Band 22, Heft 5-6

Conventional experimental or computational techniques are often inadequate for the analysis and development of nanocomposite-based materials as they are tedious (e.g., experimental methods) or are unsuitable to capture the properties of these novel materials (e.g., conventional computational techniques), thereby requiring multiscale computational strategies. During the last 5 years, major developments were made by the authors on the formulation and implementation of multiscale computational models, using atomistic simulation and micro-mechanics-based techniques, to study the mechanical and thermal behavior of nanocomposite-based materials. In this article, the advances made in the computational analysis of nanocomposites for tissue engineering applications (e.g., scaffolds and bioreactors) would be discussed. The material properties of the nanocomposites in the lower scales were determined using molecular dynamics, and were then transferred to the macroscale using various homogenization techniques. Also in this article, the authors discuss the development of a theory of mixture-based finite element model for nutrient flow in a hollow fiber membrane bioreactor and the use of computational tools to improve the efficiency of the bioreactor.

In the non-linear finite element analysis (NFEA) of concrete materials, continuum damage mechanics (CDM) provides a powerful framework for the derivation of constitutive models capable of describing the mechanical behavior of such materials. The internal state variables of CDM can be introduced to the elastic analysis of concrete to form elastic-damage models (no inelastic strains), or to the elastic-plastic analysis in order to form coupled/uncoupled elastic-plastic-damage models. Experimental evidence that is well documented in literature shows that the susceptibility of concrete to damage and failure is distinguished under deviatoric loading from that corresponding to hydrostatic loading. A reduction factor is usually introduced into a CDM model to reduce the susceptibility of concrete to hydrostatic stresses/strains. In this work, the effect of a hydrostatic stress/strain reduction factor on the performances of two NFEA concrete models will be studied. These two (independently published) models did not provide any results showing such effect. One of these two models is an elastic-damage model, whereas the other is an uncoupled elastic-plastic-damage model. Simulations and comparisons are carried out between the performances of the two models under uniaxial tensile and compressive loading conditions. Simulations are also provided for the uncoupled elastic-plastic-damage model under the following additional loading conditions: biaxial tension and biaxial compression, uniaxial cyclic loading, and varying ratios of triaxial compressive loadings. These simulations clearly show the effect of the reduction factor on the numerically depicted behaviors of concrete materials. To have rational comparisons, the hydrostatic stress reduction factor applied to each model is chosen to be a function of the internal state variables common to both models. Therefore, once the two models are calibrated to simulate the experimental behaviors, their corresponding reduction factors are readily available at every increment of the iterative NFEA procedures.

The elastic behavior of an arbitrary oriented wedge disclination dipole located inside a nanowire, which in turn is embedded in an infinite matrix, is studied within the surface/interface theory of elasticity. The corresponding boundary value problem is provided using complex potential functions. The potential functions are defined through modeling the wedge disclination in terms of an equivalent distribution of edge dislocations. The interface effects on the stress field and strain energy of the disclination dipole and image forces acting on it, the influence of relative shear moduli of the nanowire and the matrix, as well as the different characteristics of the interface are studied thoroughly. It is shown that the positive interface modulus leads to increased strain energy and extra repulsive forces on the disclination dipole. The noticeable effect of the negative interface modulus is the non-classical oscillations in the stress field of the disclination dipole and an extra attractive image force on it.

In the interest of developing a bridge between researchers modeling materials and those modeling biological molecules, we survey recent progress in developing nonlocal-dielectric continuum models for studying the behavior of proteins and nucleic acids. As in other areas of science, continuum models are essential tools when atomistic simulations (e.g., molecular dynamics) are too expensive. Because biological molecules are essentially all nanoscale systems, the standard continuum model, involving local dielectric response, has basically always been dubious at best. The advanced continuum theories discussed here aim to remedy these shortcomings by adding nonlocal dielectric response. We begin by describing the central role of electrostatic interactions in biology at the molecular scale, and motivate the development of computationally tractable continuum models using applications in science and engineering. For context, we highlight some of the most important challenges that remain, and survey the diverse theoretical formalisms for their treatment, highlighting the rigorous statistical mechanics that support the use and improvement of continuum models. We then address the development and implementation of nonlocal dielectric models, an approach pioneered by Dogonadze, Kornyshev, and their collaborators almost 40 years ago. The simplest of these models is just a scalar form of gradient elasticity, and here we use ideas from gradient-based modeling to extend the electrostatic model to include additional length scales. The review concludes with a discussion of open questions for model development, highlighting the many opportunities for the materials community to leverage its physical, mathematical, and computational expertise to help solve one of the most challenging questions in molecular biology and biophysics.

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the surface waves in a homogeneous, isotropic, visco-elastic solid medium of n th order, including time rate of strain under the influence of surface stresses. The theory of generalized surface waves is developed to investigate particular cases of waves such as the Stoneley, Rayleigh, and Love waves. Corresponding equations have been obtained for different cases. These are reduced to classical results, when the effects of surface stresses and viscosity are ignored.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the stress and the displacement field of a crack within a robust version of gradient elasticity, focusing at the standard Mode I, II, III problems. Special treatment is attributed to the crack configuration near its tip, deriving the gradient elasticity results that are analogous to the classical asymptotical solutions near the crack tip.

Starting with Feynman’s “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” prophetic lecture at Caltech in the 1960s, the term “nanotechnology” was first coined in the scientific literature in the 1980s. This was followed by the unprecedented growth in the corresponding scientific field in 2000 due to the financial incentive provided by President Clinton in the US, followed up by similar efforts in Europe, Japan, China and Russia. Today, nanotechnology has become a driving force for economic development, with applications in all fields of engineering, information technology, transport and energy, as well as biology and medicine. Thus, it is important to forecast its future growth and evolution on the basis of two different criteria: (1) the government and private capital invested in related activities, and (2) the number of scientific publications and popular articles dedicated to this field. This article aims to extract forecasts on the evolution of nanotechnology, using the standard logistic equation that result in familiar sigmoid curves, as well as to explore the effect of time delay on its evolution. Time delay is commonly known from previous biological and ecological models, in which time lag is either already known or can be experimentally measured. In contrast, in the case of a new technology, we must first define the method for determining time delay and then interpret its existence and role. Then we describe the implications that time delay may have on the stability of the sigmoidal behavior of nanotechnology evolution and on the related oscillations that may appear.