Single-sensor rotating blade monitoring method under non-stationary conditions based on velocity and displacement.

A novel single-sensor method for monitoring rotating blade vibration is proposed and utilized to identify vibration parameters under the non-stationary condition. By analyzing the pulse-signal waveform, the blade tip displacement and vibration velocity are extracted. Then, the motion equation under the non-stationary condition is further developed to provide a theoretical basis. Finally, the optimization technology is applied to extract vibration parameters. Compared with multiple-sensor methods, the proposed method has lower installation difficulty, less equipment cost, fewer sensors, and no strict sensor layout requirement. Numerical simulations and experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method. The relative error in the natural frequency does not exceed 0.1 %. Additionally, errors in other parameters are less than 8 % in the experiment.

Research on Determining Elastic-Plastic Constitutive Parameters of Materials from Load Depth Curves Based on Nanoindentation Technology.

It is of great significance for structural design and engineering evaluation to obtain the elastic-plastic parameters of materials. The inverse estimation of elastic-plastic parameters of materials based on nanoindentation technology has been applied in many pieces of research, but it has proved to be difficult to determine the elastic-plastic properties of materials by only using a single indentation curve. A new optimal inversion strategy based on a spherical indentation curve was proposed to obtain the elastoplastic parameters (the Young's modulus E, yield strength σy, and hardening exponent n) of materials in this study. A high-precision finite element model of indentation with a spherical indenter (radius R = 20 µm) was established, and the relationship between the three parameters and indentation response was analyzed using the design of experiment (DOE) method. The well-posed problem of inverse estimation under different maximum indentation depths (hmax1 = 0.06 R, hmax2 = 0.1 R, hmax3 = 0.2 R, hmax4 = 0.3 R) was explored based on numerical simulations. The results show that the unique solution with high accuracy can be obtained under different maximum press-in depths (the minimum error was within 0.2% and the maximum error was up to 1.5%). Next, the load-depth curves of Q355 were obtained by a cyclic loading nanoindentation experiment, and the elastic-plastic parameters of Q355 were determined by the proposed inverse-estimation strategy based on the average indentation load-depth curve. The results showed that the optimized load-depth curve was in good agreement with the experimental curve, and the optimized stress-strain curve was slightly different from the tensile test, and the obtained parameters were basically consistent with the existing research.

Study on the Effect of Sample Temperature on the Uniaxial Compressive Mechanical Properties of the Brain Tissue.

Craniocerebral injury has been a research focus in the field of injury biomechanics. Although experimental endeavors have made certain progress in characterizing the material behavior of the brain, the temperature dependency of brain mechanics appears to be inconclusive thus far. To partially address this knowledge gap, the current study measured the brain material behavior via unconstrained uniaxial compression tests under low strain rate (0.0083 s-1) and high strain rate (0.83 s-1) at four different sample temperatures (13°C, 20°C, 27°C, and 37°C). Each group has 9~12 samples. One-way analysis of variance method was used to study the influence of sample temperature on engineering stress. The results show that the effect of sample temperature on the mechanical properties of brain tissue is significant under the high strain rate, especially at low temperature (13°C), in which the hardening of the brain tissue is very obvious. At the low strain rate, no temperature dependency of brain mechanics is noted. Therefore, the current results highlight that the temperature of the brain sample should be ensured to be in accordance with the living subject when studying the biomechanical response of living tissue.

The Effect of Formalin Preservation Time and Temperature on the Material Properties of Bovine Femoral Cortical Bone Tissue.

Literature has reported controversial findings on whether formalin affected bone properties, or not, especially when different preservation time durations and temperatures were involved. Hence, accurately and systematically quantifying the effect of formalin on the mechanical properties of bone using a large dataset is crucial for assessing biomechanical responses based on fixed specimens. A total of 154 longitudinal and 149 transverse cuboid-shaped (12 mm × 2 mm × 0.5 mm) specimens from the midsection of 12 bovine femora from six bovines were prepared and assigned to ten groups, including fresh-frozen, formalin-preserved at 25 °C for 4 weeks and 8 weeks, and formalin-preserved at 4 °C for 4 weeks and 8 weeks. All specimens underwent quasi-static three-point bending tests with a loading rate of 0.02 mm/s. The Young's modulus, yield stress, yield strain, tangent modulus, effective plastic strain, ultimate stress, and toughness were calculated by optimizing the material parameters to make the force-displacement curve of the finite element prediction consistent with the experimental curve, combined with specimen-specific finite element models. Preservation time and temperature both had significant effects on the Young's modulus, yield stress, effective plastic strain, yield strain and ultimate stress of cortical bone (p < 0.05). The Young's modulus, yield stress, and ultimate stress of longitudinal specimens decreased significantly with the increase of preservation time, and the yield strain increased significantly. As the preservation temperature increases, the Young's modulus of the transverse sample decreased significantly, and the yield strain increased significantly. The preservation time mainly affects the longitudinal specimens, while the preservation temperature mainly affects the transverse specimens. Formalin preservation of bovine femoral cortical bones at a lower temperature and less than 4 weeks is recommended for biomechanical testing.

