In this study, we sought to assess the cardiopulmonary functions in three pediatric heart transplant recipients, two of whom are with dilated cardiomyopathy, whereas one is with cyanotic heart disease, in early postoperative period. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing was performed using an incremental cycling at 1 mo after surgery. The results revealed that our study subjects had obvious impairme...

Mandibular condyle plays an important role in the growth and reconstruction of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). We aimed to obtain orthotropic elastic parameters of the condyle using a continuous-wave ultrasonic technique and to observe the effects of condylar elastic parameters on stress distribution of the TMJ using finite element analysis (FEA). Using the ultrasonic technique, all nine ela...

Functionally graded materials (FGMs) enable one to tailor the spatial variation of material properties so as to fully use the material everywhere. For example, in a hollow circular cylinder one can vary, in the radial direction, the material moduli to make the hoop stress constant. Whereas the problem for a hollow cylinder with the inner and the outer surfaces circular has been studied, that of...

High-order finite-element (FE) analyses with inhomogeneous isotropic material properties have been shown to predict the strains and displacements on the surface of the proximal femur with high accuracy when compared with in vitro experiments. The same FE models with inhomogeneous orthotropic material properties produce results similar to those obtained with isotropic material properties. Herein...

This work investigates two aspects linked to the nature of feasible domain anisotropic laminates. In first part paper, proofs are given on non-convexity for full and membrane-orthotropic laminates, either in lamination parameters space or polar one. Then, adopting formalism, some particular cases studied, providing analytical expressions new narrower bounds, terms membrane stiffness tensor. For...

In this study an orthotropic slab finite element is developed to model orthotropic slabs in fire, using a layered 9-noded iso-parametric slab element and a 3-noded beam element. The element is assembled from a solid slab element which represents the continuous upper portion of the profile, and a special beam element which represents the ribbed lower portion. An equivalent width for the cross-se...

Functional adaptation of the femur has been studied extensively by embedding remodelling algorithms in finite element models, with bone commonly assumed to have isotropic material properties for computational efficiency. However, isotropy is insufficient in predicting the directionality of bone's observed microstructure. A novel iterative orthotropic 3D adaptation algorithm is proposed and appl...