a numerical algorithm for the solution of the quasistatic initial/boundary value problems involving the linear viscoelastic media with thermal and mechanical deformations. The viscoelastic constitutive equations, represented in an integral form and involving relaxation functions, are transformed into an incremental algebraic relation. An incremental relaxation is then developed for the finite element formulation to deal with... 

Steady blood flow through a circular artery with rigid walls is studied by COSSERAT Continuum Mechanical Approach. To obtain the additional viscosities coefficients, feed forward multi-layer perceptron (MLP) type of artificial neural networks (ANN) and the results obtained in previous empirical works is used. The governing filed equations are derived and solution to the Hagen-Poiseuilli flow of a COSSERAT fluid in the artery is obtained analytically by Homotopy Perturbation Method (HPM) and numerically using finite difference method. Comparison of analytical results with numerical ones showed excellent agreement. In addition microrotation and the velocity profile along the radius are... 

This research deals with the numerical simulation of two viscoelastic uids ow in an open capillary of a reservoir. Oldroyd-B and Leonov models have been used to describe the rheological behavior of polymer solutions. The finite volume method on a structured and collocated grid has been used for discretization of the governing equations. The discrete elastic viscous stress splitting technique has also been used. The steady state, isothermal and incompressible uids past through a two dimensional micropore have been considered. The numerical method has been validated through the comparison of numerical results by the analytical solutions of Oldroyd-B uid ow through a planar channel. The effects... 

In recent years, there hass been a pronounced emphasis on percutaneous needle steering with the aid of advanced soft tissue modeling techniques. In this work an optical flow based motion estimation method is used to estimate the force applied to the needle by the soft tissue during percutaneous applications. The study considers Finite Element Model (FEM) of the tissue evaluated by the deformation data acquired through the optical flow method. To represent the soft tissue behavior, dynamic FEM with Rayleigh damping and viscoelastic models are used. The method is validated experimentally through offline evaluation of the ultrasonic images of the chicken breast punctured by a needle. The force... 

In this paper, employing the logarithmic (or Hencky) strain as a more physical measure of strain, the time-dependent response of compressible viscoelastic materials is investigated. In this regard, we present a phenomenological finite strain viscoelastic constitutive model, developed within the framework of irreversible thermodynamics with internal variables. The formulation is based on the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient into elastic and viscoelastic parts, together with the use of the isotropic property of the Helmholtz strain energy function. Making use of a logarithmic mapping, we present an appropriate form of the proposed constitutive equations in the... 

In this work an analytical solution is presented for a viscoelastic micro-beam based on the modified couple stress theory which is a non-classical theory in continuum mechanics. The modified couple stress theory has the ability to consider small size effects in micro-structures. It is strongly emphasized that without considering these effects in such structures the solution will be wrong and not suitable for designing systems in micro-scales. In this study correspondence principle is used for deriving constitutive equations for viscoelastic material based on the modified couple stress theory. Governing equilibrium equations are obtained by considering an element of micro-beam. Closedform... 

The oscillating drop and bubble analyzer (ODBA) is an experimental set-up based on the measurement of capillary pressure under static and dynamic conditions. It allows studies of slow and fast dynamic surface and interfacial tensions, following different growing and oscillating drop or bubble protocols, as well as determination of the dilational interfacial visco-elasticity of liquid interfacial layers. For the visco-elasticity studies, drops or bubbles are subjected to harmonic oscillations of area or volume in a broad frequency range, and the resulting harmonic capillary pressure response is analyzed by Fourier analysis. Also, transient relaxations can be easily performed, which are of... 

In this study, the flow of a fiber filled viscoelastic matrix through planar contractions is investigated. It was found that by adding fiber to the matrix vortex, the intensity increases. Fiber orientation along "x" and "y" axes was studied too. It was found that fiber orientation could be used for determining the flow regime through the contraction geometry. The rigidity condition of fibers, which needs the trace of the orientation tensor to be unity everywhere in the domain, is correct except near walls and the reentrant corner, which is slightly less than one. In these regions, the stress magnitude is higher, which results in more numerical errors, and which further leads to some error in...