Identification of the visco-hyperelastic properties of brain white matter based on the combination of inverse method and experiment.

To fully understand the brain injury mechanism and develop effective protective approaches, an accurate constitutive model of brain tissue is firstly required. Generally, the brain tissue is regarded as a kind of viscoelastic material and is simply used in the simulation of brain injury. In fact, the brain tissue has the behavior of the visco-hyperelastic property. Therefore, this paper presents an effective computational inverse method to determine the material parameters of visco-hyperelastic constitutive model of brain white matter through compression experiments. First, with the help of 3D hand scanner, 3D geometries of brain white matter specimens are obtained to make it possible to establish the accurate simulation models of the specific specimens. Then, the global sensitivity analysis is adopted to evaluate the importance of the material parameters and further determine the parameters which may be identified. Subsequently, based on the genetic algorithm, the optimal material parameters of brain white matter can be identified by minimizing the match error between the experimental and simulated responses. Finally, by comparing the experiment and simulation results on the other specific specimen, and the simulation results with the material parameters from the references, respectively, the accuracy and reliability of the constitutive model parameters of brain white matter are demonstrated. Graphical abstract The main flowchart of the computational inverse technique for determining the material parameters of specimen-specific on brain white matter. Generalization: Combining the computational inverse method and unconfined uniaxial compression experiment of the specific specimen, an effective identification method is presented to accurately determine the hyperelastic and viscoelastic parameters of brain white matter in this paper.

The effect of storage time in saline solution on the material properties of cortical bone tissue.

BACKGROUND: The use of saline in preserving bone specimens may affect the mechanical properties of specimens. Yet, the reported effects varied and contradicted to each other, with a lack of investigating constitutive material parameters. Therefore, we quantified the effects of preservation time on the constitutive properties of cortical bone. METHODS: We collected 120 specimens from the mid-diaphysis of six male bovine femora, which were assigned to five groups, including fresh-frozen for 60 days (-20 °C), storage in saline for 3, 10, 36 and 60 days (25 °C). All specimens underwent quasi-static three-point bending tests with a loading rate of 0.02 mm/s. Using the optimization method combined with specimen-specific finite element models, the Young's modulus, tangent modulus, yield stress, effective plastic strain, yield strain, ultimate stress, and toughness were calculated. FINDINGS: Saline preservation resulted in a significant decrease of Young's modulus, yield stress, ultimate stress and pre-yield toughness (P < 0.001), and a significant increase of effective plastic strain (P = 0.034). After 10 days of preservation, yield stress and pre-yield toughness decreased -14.9% and -21.4%, respectively, and they continued to decrease with longer preservation time. After 36 days of preservation, Young's modulus and ultimate stress decreased -19.2% and -17.3%, respectively, and continued to decrease with longer preservation time. Our data also showed changes of material properties collected after 3-day saline preservation, while the low statistical power must be considered for this group. INTERPRETATION: Saline preservation impacts on mechanical properties of cortical bone tissue and the effect is already observable after 3 days.

Combining specimen-specific finite-element models and optimization in cortical-bone material characterization improves prediction accuracy in three-point bending tests.

Although the beam theory is widely used for calculating material parameters in three-point bending test, it cannot accurately describe the biomechanical properties of specimens after the yield. Hence, we propose a finite element (FE) based optimization method to obtain accurate bone material parameters from three-point bending test. We tested 80 machined bovine cortical bone specimens at both longitudinal and transverse directions using three-point bending. We then adopted the beam theory and the FE-based optimization method combined with specimen-specific FE models to derive the material parameters of cortical bone. We compared data obtained using these two methods and further evaluated two groups of parameters with three-point bending simulations. Our data indicated that the FE models with material properties from the FE-based optimization method showed best agreements with experimental data for the entire force-displacement responses, including the post-yield region. Using the beam theory, the yield stresses derived from 0.0058% strain offset for the longitudinal specimen and 0.0052% strain offset for the transverse specimen are closer to those derived from the FE-based optimization method, compared to yield stresses calculated without strain offset. In brief, we conclude that the optimization FE method is more appropriate than the traditional beam theory in identifying the material parameters of cortical bone for improving prediction accuracy in three-point bending mode. Given that the beam theory remains as a popular method because of its efficiency, we further provided correction functions to adjust parameters calculated from the beam theory for accurate FE simulation.

Sparse Representation Based Frequency Detection and Uncertainty Reduction in Blade Tip Timing Measurement for Multi-Mode Blade Vibration Monitoring.

