A validated reduced-order dynamic model of nitric oxide regulation in coronary arteries.

Nitric Oxide (NO) provides myocardial oxygen demands of the heart during exercise and cardiac pacing and also prevents cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis and platelet adhesion and aggregation. However, the direct in vivo measurement of NO in coronary arteries is still challenging. To address this matter, a mathematical model of dynamic changes of calcium and NO concentration in the coronary artery was developed for the first time. The model is able to simulate the effect of NO release in coronary arteries and its impact on the hemodynamics of the coronary arterial tree and also to investigate the vasodilation effects of arteries during cardiac pacing. For these purposes, flow rate, time-averaged wall shear stress, dilation percent, NO concentration, and Calcium (Ca2+) concentration within coronary arteries were obtained. In addition, the impact of hematocrit on the flow rate of the coronary artery was studied. It was seen that the behavior of flow rate, wall shear stress, and Ca2+ is biphasic, but the behavior of NO concentration and the dilation percent is triphasic. Also, by increasing the Hematocrit, the blood flow reduces slightly. The results were compared with several experimental measurements to validate the model qualitatively and quantitatively. It was observed that the presented model is well capable of predicting the behavior of arteries after releasing NO during cardiac pacing. Such a study would be a valuable tool to understand the mechanisms underlying vessel damage, and thereby to offer insights for the prevention or treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

Optimal distribution of piezoelectric patches for active vibration reduction of a thick plate using singular value decomposition approach.

This paper uses the singular value decomposition approach to find the optimal distribution of a set of piezoelectric actuators and sensors in order to suppress the vibrations of a thick plate. The dynamic model of the system is derived using Mindlin plate theory and consequently, the finite difference method is employed to divide the thick plate to a finite number of nodes with appropriate horizontal and vertical distances. To compute the control force of piezoelectric actuators, the singular value decomposition approach for the column control matrix is supposed as the fitness function of an optimization problem. Through a genetic algorithm, the optimized solution is obtained. The results of numerical simulations indicate the optimal location achieved by the proposed method outperforms the previous results in suppressing the vibrations of a thick plate.

On designing geometric motion planners to solve regulating and trajectory tracking problems for robotic locomotion systems.

Based on a geometric fiber bundle structure, a generalized method to solve both regulation and trajectory tracking problems for locomotion systems is presented. The method is especially applied to two case studies of robotic locomotion systems; a three link articulated fish-like robot as a prototype of locomotion systems with symmetry, and the snakeboard as a prototype of mixed locomotion systems. Our results show that although these motion planners have an open loop structure, due to their generalities, they can steer case studies with negligible errors for almost any complicated path.