Sharif Digital Repository

In the current study, thin-film nanocomposite membranes (TFN-Mx) based on a zwitterion-functionalized metal-organic framework (MOF) have been developed for the forward osmosis (FO) salt-water separation process. The active polyamide layer was formed through the interfacial polymerization of the m-phenylenediamine aqueous phase (with or without the presence of MIL-125-NH-CC-Cys) and the trimesoyl chloride organic phase. In comparison with the results from the surface of the unmodified membrane, a nanofiller-incorporated TFN-M0.10 membrane represents a smoother and more wettable surface that collaborates synergically to enhance the membrane antifouling ability. Among the examined membranes,... 

Investigation of the relationship between different types of mechanical loading and the failure of the intervertebral disc requires a well-defined finite element model. The objective of this paper was to develop and validate a nonlinear axisymmetric poroelastic finite element model of intervertebral disc and show its capability for studying the time-dependent response. After presenting the poroelastic model of intervertebral disc, the results of prolonged (short-term and long-term creep tests) and cyclic loading were compared with in vivo and in vitro experimental data. The trends predicted by FE model agreed well with measured experimental data and showed its validity for dynamic analysis.... 

Understanding the relationship between different kinds of mechanical loading and the failure of the intervertebral disc is difficult to study in vivo and in vitro. Through finite element studies some of these issues may be overcome enabling more detailed assessment of the biomechanical behavior of the intervertebral disc. The objective of this paper is to develop a nonlinear axisymmetric poroelastic finite element model of intervertebral disc and show its capability for studying the time-dependent response of disc. After comparison of the response of different models in quasi-static analysis, the poroelastic model of intervertebral disc is presented and the results of a short-term and... 

Low back pain is a common reason for activity limitation in people younger than 45 years old, and was proved to be associated with heavy physical works, repetitive lifting, impact, stationary work postures and vibrations. The study of load transferring and the loading condition encountered in spinal column can be simulated by finite element models. The intervertebral disc is a structure composed of a porous material. Many physical models were developed to simulate this phenomenon. The confounding effects of poroelastic properties and loading conditions on disc mechanical responses are, nevertheless, not cleared yet. The objective of this study was to develop an axisymmetric poroelastic... 

The constitutive equation of an Euler-Bernoulli beam under the excitation of moving mass is considered. The dynamics of the uncontrolled system is governed by a linear, self-adjoint partial differential equation. A Dirac-delta function is used to describe the position of the moving mass along the beam and its inertial effects. An approximate formulation to the problem is obtained by limiting the inertial effect of the moving mass merely to the vertical component of acceleration. Having defined a "critical velocity" in terms of the fundamental period and span of the beam, it is shown that for smaller velocities, the approximate and exact approaches to the problem almost coincide. Since, the... 

Due to the advent and maturity of the additive manufacturing technology, it is possible now to construct complex microstructures with unprecedented accuracy. In addition, to the influence of network unit cell types and porosities in recent years, researchers have studied the number of scaffold layers fabricated by additive manufacturing on mechanical properties. The objective of this paper is to assess the numerical and analytical simulations of the multilayer scaffolds. For this purpose, 54 different regular scaffolds with a unit cell composed of multilayer scaffolds were simulated under compressive loading and compared with the analytical relationships based on the Euler–Bernoulli and... 

ABSTRACT Disc rheological parameters regulate the mechanical and biological function of intervertebral disc. The knowledge of effects of degeneration on disc rheology can be beneficial for the design of new disc implants or therapy. We developed two material property identification protocols, i.e., inverse poroelas-tic finite element analysis, and biphasic closed form solution. These protocols were used to find the material properties of intact, moderate and severe degenerated porcine discs. Comparing these two computational protocols for intact and artificial degenerated discs showed they are valid in defining bi-phasic/poroelastic properties. We found that enzymatic agent disrupts the... 

Finite element analysis is an effective tool to evaluate the material properties of living tissue. For an interactive optimization procedure, the finite element analysis usually needs many simulations to reach a reasonable solution. The metamodel analysis of finite element simulation can be used to reduce the computation of a structure with complex geometry or a material with composite constitutive equations. The intervertebral disc is a complex, heterogeneous, and hydrated porous structure. A poroelastic finite element model can be used to observe the fluid transferring, pressure deviation, and other properties within the disc. Defining reasonable poroelastic material properties of the... 

Understanding the effect of impact loading on the mechanical response of the intervertebral disc (IVD) is valuable for investigating injury mechanisms and devising effective therapeutic modalities. This study used 24 porcine thoracic motion segments to characterize the mechanical response of intact (N = 8), degenerated (Trypsin-denatured, N = 8), and repaired (Genepin-treated, N = 8) IVDs subject to impact loading. A meta-model analysis of poroelastic finite element simulations was used in combination with ex-vivo creep and impact tests to extract the material properties. Forward analyses using updated specimen-specific FE models were performed to evaluate the effect of impact duration. The... 

The governing differential equation of motion of a thin rectangular plate excited by a moving mass is considered. The moving mass is traversing on the plate's surface at arbitrary trajectories. Eigenfunction expansion method is employed to solve the constitutive equation of motion for various boundary conditions. Approximate and exact expressions of the inertial effects are adopted for the problem formulation. In the approximate formulation, only the vertical acceleration component of the moving mass is considered while in the exact formulation all the convective acceleration components are included in the problem formulation as well. Parametric studies are carried out to investigate the... 