The accurate monitoring of blade vibration under operating conditions is essential in turbo-machinery testing. Blade tip timing (BTT) is a promising non-contact technique for the measurement of blade vibrations. However, the BTT sampling data are inherently under-sampled and contaminated with several measurement uncertainties. How to recover frequency spectra of blade vibrations though processing these under-sampled biased signals is a bottleneck problem. A novel method of BTT signal processing for alleviating measurement uncertainties in recovery of multi-mode blade vibration frequency spectrum is proposed in this paper. The method can be divided into four phases. First, a single measurement vector model is built by exploiting that the blade vibration signals are sparse in frequency spectra. Secondly, the uniqueness of the nonnegative sparse solution is studied to achieve the vibration frequency spectrum. Thirdly, typical sources of BTT measurement uncertainties are quantitatively analyzed. Finally, an improved vibration frequency spectra recovery method is proposed to get a guaranteed level of sparse solution when measurement results are biased. Simulations and experiments are performed to prove the feasibility of the proposed method. The most outstanding advantage is that this method can prevent the recovered multi-mode vibration spectra from being affected by BTT measurement uncertainties without increasing the probe number.

Quantifying the Effects of Formalin Fixation on the Mechanical Properties of Cortical Bone Using Beam Theory and Optimization Methodology With Specimen-Specific Finite Element Models.

The effects of formalin fixation on bone material properties remain debatable. In this study, we collected 36 fresh-frozen cuboid-shaped cortical specimens from five male bovine femurs and immersed half of the specimens into 4% formalin fixation liquid for 30 days. We then conducted three-point bending tests and used both beam theory method and an optimization method combined with specimen-specific finite element (FE) models to identify material parameters. Through the optimization FE method, the formalin-fixed bones showed a significantly lower Young's modulus (-12%) compared to the fresh-frozen specimens, while no difference was observed using the beam theory method. Meanwhile, both the optimization FE and beam theory methods revealed higher effective failure strains for formalin-fixed bones compared to fresh-frozen ones (52% higher through the optimization FE method and 84% higher through the beam theory method). Hence, we conclude that the formalin fixation has a significant effect on bovine cortical bones at small, elastic, as well as large, plastic deformations.

Strain-based regional traumatic brain injury intensity in controlled cortical impact: a systematic numerical analysis.

Regional strain-based brain injury intensity during controlled cortical impact (CCI) was studied using a three-dimensional numerical rat brain model. A full factorial design of CCI computer experiments was performed using two typical impactor shapes (flat or hemispherical) at a fixed impact velocity of 4?m/s with various impact depths (1, 1.5, 1.6, 2, 2.5, 2.7, and 3?mm) and various impactor diameters (4, 5, 6, 8, and 9.5?mm). In total, 70 CCI cases were simulated numerically. Two injury assessment measures, the cumulative strain damage measure (CSDM), which accounts for the volume of brain tissue with elevated strains, and cumulative strain damage percentage measure (CSDPM), which is a strain-based estimate of the neuronal cell loss percentage, were used to evaluate the risk of brain injury. Results demonstrated positive nonlinear relationships between impact depth and these injury assessment measures in six regions of interest: ipsilateral cortex, ipsilateral corpus callosum, ipsilateral hippocampus, ipsilateral thalamus, cerebellum, and brainstem. However, the impactor diameter was not always positively correlated with regional tissue strains. For the flat impactor group, the 5?mm diameter impactor induced more tissue strain in the corpus callosum/hippocampus, and a smaller impactor induced more strain in the thalamus. For the hemispherical impactor group, a larger impactor tended to induce more tissue strain in subcortical regions, with the exception of the 6?mm diameter impactor. This study systematically predicts regional intensity of primary brain injury according to tissue strain distributions in the hope that strain distribution maps may become a common platform to compare CCI severities with different configurations.

Application of optimization methodology and specimen-specific finite element models for investigating material properties of rat skull.

Finite element (FE) models of rat skull bone samples were developed by reconstructing the three-dimensional geometry of microCT images and voxel-based hexahedral meshes. An optimization-based material identification method was developed to obtain the most favorable material property parameters by minimizing differences in three-point bending test responses between experimental and simulation results. An anisotropic Kriging model and sequential quadratic programming, in conjunction with Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS), are utilized to minimize the disparity between the experimental and FE model predicted force-deflection curves. A selected number of material parameters, namely Young's modulus, yield stress, tangent modulus, and failure strain, are varied iteratively using the proposed optimization scheme until the assessment index 'F', the objective function comparing simulation and experimental force-deflection curves through least squares, is minimized. Results show that through the application of this method, the optimized models' force-deflection curves are closely in accordance with the measured data. The average differences between the experimental and simulation data are around 0.378 N (which was 3.3% of the force peak value) and 0.227 N (which was 2.7% of the force peak value) for two different test modes, respectively. The proposed optimization methodology is a potentially useful tool to effectively help establish material parameters. This study represents a preliminary effort in the development and validation of FE models for the rat skull, which may ultimately serve to develop a more biofidelic rat head FE model.