0000000001265222
AUTHOR
Karlis Kanders
Assessment of conduit artery vasomotion using photoplethysmography
Vasomotion is a spontaneous oscillation of vascular tone. The phenomenon has been observed in small arterioles and capillaries as well as in the large conduit arteries. The layer of smooth muscle cells that surrounds a blood vessel can spontaneously and periodically change its tension and thereby the arterial wall stiffness also changes. As the understanding of the phenomenon is still rather obscure, researchers would benefit from a low-cost and reliable investigation technique such as photoplethysmography (PPG). PPG is an optical blood pulsation measurement technique that can offer substantial information about the arterial stiffness. The aims of this pilot study were to evaluate the usefu…
Nanoindentation response analysis of Cu-rich carbon–copper composite films deposited by PVD technique
Abstract The micromechanical properties of sputter deposited amorphous carbon–copper (a-C/Cu) composite films with different carbon content (6.8–19.8 at.%) were investigated. Atomic force and electron microscopy studies confirmed that the a-C/Cu films have a two-phase microstructure of amorphous sp 2 /sp 3 -bonded carbon as a composite matrix with embedded copper nanocrystallites encapsulated in a graphene shell. Load–displacement curves obtained in nanoindentation experiments followed Meyer's law with the exponent varying slightly within the interval 2.0–2.2 depending on the penetration depth and carbon content. The reverse indentation size effect was observed which was most likely the res…
Strain hardening-softening oscillations induced by nanoindentation in bulk solids
Nanoindentation is a widely used method for sensitive exploration of the mechanical properties of micromechanical systems. We derived an empirical analysis technique to extract stress-strain field gradient and divergence representations from nanoindentation measurements. With this approach local gradients and heterogeneities can be discovered to obtain more detail about the sample's microstructure, thus enhancing the analytic capacity of the nanoindentation technique. We analysed nanoindentation tests of bulk solid substrates, namely bearing and tooling steel, and fused silica. Oscillations of the stress-strain field gradient and divergence induced in the subsurface layer by the nanoindenta…