Soft actuators are receiving increasing attention from the engineering community, not only in research but even for industrial applications. Among soft actuators, fibre-reinforced Bending Fluidic Actuators (BFAs) became very popular thanks to features such as robustness and easy design and fabrication. However, an accurate modelling of these smart structures, taking into account all the nonline...

This paper develops an efficient, physically based shape manipulation technique. It defines a 3D model with profile curves, and uses spine curves generated from the profile curves to control the motion and global shape of 3D models. Profile and spine curves are changed into profile and spine wires by specifying proper material and geometric properties together with external forces. The underlyi...

This work concerns an assessment of the behavior of infilled frames. The feasibility of possible immediate implementation of some recent developments both in analysis and design of infilled frames for practical design is investigated. It is now widely recognized that masonry infill panels used in reinforced concrete (R/C) frame structures, significantly enhance both the stiffness and the streng...

In recent years, glass-fiber reinforced composite materials are more and more used in structural applications. Their mechanical properties: low density, high strength and high chemical corrosionresistance offer an interesting alternative solution to metallic or concrete material. The pultrusion is a composite material processing technique that is penetrating the civil engineering market since t...

The archwire bending is one of processes the most frequently used in the orthodontic treatment. Furthermore, the springback of sheet metal, which is defined as elastic recovery of the part during unloading, should be taken into consideration so as to produce formed archwire within acceptable tolerance limits. In this paper, the springback angle of different alloy archwires (including NiTi alloy...

This paper presents the details of a research program that was conducted to evaluate the two-way bending behavior of 3-D glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) sandwich panels. The panels consist of GFRP skins with a foam core and through-thickness fiber insertions. While the behavior of these panels under one-way bending is relatively well understood the behavior under two-way bending has not y...

The basic manufacturing processes of cellular materials have been briefly noted as well as the metal foam properties. The most widely used are the aluminium foams due to the following properties: very good insulation (thermal insulation and sound absorption), low density (mass), high specific rigidity in sandwich structures, very good impact damping, corrosion resistance, non-flammability, very...

Cooperative DNA binding by transcription factors that bind to separate recognition sites is likely to require bending of intervening sequences and the appropriate orientation of transcription factor binding. We investigated DNA bending in complexes formed by the basic region-leucine zipper domains of Fos and Jun with the DNA binding region of nuclear factor of activated T cells 1 (NFAT1) at com...

Sequence-dependent bending of the helical axes in 112 oligonucleotide duplex crystal structures resident in the Nucleic Acid Database have been analyzed and compared with the use of bending dials, a computer graphics tool. Our analysis includes structures of both A and B forms of DNA and considers both uncomplexed forms of the double helix as well as those bound to drugs and proteins. The patte...

How animals cope with increases in body size is a key issue in biology. Here, we consider scaling of xenarthrans, particularly how femoral form and function varies to accommodate the size range between the 3 kg armadillo and its giant relative the 300 kg glyptodont. It has already been noted that femoral morphology differs between these animals and suggested that this reflects a novel adaptatio...