BACKGROUND The function of esophagus is to move food by peristaltic motion which is the result of the interaction of the tissue forces in the esophageal wall and the hydrodynamic forces in the food bolus. The structure of the esophagus is layered. In this paper, the esophagus is treated as a two-layered structure consisting of an inner collagen-rich submucosa layer and an outer muscle layer. We...

The role of elastic strain for magnetoelectric materials and devices is twofold. It can induce ferroic orders in thin films of otherwise non-ferroic materials. On the other hand, it provides the most exploited coupling mechanism in two-phase magnetoelectric materials and devices today. Complex oxide films (perovskites, spinels) are promising for both routes. The strain control of magnetic order...

The elastic energy of a multiphase solid is a function of its microstructure. Determining the infimum of the energy of such a solid and characterizing the associated optimal microstructures is an important problem that arises in the modeling of the shape memory effect, microstructure evolution, and optimal design. Mathematically, the problem is to determine the relaxation under fixed phase frac...

Results are presented for finding the optimal orientation of an anisotropic elastic material. The problem is formulated as minimizing the strain energy subject to rotation of the material axes, under a state of uniform stress. It is shown that a stationary value of the strain energy requires the stress and strain tensors to have a common set of principal axes. The new derivation of this well kn...

Time-dependent creep analysis is presented for the calculation of stresses and displacements of axisymmetric thick-walled cylindrical pressure vessels made of functionally graded material (FGM). For the purpose of time-dependent stress analysis in an FGM pressure vessel, material creep behavior and the solutions of the stresses at a time equal to zero (i.e. the initial stress state) are needed....

Muscles behave as elastic springs during the initial strain phase, indicated as short range stiffness (SRS). Beyond a certain amount of strain the muscle demonstrates a more viscous behavior. The strain at which the muscle transits from elastic- to viscous-like behavior is called the elastic limit and is believed to be the result of breakage of cross-bridges between the contractile filaments. T...

The role of elastic strain for magnetoelectric materials and devices is twofold. It can induce ferroic orders in thin films of otherwise non-ferroic materials. On the other hand, it provides the most exploited coupling mechanism in two-phase magnetoelectric materials and devices today. Complex oxide films (perovskites, spinels) are promising for both routes. The strain control of magnetic order...

The optical parameters (refractive index, absorption coefficient) of opaque dielectric materials can be measured with terahertz (THz) Time-Domain spectroscopy (TDS). By using a THz beam of known polarization and measuring both components of the transmitted THz field, it is possible to determine the birefringence present in an anisotropic material. In this work we used polarization sensitive (PS...

The origin of the accelerated expansion of the universe is still unclear and new physics is needed on cosmological scales. We propose and test a novel interpretation of dark energy as originated by an elastic strain due to a cosmic defect in an otherwise Euclidean space-time. The strain modifies the expansion history of the universe. This new effective contribution tracks radiation at early tim...