The governing differential equation of motion for an undamped thin rectangular plate with a number of bonded piezoelectric patches on its surface, and arbitrary boundary conditions are derived using Hamilton's principle. A moving mass traveling on an arbitrary trajectory acts as an external excitation for the system. The effect of moving mass inertia is considered using all the out-of-plane translational acceleration components. The method of eigenfunction expansion is used to decouple the equation of motion into a number of coupled ordinary differential equations. A classical closed loop optimal control algorithm is employed to suppress the dynamic response of the system by determining the... 

Degenerative disc disease, associated with discrete structural changes in the peripheral annulus and vertebral endplate, is one of the most common pathological triggers of acute and chronic low back pain, significantly depreciating an individual's quality of life and instigating huge socioeconomic costs. Novel emerging therapeutic techniques are hence of great interest to both research and clinical communities alike. Exogenous crosslinking, such as Genipin, and platelet-rich plasma therapies have been recently demonstrated encouraging results for the repair and regeneration of degenerated discs, but there remains a knowledge gap regarding the quantitative degree of effectiveness and... 

A single-degree-of-freedom model is considered for flexible exercise bars based on the lumped-element approach. By considering the side segment of a flexible bar as a cantilever beam with an equivalent mass at the free end, its free-vibration response, as well as the forced response under the excitation of the grip, are expressed parametrically. Experiments are performed on a particular flexible bar (FLEXI-BAR) in order to obtain numerical values for quantifying the model's parameters. The model is also computationally simulated to study the response of the flexible bar to various excitations. The results are imported into a multi-segment musculoskeletal software (AnyBody), where the effect... 

Discrete motion equations of an Euler-Bernoulli, Timoshenko and higher-order beams under a moving mass are derived for different boundary conditions. To this end, the reproducing kernel particle method (RKPM) has been utilized for spatial discretization, beside the extension of Newmark-β method for time discretization of the beams motion equations. The effects of significant parameters such as the beam's slenderness and velocity of the moving mass on the maximum deflection and bending moment of different beams are studied in some details. The results indicate the existence of a critical beam's slenderness mostly as a function of beam's boundary conditions, in which for slenderness lower than... 

This paper focuses on characterization of intervertebral disc behavior upon fatigue stress. It consists in in-vitro experiments to measure intervertebral disc deformation with regard to forces applied to produce fatigues test. In this paper, a system modeling based non-invasive method to assess back pain is proposed which may be used for designing of prediction model to predict the failure of intervertebral disc (IVD) experiencing fatigue loading. An artificial compression fracture was simulated in the lower level of vertebra followed by a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) bone cement injection. Fatigue loading was applied on the specimens and the load was incrementally increased form 650 N... 

This paper presents the background of low back problem caused by repetitive fatigue loading. We emphasize on mechanism of Intervertebral Disc (IVD) and conditions for which the disc does not recover its original status under repetitive work and cause low back pain. The objective of this study is to identify structural changes in system parameters for fatigue loaded intervertebral disc. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used for studying the behavioral change of spine against cyclic loading as a function of time. Percentage difference and similarity factor was calculated for the analysis. Specimens were applied with impulse testing to measure the stiffness and acceleration after fracture,... 

This paper presents recent developments on effects of rest and fatigue loading on properties of healthy vertebra discs. A comparison of different approaches used in literature to study the properties of intervertebral disc is presented. The major achievements in this area so far are discussed in the context of their advantages and disadvantages. The past approaches are based on bio-mechanical models which mostly used statistical techniques for the analysis and estimation of fatigue loaded Intervertebral Disc (IVD). However, those modeling techniques were not flexible enough for analysis of customized tests. In this paper, we applied System Identification (SI) based NLARX modeling technique... 

Abstract In this study, the response spectrum of a time-varying system such as a beam subjected to moving masses under a harmonic and earthquake support excitations is explored. The excitations are supposed to act on the horizontal directions of the beam axis. The inertial effect of the moving masses on the natural frequencies of the beam for different cases of loading is investigated and a critical value of a so called parameter "mass staying time" is presented to avoid dynamic instability of the system. Finally, some 3D response spectra for different supports excitations as well as the beam natural frequencies are depicted  

Dynamic deformations of beams and plates under moving objects have extensively been studied in the past. In this work, the dynamic response of geometrically nonlinear rectangular elastic plates subjected to moving mass loading is numerically investigated. A rectangular von Karman plate with various boundary conditions is modeled using specifically developed geometrically nonlinear plate elements. In the available finite element (FE) codes the only way to distinguish between moving masses from moving loads is to model the moving mass as a separate entity. However, these procedures still do not guarantee the inclusion of all inertial effects associated with the moving mass. In a prepared... 

Oxido-peroxido W(VI)-histidine–MgAl-layered double hydroxide composite was prepared by using MgAl-layered double hydroxide as a host and oxido-peroxido W(VI)-histidine complex as a guest. The composite was characterized by XRD, IR, EDX,SEM and TEM techniques. This composite is tested for catalytic selective sulfoxidation reactions using hydrogen peroxide as oxidant showing good to moderate conversion along with high selectivity. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd