This paper reports a prototype of a mechanically and thermally robust encapsulated microfabricated thermionic energy converter (μ-TEC). We used conformal sidewall deposition of poly-SiC to form stiff suspension legs with U-shaped cross sections, which increase the out-of-plane rigidity and prevent contact with the substrate during the heating of the suspended emitter—a qualitative improvement o...

A digital tool is presented and made available for the rapid structural assessment of historic masonry domes. It especially suited domes that present long meridian cracks; ergo partitioned slices governed by a pushing failure mode. The proposed procedure considers Heyman’s no-tension mechanical model has been implemented within user-friendly visual programming environment. numerical approach in...

This paper is a sequel to the authors’ articles which provided test data on progressive collapse of full-scale steel stiffened-plate structures without and with passive fire protection (PFP) under lateral patch loading in fires [1,2]. presents new computational models for analyses heat transfer fire-induced behaviour stiffened plate or PFP. For this purpose, transient thermal elastic-plastic la...

This paper investigates the stability behaviour and load carrying capacity of longitudinally stiffened, transversally curved steel plates under compressive stresses. The is a complex problem, especially due to interaction curvature, relative stiffness stiffeners initial imperfections. A comprehensive parametric study presented investigate effects plate slenderness, size shape on ultimate resist...

during the last few decades, steel shear walls have been adopted as efficient lateral resisting systems for high rise structures and numerous researches have been conducted on their static and dynamic behavior. steel shear walls have been utilized for retrofitting existing structures, as well as in design of new buildings in japan and usa. in this research, we have focused on the optimization o...

How mechanical forces are sensed remains largely mysterious. The forces that gate prokaryotic and several eukaryotic channels were found to come from the lipid membrane. Our survey of animal cells found that membrane force foci all have cholesterol-gathering proteins and are reinforced with cholesterol. This result is evident in overt force sensors at the tips of stereocilia for vertebrate hear...

Article history: Received 5 February 2008 Available online 12 August 2008 This work is dedicated to the memory of Professor Liviu Librescu

The conversion of structural dynamic strain into electric power using piezoelectric transducers to microelectronic devices and wireless sensor nodes for structure health monitoring has been receiving growing attention from academic researchers industry. Harvesting energy vibration storing it in an external infinite life-span capacitor is a proposed technique eliminate the drawbacks conventional...

In this work, the longitudinal residual stresses that arise from FSW processes were measured by means of the Contour Method. These residual stresses were then introduced into a numerical simulation model based on the Finite Element Method (FEM), and their effect on the buckling collapse load of aluminium stiffened panels was assessed. The sensitivity of the models to initial geometrical imperfe...