AIMS Biodegradable coatings on drug-eluting stents (DES) may help to avoid adverse long-term effects of DES such as late/very late stent thrombosis which is partly attributed to durable polymers. As the post-expansion morphology of biodegradable coatings is greatly unknown, we investigated the polylactic acid coating on biolimus-eluting BioMatrix stents. METHODS AND RESULTS Scanning electron ...

Scratch-induced cracking is a serious problem for the use of glass products. At the scratch process, both median (vertical to the glass surface) and lateral (horizontal to the glass surface) cracks are formed. In this study, morphology of the scratch-induced cracks in a commercial soda-lime-silica glass was investigated by the scanning electron microscopy for the specimen broken across the scra...

Although concrete is one of the most widely used construction materials, it is characterized by substantially low tensile strength in comparison to its compression strength, and the occurrence of cracks is unavoidable. In addition, cracks progress due to environmental conditions including damage by freezing, neutralization, and salt, etc. Moreover, detrimental damage can occur in concrete struc...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to compare the frequency of dentinal microcracks after root canal shaping with 2 reciprocating (Reciproc and WaveOne) and 1 combined continuous reciprocating motion twisted files adaptive (TFA) rotary system. MATERIALS AND METHODS Ninety molars were chosen and divided into three groups of 30 each. Root canal preparation was achieved by using Reciproc R25, Primary Wa...

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer laminates are increasingly used in the aerospace and civil engineering fields. Identifying cracks in carbon fiber reinforced polymer laminated beam components is of considerable significance for ensuring the integrity and safety of the whole structures. With the development of high-resolution measurement technologies, mode-shape-based crack identification in such...

Vibrothermography often employs a high-power actuator to generate heat on a specimen to reveal damage, however, the high-power actuator brings inconvenience to the application and possibly introduces additional damage to the inspected objects. This study uses a low-power piezoceramic transducer as the actuator of vibrothermography and explores its ability to detect multiple surface cracks in a ...

Sand-®lled cracks from the Lower Fine-grained Quartzite of Dalradian (late Proterozoic) age on the Island of Islay, western Scotland, may be divided into two main types, both of which form orthogonal and non-orthogonal closed patterns on bedding surfaces. Type 1 cracks are short and lenticular in cross-section, contain sand which had been injected downwards, and are found on the bottoms of cros...

Two-dimensional weakly-singular Symmetric Galerkin Boundary Elements (SGBEMs) are developed, following the work of [Han and Atluri (2003)], using non-hypersingular integral equations for tractions. Specifically, the present 2D SGBEM is used to compute the stress intensity factors for arbitrary-shaped line cracks, including embedded, edge, branching, and intersecting cracks. The computed stress ...

Indentation cracks on ceramics are frequently used not only for the semi-empirical determination of the fracture toughness KIC but also as a method for generating semielliptical surface cracks to be used in as starting cracks in fracture and fatigue studies. Tetragonal zirconia stabilized with 3 % mol of yttria (3Y-TZP) is a biocompatible ceramic with good mechanical properties which is used in...

DETECTING DEFECTS IN CHERRIES USING MACHINE VISION By Patchrawat Uthaisombut This thesis describes machine vision procedures which are able to classify defective cherries from non-defective cherries. Defects can be divided into bruises, dry cracks, and wet cracks. Bandpass lters that enhance the intensity contrast between bruised and unbruised cherries are determined. An optimum combination of ...