The internal friction of pure Ti between 500K and700K is constant at 10-4 when measured during a continuous increase of temperature. In opposite when the temperature is increased stepby step, each increase of 10K induces immediatly a raising up of 4 10-4 internal friction. During the following stage at the new temperature the internal friction falls slowly down to its initial value. This behavi...

Friction Pendulum Bearing (FPB for short) is a kind of widely used device to improve seismic capacities building and bridge structures. Despite the considerable progress made in developing theoretical models understand mechanical behaviour FPB, these mostly focus on horizontal movement rarely rotational FPB. However, displacements FPBs indeed will occur along with earthquakes may affect structu...

A variation of a hanging pendulum thrust stand capable of measuring the performance of an electric thruster operating in the vertical orientation is presented. The vertical orientation of the thruster dictates that the thruster must be horizontally offset from the pendulum pivot arm, necessitating the use of a counterweight system to provide a neutrally stable system. Motion of the pendulum arm...

BACKGROUND Total meniscectomy has been shown to cause early-onset arthritis in the underlying cartilage and bone in the knee joint, demonstrating that the meniscus plays an important protective role in the load carrying capacity. Relationships between friction and wear in synovial joints are complex due to the biphasic nature of articular cartilage and the time dependency of tribological respon...

Seven female elite gymnasts performed backward giant circles on the high bar under different conditions of loading. The magnitude (2 or 4 kg) and location (shoulders, waist, and ankles) of load systematically influenced the overall swing duration as well as the relative timing of movements at the joints. An analysis of the mechanical constraints operating suggested that the gymnast should be co...

In this paper we present a novel decoupled fuzzy sliding mode (DFSM) strategy for swinging-up an inverted pendulum. In the proposed technique the control objective is decomposed into two sub-tasks, i.e., swing-up and stabilization. Accordingly, first a DFSM controller stabilizing the pole is synthesized and optimised via genetic algorithms. Next, a DFSM controller with a piecewise linear slidin...