Anisotropic Multishell Analytical Modeling of an Intervertebral Disk Subjected to Axial Compression

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Demers ◽  
Sylvie Nadeau ◽  
Abdel-Hakim Bouzid

Studies on intervertebral disk (IVD) response to various loads and postures are essential to understand disk's mechanical functions and to suggest preventive and corrective actions in the workplace. The experimental and finite-element (FE) approaches are well-suited for these studies, but validating their findings is difficult, partly due to the lack of alternative methods. Analytical modeling could allow methodological triangulation and help validation of FE models. This paper presents an analytical method based on thin-shell, beam-on-elastic-foundation and composite materials theories to evaluate the stresses in the anulus fibrosus (AF) of an axisymmetric disk composed of multiple thin lamellae. Large deformations of the soft tissues are accounted for using an iterative method and the anisotropic material properties are derived from a published biaxial experiment. The results are compared to those obtained by FE modeling. The results demonstrate the capability of the analytical model to evaluate the stresses at any location of the simplified AF. It also demonstrates that anisotropy reduces stresses in the lamellae. This novel model is a preliminary step in developing valuable analytical models of IVDs, and represents a distinctive groundwork that is able to sustain future refinements. This paper suggests important features that may be included to improve model realism.

Author(s):  
Saeed Delara ◽  
Kendra MacKay

Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) has become the preferred method for trenchless pipeline installations. Drilling pressures must be limited and a “no-drill zone” determined to avoid exceeding the strength of surrounding soil and rock. The currently accepted industry method of calculating hydraulic fracturing limiting pressure with application of an arbitrary safety factor contains several assumptions that are often not applicable to specific ground conditions. There is also no standard procedure for safety factor determination, resulting in detrimental impacts on drilling operations. This paper provides an analysis of the standard methods and proposes two alternative analytical models to more accurately determine the hydraulic fracture point and acceptable drilling pressure. These alternative methods provide greater understanding of the interaction between the drilling pressures and the surrounding ground strength properties. This allows for more accurate determination of horizontal directional drilling limitations. A comparison is presented to determine the differences in characteristics and assumptions for each model. The impact of specific soil properties and factors is investigated by means of a sensitivity analysis to determine the most critical soil information for each model.


Author(s):  
Farshad BahooToroody ◽  
Saeed Khalaj ◽  
Leonardo Leoni ◽  
Filippo De Carlo ◽  
Gianpaolo Di Bona ◽  
...  

Geosynthetics are extensively utilized to improve the stability of geotechnical structures and slopes in urban areas. Among all existing geosynthetics, geotextiles are widely used to reinforce unstable slopes due to their capabilities in facilitating reinforcement and drainage. To reduce settlement and increase the bearing capacity and slope stability, the classical use of geotextiles in embankments has been suggested. However, several catastrophic events have been reported, including failures in slopes in the absence of geotextiles. Many researchers have studied the stability of geotextile-reinforced slopes (GRSs) by employing different methods (analytical models, numerical simulation, etc.). The presence of source-to-source uncertainty in the gathered data increases the complexity of evaluating the failure risk in GRSs since the uncertainty varies among them. Consequently, developing a sound methodology is necessary to alleviate the risk complexity. Our study sought to develop an advanced risk-based maintenance (RBM) methodology for prioritizing maintenance operations by addressing fluctuations that accompany event data. For this purpose, a hierarchical Bayesian approach (HBA) was applied to estimate the failure probabilities of GRSs. Using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations of likelihood function and prior distribution, the HBA can incorporate the aforementioned uncertainties. The proposed method can be exploited by urban designers, asset managers, and policymakers to predict the mean time to failures, thus directly avoiding unnecessary maintenance and safety consequences. To demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology, the performance of nine reinforced slopes was considered. The results indicate that the average failure probability of the system in an hour is 2.8×10−5 during its lifespan, which shows that the proposed evaluation method is more realistic than the traditional methods.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus de B. Vallim ◽  
José M. C. Dos Santos ◽  
Argemiro L. A. Costa

ABSTRACT The transmission of vibrations in motorcycles and their perception by the passengers are fundamental in comfort analysis. Tire nonuniformities can generate self-excitations at the rotational frequency of the wheel and contribute to the ride vibration environment. In this work a multi-body motorcycle model is built to evaluate the ride comfort with respect to tire nonuniformities. The aim is to obtain a multi–degrees-of-freedom dynamic model that includes both the contributions of the motorcycle and tire–wheel assembly structures. This representation allows the tire nonuniformities to predict the vertical force variations on the motorcycle and can be used through a root mean square acceleration evaluation for ride comfort analysis. The motorcycle model proposed is a 10-degrees-of-freedom system, where each tire–wheel is a 4-degrees-of-freedom model. The tire–wheel assemblies include two types of nonuniformities: lumped mass imbalance and radial run-out. Simulations of analytical models are compared with experimental tests.


Author(s):  
Fanxia Kong ◽  
Yuan-Shin Lee

This paper presents a new analytical modeling of ultrasonic vibration assisted drilling of bones for medical surgery operations. Due to the heterogeneous bone structure and the uneven bone surface, bone surgery cutting suffers from inaccuracy and difficulty in high precision bone surgery cutting. In this paper, a new method of ultrasonic vibration assisted drilling is proposed for bone surgery cutting. An analytical force modeling is presented for ultrasonic vibration assisted bone drilling. Experimental result validates the analytical modeling presented in the paper. Preliminary testing result also shows a significant improvement of drilling accuracy based on the proposed ultrasonic vibration assisted bone drilling. The proposed cutting techniques can be used in bone cutting surgery to increase the accuracy of born drilling position and reduce trauma damage of bone and surrounding soft tissues.


