Living tissues show an adaptive response to mechanical loading by changing their internal structure and morphology. Understanding this response is essential for successful tissue engineering of load-bearing structures, such as the aortic valve. In this study, mechanically induced remodeling of the collagen architecture in the aortic valve was investigated. It was hypothesized that, in uniaxiall...

The elastic structures of many muscles include both an extramuscular free tendon as well as a sheet-like aponeurosis. An important distinguishing feature of aponeuroses is that these tendinous structures function as the attachment and insertion surfaces of muscle fascicles and therefore surround a substantial portion of the muscle belly. As a result, aponeuroses must expand both parallel (longi...

On the basis of the pseudopotential plane-wave(PP-PW) method in combination with the local-density-functional theory(LDFT), complete stress-strain curves for the uniaxial loading and uniaxial deformation along the [001] and [111] directions, and the biaxial proportional extension along [010] and [001] of aluminium are obtained. During the uniaxial loading, certain general behaviors of energy ve...

Spatially distributed arrays of piezoelectric disks are being applied to monitor structural integrity using Lamb waves. Applied loads directly affect waves propagating between array elements because of dimensional changes and the acoustoelastic effect. Resulting changes in phase velocity depend upon the propagation direction as well as the Lamb wave mode and frequency. This paper shows from num...

a framework for development of constitutive models including damage progress, based on semi-micromechanical aspects of plasticity is proposed for concrete. the model uses sub-loading surface with multilaminate framework to provide kinematics and isotropic hardening/softening in the ascending/descending branches of loading and can be able to keep stress/stain paths histories for each plane separ...

Calcium phosphate cements (CPCs) are widely used in bone repair. Currently there are two main types of CPCs, brushite and apatite. The aim of this project was to evaluate the mechanical properties of particularly promising experimental brushite and apatite formulations in comparison to commercially available brushite- and apatite-based cements (chronOS(™) Inject and Norian(®) SRS(®), respective...

The passive mechanical properties of blood vessel mainly stem from the interaction of collagen and elastin fibers, but vessel constriction is attributed to smooth muscle cell (SMC) contraction. Although the passive properties of coronary arteries have been well characterized, the active biaxial stress-strain relationship is not known. Here, we carry out biaxial (inflation and axial extension) m...

Mounting evidence suggests that the normal biomechanical state of arteries may include a nearly equibiaxial intramural stress and that arteries tend to undergo rapid and dramatic remodeling when perturbed from this normal state. Technical developments since the early 1980s have enabled in vitro (acute) and ex vivo (chronic culture) study of isolated, perfused microvessels, and it is clear that ...

A numerical study that focuses on the maximum displacement response of reinforced concrete structures subjected to earthquake loading is presented. The specific item of the interest is the increase in maximum displacement caused by biaxial base excitation as compared with that for uniaxial base excitation. The maximum displacement of structural systems structures subjected to uniaxial base exci...