The effectiveness of silica sol grout on mudstones is reported in this paper. Using X-ray diffraction (XRD), the study investigates how the silica sol grout modifies mudstone mineralogy. Micropore sizes and mechanical properties of the mudstone before and after grouting with four different materials were determined with a surface area/porosity analyser and by uniaxial compression. Tests show th...

In adherent cells, the relevance of a physical mechanotransduction pathway provided by the perinuclear actin cap stress fibers has recently emerged. Here, we investigate the impact of a functional actin cap on the cellular adaptive response to topographical cues and uniaxial cyclic strain. Lmna-deficient fibroblasts are used as a model system because they do not develop an intact actin cap, but...

We employ classical molecular dynamics to calculate elastic properties and to model the nucleation and propagation of deformation twins in calcite, both as a pure crystal and with magnesium and aspartate inclusions. The twinning is induced by applying uniaxial strain to the crystal and relaxing all stress components except the uniaxial component. A detailed analysis of the atomistic processes r...

We have developed new techniques to measure the magnetization and the coercivity of a uniaxial magnetic material using a torque magnetometer. The magnetization could be measured from the linear dependence at the low-field regime in a plot of the torque versus the applied magnetic field, where the direction of the applied field was perpendicular to the uniaxial orientation. The coercivity could ...

a literature review revealed that most of the empirical equations introduced for determination of the uniaxial compressive strength (ucs) of rocks based on the schmidt hammer rebound number (n) are not sufficiently reliable mostly due to the relatively low coefficient of correlations. this is attributed to the fact that in most cases one formula is used for all types of rocks, although...

We report a first-principles study on the electronic structures of deformed graphene nanoribbons (GNRs). Our theoretical results show that the electronic properties of zigzag GNRs are not sensitive to uniaxial strain, while the energy gap modification of armchair GNRs (AGNRs) as a function of uniaxial strain displays a nonmonotonic relationship with a zigzag pattern. The subband spacings and sp...

A peristaltically actuated device, PADeMIS, composed of silicone rubber (SR) is under development for use in minimally invasive surgery. During locomotion, the device will be subject to a few thousand load changes involving varying, sometimes high, strains. The design is being optimised by finite element analysis, for which a constitutive law for the mechanical behaviour of silicone rubber is r...

Knitted textiles have been used in medical applications due to their high flexibility and low tendency to fray. Their mechanics has, however, received limited attention compared to woven fabrics used as technical textiles e.g. in aerospace and as composite reinforcements. A constitutive model for soft tissue using a strain energy function was extended, by including shear and increasing the numb...

The Poisson's ratio of a material characterizes its response to uniaxial strain. Materials normally possess a positive Poisson's ratio - they contract laterally when stretched, and expand laterally when compressed. A negative Poisson's ratio is theoretically permissible but has not, with few exceptions of man-made bulk structures, been experimentally observed in any natural materials. Here, we ...

We report an ab initio study of the effect of hydrostatic pressure and uniaxial strain on electronic properties of KNa2Bi, a cubic bialkali bismuthide. It is found that this zero-gap semimetal with an inverted band structure at the Brillouin zone center can be driven into various topological phases under proper external pressure. We show that upon hydrostatic compression KNa2Bi turns into a tri...