2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Wong ◽  
Paul Subar ◽  
Heidi Witherell ◽  
Konstantin J Ovodov

Nasal intubation is an advantageous approach for dental procedures performed in the hospital, ambulatory surgery center, or dental office, when possible. Although many who provide anesthesia services are familiar and comfortable with nasal intubation techniques, some are reluctant and uncomfortable because of lack of experience or fear of nasopharyngeal bleeding and trauma. It has been observed from experiences in various settings that many approaches may be adapted to the technique of achieving nasal intubation. The technique that is described in this paper suggests a minimally invasive approach that introduces the nasoendotracheal tube through the nasopharyngeal pathway to the oropharynx in an expedient manner while preserving the nasopharyngeal structures, thus lessening nasal bleeding and trauma to soft tissues. The technique uses a common urethral catheter and can be incorporated along with current intubation armamentaria. As with all techniques, some limitations to the approach have been identified and are described in this paper. Cases with limited mouth opening, neck injury, and difficult airways may necessitate alternative methods. However, the short learning curve along with the many benefits of this technique offers the anesthesia professional additional options for excellent patient care.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 1287
Author(s):  
Salah A.M. Elmoselhy ◽  
Waleed F. Faris ◽  
Hesham A. Rakha

The flexibility of a crankshaft exhibits significant nonlinearities in the analysis of diesel engines performance, particularly at rotational speeds of around 2000 rpm. Given the explainable mathematical trends of the analytical model and the lack of available analytical modeling of the diesel engines intake manifold with a flexible crankshaft, the present study develops and validates such a model. In the present paper, the mass flow rate of air that goes from intake manifold into all the cylinders of the engine with a flexible crankshaft has been analytically modeled. The analytical models of the mass flow rate of air and gas speed dynamics have been validated using case studies and the ORNL and EPA Freeway standard drive cycles showing a relative error of 7.5% and 11%, respectively. Such values of relative error are on average less than those of widely recognized models in this field, such as the GT-Power and the CMEM, respectively. A simplified version for control applications of the developed models has been developed based on a sensitivity analysis. It has been found that the flexibility of a crankshaft decreases the mass flow rate of air that goes into cylinders, resulting in an unfavorable higher rate of exhaust emissions like CO. It has also been found that the pressure of the gas inside the cylinder during the intake stroke has four elements: a driving element (intake manifold pressure) and draining elements (vacuum pressure and flow losses and inertial effect of rotating mass). The element of the least effect amongst these four elements is the vacuum pressure that results from the piston's inertia and acceleration. The element of the largest effect is the pressure drop that takes place in the cylinder because of the air/gas flow losses. These developed models are explainable and widely valid so that they can help in better analyzing the performance of diesel engines.


1997 ◽  
Vol 01 (02) ◽  
pp. 81-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. K. Goel ◽  
N. M. Grosland ◽  
J. Scifert

The human disc and the facets work in unison to transmit loads across a lumbar motion segment. For this reason, if one component is affected by the degenerative process, the other follows. Modern imaging techniques and clinical observations have adequately delineated morphological changes in the spinal structures, while in vitro biomechanical studies have revealed that repetitive complex loads may lead to loosening of spinal structures, annular tears, and herniated discs. In addition to such experimental methods, analytical models have been able to explain the role of mechanical factors in producing disc degeneration and herniation. Furthermore, these techniques are applicable to investigating various surgical stabilization procedures. From a biomechanical perspective, surgical procedures such as discectomy are effective in reducing pain due to a decrease in disc bulge following surgery. Excessive instability across the disc, however, may require the use of bone grafts, cages or other types of interbody spacers to restore disc height. Efforts are currently underway to restore disc mechanics via an artificial disc. The following review is aimed at outlining the role of mechanical foctors in both inducing and stabilizing the degenerated/herniated intervertebral disc.


1984 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. R. Simon ◽  
R. S. Coats ◽  
S. L.-Y. Woo

A quasilinear viscoelastic model was used to develop relaxation and creep forms for a constitutive law for soft tissues. Combined relaxation and cyclic test data as well as preconditioned and nonpreconditioned creep data were used to demonstrate the approach for normal bovine articular cartilage. Values for mechanical parameters in the analytical models were determined using a generalized least squares method.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katy Burrows ◽  
David Milledge ◽  
Richard J. Walters ◽  
Dino Bellugi

Abstract. Information on the spatial distribution of triggered landslides following an earthquake is invaluable to emergency responders. Manual mapping using optical satellite imagery, which is currently the most common method of generating this landslide information, is extremely time consuming and can be disrupted by cloud-cover. Empirical models of landslide probability and landslide detection with satellite radar data are two alternative methods of generating information on triggered landslides that overcome these limitations. Here we assess the potential of a combined approach, in which we generate an empirical model of the landslides using data available immediately following the earthquake using the Random Forests technique, and then progressively add landslide indicators derived from Sentinel-1 and ALOS-2 satellite radar data to this model in the order they were acquired following the earthquake. We use three large case study earthquakes and test two model types: first, a model that is trained on a small part of the study area and used to predict the remainder of the landslides, and second a preliminary "global" model that is trained on the landslide data from two earthquakes and used to predict the third. We assess model performance using receiver operating characteristic analysis and r2, and find that the addition of the radar data can considerably improve model performance and robustness within two weeks of the earthquake. In particular, we observed a large improvement in model performance when the first ALOS-2 image was added and recommend that these data or similar data from other L-band radar satellites be routinely incorporated in future empirical models.


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