Does offering only the spherical contact lens trial to the low astigmats mislead the practitioners?

AIM: To compare the visual acuity (VA), comfort, and patient preference in a soft toric contact lens (TCL) versus soft spherical contact lens (SCL) in low astigmatic subjects during the contact lens (CL) trial. METHODS: This subject-masked, block randomized, 2×2 crossover study recruited 40 neophyte subjects (80 eyes) aged 18 to 33y with astigmatism in the range of 0.75-1.25 D with or without spherical power from -6.00 D to +6.00 D. The participants were scheduled for two days CL trial and were fitted with the best-fit SCL and TCL. After 4h of wear, they were assessed objectively for high contrast VA and subjective vision, comfort, and preference. RESULTS: The responses of 36 subjects (response rate 90%) with a mean age of 23.02±2.97y (range 18 to 33y) were analyzed. One-line improvement of monocular VA in the logMAR chart was reported to TCL as compared to SCL (-0.044±0.06 vs 0.04±0.03 logMAR, P=0.01) but the binocular vision remained similar (-0.12±0.07 vs -0.14±0.04 logMAR, P=0.38). Subjects felt a noticeable difference in clarity when shifted to TCL as compared to the SCL. The satisfaction with vision (vision quality) was significantly better with TCL (P=0.03). The fatigue with TCL was graded less at 2.5±0.6, compared to SCL at 4.6±1.3 (P=0.04). Thirty-three participants (91.6%) preferred to use contact lens of which 26 participants (79%) preferred TCL. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that VA and comfort are better with TCL as compared to SCL which is only observed if the patient was offered both offering SCL with spherical equivalent power alone as the first option can mislead the practitioner; TCL trial should be the first choice of the lens in low-to-moderate astigmatism.

Wear and reliability of cylindrical vehicle joints

A method for calculating the wear of car suspension liners is presented. To determine the wear by a computational method, a system of equations for the spherical contact of mates of the friction unit of a car was obtained. An example of calculating wear for a given service life of a ball joint is given. The issue of determining the reliability indicators of a cylindrical hinge by the wear criterion is considered. An experimental study of the effectiveness of various greases for car hinge joints has been carried out.

Erratum: Chen, Z. and Etsion, I. Recent Development in Modeling of Coated Spherical Contact. Materials 2020, 13, 460

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [...]

A Coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian Model for Sliding Inception of Elastic–Plastic Spherical Contact

Currently existing finite element (FE) Lagrangian models of elastic–plastic spherical contact are costly in terms of computing time to reach vanishing tangential stiffness at sliding inception. A coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian (CEL) model with explicit dynamic analysis and power-law hardening is proposed to resolve this problem. The CEL model also avoids convergence problem caused by excessive distortion of elements in Lagrangian models. Static friction coefficient at sliding inception is investigated and compared with available experimental results. It is found that the proposed new CEL model is more efficient and accurate compared to previously published results of Lagrangian models.