A nano-displacement sensing method for micro-opto-electro-mechanical-systems (MOEMS) is proposed. The method is based on a square attice photonic crystal (PC) made of dielectric silicon posts, mounted on a micro mechanical flexure. The flexure is fixed at one end and is free to ove at the other, to enable elastic deformations that, by being transferred to the photonic crystal array, modify its ...

For treatment of critical heart valve diseases, prosthetic valves perform fairly well in most adults; however, for pediatric patients, there is the added requirement that the replacement valve grows with the child, thus extremely limiting current treatment options. Tissue engineered heart valves (TEHV), such as those derived from autologous bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs), have the potential to ...

In the quest to obtain a precise set of aircraft attitude parameters the modeling of wing flexure can become an important issue, especially when short baselines are being used. Previous techniques for the estimation of wing flexure have relied on a constrained Least Squares process to determine the displacement at each epoch before the estimation of the attitude parameters. As will be shown in ...

In this article, we propose a Flexure-FET (flexure sensitive field effect transistor) ultrasensitive biosensor that utilizes the nonlinear electromechanical coupling to overcome the fundamental sensitivity limits of classical electrical or mechanical nanoscale biosensors. The stiffness of the suspended gate of Flexure-FET changes with the capture of the target biomolecules, and the correspondin...

OBJECTIVES To assess the effect of interfacial surface roughness on the flexure strength and fracture mode and origin utilizing an in-vitro assessment of the clinical failure conditions expected for all-ceramic crowns and the connector area of fixed partial dentures (FPDs) using bilayered ceramic specimens tested in bi-axial flexure. METHODS Sets of 20 bilayered composite discs, with core:den...

Code design of unreinforced masonry (URM) brick buildings is based on elastic analysis, which requires as input, among others, estimates of the in-plane drift capacity at the considered limit states. Current approaches assess the drift capacity of URM walls by means of empirical models with most codes relating the drift capacity to the failure mode and wall slenderness. Comparisons with experim...

Pedestrian bridge structures are usually sensitive to the effects of wind due to their relatively high slimness and low weight. The arising forces can excite both oscillation in the direction of the wind and also crosswise torsion-flexure oscillation which can result in a local or (in the case of coupled torsion-flexure oscillation) complete loss of aerodynamic stability of the structure. This ...

This paper presents an experimental study and theoretical analyses on the monotonic and fatigue performance in bending of a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber-reinforced engineered cementitious composite (ECC) overlay system. The influence of the interfacial characteristics between overlay and old concrete substrate on the overall bending performance is investigated. The experimental results show th...

This paper presents the design of a selective-actuation flexure parallel mechanism that can provide three de-coupled micro-motions along the X-, Y and Z-axes. This mechanism can be used as an ultra-precision positioning system. The modeling of this flexure parallel mechanism is then established based on a pseudo-rigid-body model with consideration of deformation of the flexure member. The facto...