This paper explores growth induced morphological instabilities in biological soft materials. In view of that the growth of a living tissue not only changes its geometry but also can alter its mechanical properties, we suggest a refined volumetric growth model incorporating the effects of growth on the mechanical properties of materials. Analogy between this volumetric growth model and the conventional thermal stress model is addressed for both small and finite de- formation problems, which brings great ease for the finite element analysis based on the suggested model. Examples of growth induced surface wrinkling behavior in soft composites, including core- shell soft cylinders and three-layered soft tissues, are explored. The results and discussions foresee possible applications of the model in understanding the correlation between the morphogenesis and growth of soft biological tissues （e.g. skins and tumors）, as well as in evaluating the defor- mation and surface instability behavior of soft artificial materials induced by swelling/shrinkage.
Optical full-field measurement methods are now widely applied in various domains. In general,the displacement fields can be directly obtained from the measurement,however in mechanical analysis strain fields are preferred.To extract strain fields from noisy displacement fields is always a challenging topic.In this study,a finite element method for smoothing displacement fields and calculating strain fields is proposed.An experimental test case on a holed aluminum specimen under tension is applied to validate this method.The heterogeneous displacement fields are measured by digital image correlation(DIC).By this proposed method,the result shows that the measuring noise on experimental displacement fields can be successfully removed,and strain fields can be reconstructed in the arbitrary area.
B.Q.Guo,~(1,a)) H.M.Xie,~(1,b)) Y.J.Li,~1P.W.Chen,~2and Q.M.Zhang~2 1) AML,Department of Engineering Mechanics,Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084,China 2) State Key Laboratory of Explosion Science and Technology,Beijing Institute of Technology,Beijing 100081, China
In this paper,the force-distance curves have been employed to investigate the force sensing properties of the probe-type microforce sensors.In the preliminary studies,two kinds of probe-type microforce sensors have been used to load the objects with dry and wetted surfaces.One is a developed piezoresistive cantilever force sensor with sensitivity of 35 μN/V and the other an atomic force microscope(AFM) cantilever beam probe with sensitivity of 10.4 nN/V.The force outputs corresponding to the regimes of approaching,indenting,and loading are obtained,and the properties of the stability in the approaching regime of the sensors,local mechanical behavior of the tested objects in the indenting regime,and the force sensing of the global samples are analyzed.Experimental results of this analysis are also presented.
Surface effects on the persistence length of quasi-one-dimensional nanomaterials are investigated by using the theory of surface elasticity and the core-shell model of nanobeams. A simple and unified expression is provided to determine the persistence length of nanowires and nanotubes with any regular polygonal cross-sections. It is demonstrated that surface effects have a distinct in- fluence on the persistence length when the characteristic sizes of materials shrink to nanometers. This work is helpful not only for understanding the size-dependent behavior of nanomaterials but also for the design of devices based on nanotubes or nanowires.
The buckling behavior of a typical structure consisting of a micro constantan wire and a polymer membrane under coupled electrical-mechanical loading was studied. The phenomenon that the constantan wire delaminates from the polymer membrane was observed after unloading. The interfacial toughness of the constantan wire and the polymer membrane was estimated. Moreover, several new instability modes of the constantan wire could be further triggered based on the buckle-driven delamination. After electrical loading and tensile loading, the constantan wire was likely to fracture based on buckling. After electrical loading and compressive loading, the constantan wire was easily folded at the top of the buckling region. On the occasion, the constantan wire buckled towards the inside of the polymer membrane under electrical-compressive loading. The mechanisms of these instability modes were analyzed.
