Thermal Contact Conductance (TCC) between an exhaust valve and its seat is one of the important parameters to be estimated in an internal combustion engine. An experimental study presented here to acquire temperature in some interior points to be used as inputs to an inverse analysis. An actual exhaust valve and its seat are utilized in a designed and constructed setup. Conjugate Gradient Metho...

Propagation of ryanodine receptor (RyR2)-derived Ca(2+) signals to the mitochondrial matrix supports oxidative ATP production or facilitates mitochondrial apoptosis in cardiac muscle. Ca(2+) transfer likely occurs locally at focal associations of the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) and mitochondria, which are secured by tethers. The outer mitochondrial membrane and inner mitochondrial membrane (OMM...

We propose a new method for analyzing the stability of grasps. The characteristic points in this paper are to consider the curvature of both hand and object at contact points and the grasp with friction and frictionless contact. From this analysis, it is shown that the grasp using round fingers is more stable than using sharp fingers. Moreover, we establish the condition on the finger’s stiffne...

A fixture is a device which immobilizes a part through a maximal set of linearly independent contacts. While many techniques exist to determine an appropriate arrangement of contacts, little research has been done on how to acquire those contacts (i.e., move the part such that it makes contact with the fixture at all intended points). In previous work, it was assumed that the gaps between the p...