Most of the existing seismic design codes are based on the empirical knowledge accumulated through systematic earthquake damage data collection and their analysis. Required levels of protection and seismic design forces gradually are increased after each series of catastrophic earthquakes particularly in developed countries. Many efforts have been made through experimental and analytical studie...

Current knowledge of the molecular basis of male infertility that is associated with oxidative stress, apoptosis, and chromatin damage calls for changes in the laboratory assessment of the fertility potential of semen samples.

The purpose of this study is to explore three numerical approaches to the elastic homogenization of disordered masonry structures with moderate meso/macrolengthscale ratio. The methods investigated include a representative of perturbation methods, the Karhunen-Loève expansion technique coupled with Monte-Carlo simulations and a solver based on the Hashin-Shtrikman variational principles. In all...

BaZrO3–BaTiO3 ceramics exhibit a shift in transformation temperatures as revealed by dielectric and viscoelastic spectroscopy; a phase diagram has been established. Sigmoid anomalies in Poisson’s ratio and bulk modulus during the ferroelastic transitions were observed in doped materials, which are not predicted by standard theories for phase transformations. “Hashin–Shtrikman” composite model w...

The phase-field microelasticity (PFM) is adapted into a homogenization process to predict all the effective elastic constants of three-dimensional heterogeneous materials with complex microstructures. Comparison between the PFM approach and the Hashin–Shtrikman variational approach is also given. Using 3D images of two-phase heterogeneous media with regular and irregular microstructures, result...