Parabolic leaf spring is one of the vital components in vehicle suspension system, and it is commonly used in heavy vehicles. It needs to have an excellent static load bearing capacity and fatigue life too. The purpose of this work is to make computer aided engineering (CAE) analysis of mono parabolic leaf spring and to see the effect of change of material in the optimized leaf. A mono steel leaf spring and a mono leaf spring made of composite material have been selected for this comparative analysis. The material of the mono steel leaf spring is EN45A and Glass Reinforced Plastic (GRP) as composite material which is having high strength to weight ratio. The mono leaf spring model is having one full length leave with eyes at both ends, two pins in each eye end and a rubber pad on the upper face of leave center. The CAD modelling of parabolic leaf spring has been done in CATIA and for analysis the model is imported in ANSYS workbench. It was shown that the use of composite material instead of steel resulted into large deflection, small variation in stresses and also a large amount of weight reduction.

The main objective of this paper is to study the effects of haversinse and triangular loading waveforms on the fatigue life of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) specimens. Effects of load duration, rest period and stress level are also studied for the asphalt mixtures at 25oC. An indirect tensile test with strain control was performed to determine the fatigue life of asphalt. The fatigue tests were performed at two stress levels (170 and 250 kPa), two waveforms (haversine and triangle), three load duration (100, 200, 400 ms), and two rest period to load duration ratios (4 and 9). The obtained results showed that fatigue life of haversine waveform is less than fatigue life of triangle waveform. As the area under the loading curve is increased (stress level is increased or deformed), effect of rest period on the fatigue life decreases. On the other hand, as the tire contact area is increased, the induced tire pressure reduction decreases its destructive effects on the asphalt layer. As the load duration is decreased, fatigue life will increase. This effect is more pronounced for lower stress levels than the higher stress levels.

This paper presents an approach of linking finite element method with artificial neural network to predict J-Integral parameter in desirable airfoil condition. Finite Element (FE) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) have been employed for the purpose. In other words, a prediction of finite element results has been done using ANN. Ultimately results of two methods have been compared for different cases. Wing fracture is a well-known problem of the planes which depends on various parameters. The J-integral is a vital parameter in evaluations of structure fracture phenomena. On the other hand residual stresses play an influential role in fracture formation. In the current work, effect of residual stresses and crack depth on J-Integral has been investigated in a standard NACA0012-34 airfoil. As will be seen, residual stresses and crack depth influence J-Integral values. It also will be shown that predictions of ANN method are in a good agreement with those obtained by finite element method.

The present paper summarizes the results from uniaxial-tension stress-controlled fatigue tests performed at different temperatures up to 650°C on Cu-Be specimens. Two geometries are considered: hourglass shaped and plates weakened by a central hole (Cu-Be alloy). The motivation of the present work is that, at the best of authors’ knowledge, only a limited number of papers on these alloys under high-temperature fatigue are available in the literature and no results deal with notched components. The Cu-Be specimens fatigue data are re-analyzed in terms of the mean value of the Strain Energy Density (SED) averaged over a control volume. Thanks to the SED approach it is possible to summarize in a single scatter-band all the fatigue data, independently of the specimen geometry.

This paper derives a semi-analytical solution to determine displacements and stresses in a thick cylindrical shell with variable thickness under uniform pressure based on disk form multilayers. The proposed study partitions the thick cylinder into disk-layer parts based on their thickness of the cylinder. According to the existence of shear stress in the thick cylindrical shell with variable thickness, the equations governing disk layers are acquired based on first shear deformation theory (FSDT), which are in the form of a set of general differential equations. In this study, the cylinder is partitioned into n different disks and n sets of differential equations are derived. The solution of these equations provides displacements and stresses based on the boundary conditions and continuity conditions between the layers. The results are compared with those obtained through the analytical solution and the numerical solution. For the purpose of the analytical solution, matched asymptotic method (MAM) and for the analytical solution, the finite element method (FEM are implemented.

In the present paper, the differential transformation method is employed to develop a semi-analytical solution for free transverse vibration of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) with arbitrary boundary conditions. The small scale effect is taken into consideration via Eringen’s nonlocal elasticity theory while the transverse shear deformation effects and rotary inertia are taken into account in presented Timoshenko beam theory. Through variational formulation and the Hamilton & apos; s principle the governing differential equations and the boundary conditions are derived and then solved by a semi-analytical method called differential transformation method (DTM) for various frequency modes of beams and different edge conditions. Comparisons made between the present results and results reported by well-known references for special cases treated before, have confirmed accuracy and efficiency of the presented approach. The effects of several parameters such as transverse shear deformation effects, slenderness ratios, boundary conditions and small scale on vibration characteristics of SWCNT are examined. The present study illustrates that the vibration characteristics of an SWCNT are strongly dependent on the small scale parameters.

Over the past decades, high entropy alloys (HEAs) have attracted continuously increasing research efforts because of their technological promise for structural applications and their scientific interest as a multi-component alloy exhibiting an overall random solid solution structure with high mixing entropy at high temperature. In this summary, we briefly review the recent studies focused on the structure and mechanical behavior of HEAs, covering the important issues from phase stability to elastic modulus, mechanical strength, hardness and fatigue resistance. Finally, we highlight a few key findings recently reported for HEAs and discuss the outstanding issues yet to be resolved.

In this study, the impact response of glass/epoxy laminates interleaved by Polycaprolactone (PCL) nanofibers is considered. PCL is a thermoplastic polymer, which is a good choice for toughening epoxy-based composite. The impact tests were conducted on curved laminates and under 24 and 36J. The results showed that the effect of interleaving on impact parameters such as maximum load is negligible, but on the other hand could decrease damaged area significantly. By inserting 30?m of PCL nanofibers between each layer of laminate the damaged area decreased about 27%.

The effect of football neck collar on the right external carotid blood flow was investigated for ten healthy subjects using Echo-Doppler technique and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. Carotid is in charge of blooding head’s parts including the brain and eyes. Hence, the evaluation of affected carotid flow by using neck collars is crucial for an improved ergonomic design. The testings were divided into three main categories; participants without wearing neck collar (Category 1), wearing neck collar (Category 2), and finally wearing neck collar with an embedded gap adjacent to the carotid artery position (Category 3). The experimental and numerical results revealed that wearing the neck collar (Category 2) reduced the average blood carotid flow by 28% compared to the case with no neck collar (Category 1). This average blood carotid flow reduction was improved by 15% when a gap separates the collar from the carotid artery position (Category 3). The results of this paper suggest a new design for the next generation of the neck collar by devising an appropriate gap near to carotid artery. The numerical results were validated and were in a reasonable agreement with the experimental data.

In this paper, a volume criterion based on a simple scalar quantity, the mean value of the strain energy (SED), has been used to assess the static strength of notched components made of Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA). The local-strain-energy based approach has been applied to a well-documented set of experimental data recently reported in the literature. Data refer to blunt U-notched cylindrical specimens of commercial PMMA subjected to static loads and characterised by a large variability of notch tip radius (from 0.67 mm to 2.20 mm). Critical loads obtained experimentally have been compared with the theoretical ones, estimated by keeping constant the mean value of the strain energy in a well-defined small size volume. In addition, some new tests dealing with V-notched specimens with end holes have been carried out to investigate the effect of the notch opening angle.