In this study, a numerical simulation method was employed to investigate and analyze superstructure fiber Bragg gratings (SFBGs) with five duty cycles (50%, 33.33%, 14.28%, 12.5%, and 10%). This study focuses on demonstrating the relevance between design period and spectral characteristics of SFBGs (in the form of graphics) for SFBGs of all duty cycles. Compared with complicated and hard-to-lea...

Tactile sensory feedback plays an important role in our daily life. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is widely accepted to produce artificial tactile sensation. To explore the underlying mechanism of tactile sensation under TENS, this paper presented a novel 3D TENS computational model including an active Aβ tactile nerve fiber (TNF) model and a forearm finite element model wi...

An efficient beam element, the modified elastofiber (MEF) element, has been developed to capture the overall features of the elastic and inelastic response of slender columns and braces under axial cyclic loading without unduly heavy discretization. It consists of three fiber segments, two at the member ends and one at mid-span, with two elastic segments sandwiched in between. The segments are ...

Adenoviral (Ad) vectors have been widely used in human gene therapy clinical trials. However, their application has frequently been restricted by the unfavorable expression of cell surface receptors critical for Ad infection. Infections by Ad2 and Ad5 are largely regulated by the elongated fiber protein that mediates its attachment to a cell surface receptor, coxsackie and adenovirus receptor (...

This paper presents a finite element formulation of elasticity to model elastic fracture in composites with long aligned fibers. We have employed a B-bar type approach which is applicable to compressible as well as nearly incompressible material systems. An energy approach is undertaken to evaluate the stress intensity factor at the crack tip. The effects of strong intact bridging fibers, fiber...

To optimize the mechanical properties and integrity of tissue-engineered aortic heart valves, it is necessary to gain insight into the effects of mechanical stimuli on the mechanical behavior of the tissue using mathematical models. In this study, a finite-element (FE) model is presented to relate changes in collagen fiber content and orientation to the mechanical loading condition within the e...

This paper presents a shell finite element formulation appropriate for simulating the heart valve leaflet mechanics, including three-dimensional (3D) stress and strain effects. A 4-node mixed-interpolation shell is formulated in convected coordinates. This shell model is made capable of handling arbitrary 3D material models by use of an algorithm that satisfies the shell stress assumption at ev...