Compacted unbound granular materials are extensively used as sub-layer in pavement design. Most pavement design guides assume that they are responsible for the degradation and deformation of the roads and railways that they support. Biaxial tests are usually employed to investigate the elasto-plastic response of these materials to cyclic loading. A particularly interesting question is whether a...

In many muscles, the tendinous structures include both an extramuscular free tendon as well as a sheet-like aponeurosis. In both free tendons and aponeuroses the collagen fascicles are oriented primarily longitudinally, along the muscle's line of action. It is generally assumed that this axis represents the direction of loading for these structures. This assumption is well founded for free tend...

The significance of strain measurement is obvious for the analysis of Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites. Conventional strain measurement methods are sufficient for static testing in general. Nevertheless, if the requirements exceed the capabilities of these conventional methods, more sophisticated techniques are necessary to obtain strain data. Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors have man...

A series of biaxial High Cycle Fatigue tests at room temperature is performed to build up an extensive and well-documented database. The testing specimen is a maltese cross thinned in its centre with non homogeneous strain/stress fields. The experimental protocol uses exclusively full-field strain measurements. The strains (cyclic and residual) as well as the crack initiation detection are obta...

Constitutive laws for shape-memory alloys subjected to multiaxial loading, which are based on direct experimental observations, are generally not available in the literature. Accordingly, in the present work, tension–torsion tests are conducted on thin-walled tubes (thickness/radius ratio of 1:10) of the polycrystalline superelastic/shape-memory alloy Nitinol using various loading/unloading pat...

The study of conical refraction for media other than biaxial non-magnetic crystals has never been considered in the literature – as far as the authors are aware. Hence, in this paper, we investigate how conical refraction can arise for broader classes of biaxial metamaterials using a new classification scheme previously developed by the authors. Namely, conical refraction is shown to occur for ...

2014 The temperature variations of the order parameter invariants are measured in the uniaxial and biaxial nematic phases of different mixtures of potassium laurate, 1-decanoL D2O. They show that the uniaxial to biaxial nematic phase transitions are second-order and mean-field, including in the case of the reentrant concentration, which gives the sequence discotic-biaxial-discotic of nematic ph...

A review is given of liquid crystals formed in colloidal dispersions, in particular those consisting of mineral particles. Starting with the historical development and early theory, the characteristic properties related to the colloidal nature of this type of liquid crystals are discussed. The possibility to find biaxial nematic and smectic phases is described for mixtures of rods and plates an...

In this study, carbon nano fibers (CNFs) were mixed into epoxy resin through a magnetic stirrer and again mixed using ultra sonicator. Using hand layup technique, biaxial braided fiber composites were prepared with unfilled, 0.2, 0.5 and 1 wt% CNF. Tensile test and shear test was performed to identify the tensile strength and shear strength of the composites. Fractured surface of the tensile sp...

Dielectric elastomer generators (DEGs) are attractive candidates for harvesting electrical energy from mechanical work since they comprise relatively few moving parts and large elastomer sheets can be mass produced. Successfully demonstrations of the DEG prototypes have been reported from a diverse of energy sources, including ocean waves, wind, flowing water and human movement. The energy dens...