Search results for "imulation"
showing 10 items of 7271 documents
Connectivity percolation in suspensions of hard platelets
2012
We present a study on connectivity percolation in suspensions of hard platelets by means of Monte Carlo simulation. We interpret our results using a contact-volume argument based on an effective single--particle cell model. It is commonly assumed that the percolation threshold of anisotropic objects scales as their inverse aspect ratio. While this rule has been shown to hold for rod-like particles, we find that for hard plate-like particles the percolation threshold is non-monotonic in the aspect ratio. It exhibits a shallow minimum at intermediate aspect ratios and then saturates to a constant value. This effect is caused by the isotropic-nematic transition pre-empting the percolation tran…
Inhibition of inflammatory responses by epitaondiol and other marine natural products
1995
The marine metabolites pacifenol, stypotriol triacetate and epitaondiol were tested for their effects on a number of inflammatory responses. Epitaondiol exhibited a potent topical anti-inflammatory activity related to inhibition of leukocyte accumulation. The other compounds showed a lower potency, similar to that of indomethacin. None of the compounds affected superoxide generation by human neutrophils but pacifenol effectively inhibited the degranulation response. This compound and epitaondiol decreased the release of eicosanoids with a higher potency on the cyclo-oxygenase pathway. Only epitaondiol inhibited human recombinant synovial phospholipase A2 activity in a concentration-dependen…
Flow Cytometric Analysis of Calcium Mobilization in Whole‐Blood Platelets
2003
Flow cytometry provides a convenient method to evaluate platelet activation by following the kinetics of intracellular free Ca2+, using sensitive fluorescent indicators that can be loaded into intact cells. Moreover, in the clinical setting, whole-blood techniques have obvious advantages to avoid artifactual platelet activation and allow the maintenance of near-physiological conditions. This unit describes a fast and sensitive flow cytometric procedure using the Ca2+-sensitive dye fluo-3 AM and the platelet-specific antibody CD41-PE to determine the kinetics of intracellular Ca2+ mobilization in whole-blood platelets with minimal manipulation of the samples. The technique may be applied to …
Three Step Bluetooth Positioning
2005
This paper discusses a three step procedure to perform high definition positioning by the use of low cost Bluetooth devices. The three steps are: Sampling, Deployment, and Real Time Positioning. A genetic algorithm is discussed for deployment optimization and a neural network for real time positioning. A case study, along with experiments and results, are finally discussed dealing with a castle in Sicily where many trials were carried out to the end of arranging a positioning system for context aware service provision to visitors.
Stress fields by the symmetric Galerkin boundary element method
2004
The paper examines the stress state of a body with the discretized boundary embedded in the infinite domain subjected to layered or double-layered actions, such as forces and displacement discontinuities on the boundary, and to internal actions, such as body forces and thermic variations, in the ambit of the symmetric Galerkin boundary element method (SGBEM). The stress distributions due to internal actions (body forces and thermic variations) were computed by transforming the volume integrals into boundary integrals. The aim of the paper is to show the tension state in Ω∞ as a response to all the actions acting in Ω when this analysis concerns the crossing of the discretized boundary, thu…
Modelling and Simulation of Gas–liquid Hydrodynamics in a Rectangular Air-lift Reactor
2013
Abstract Computational Fluid Dynamics is a quite well established tool for carrying out realistic simulations of process apparatuses. However, as a difference from single phase systems, for multiphase systems the development of CFD models is still in progress. Among the two-phase systems, gas–liquid systems are characterised by an additional complexity level, related to the fact that bubble sizes are not known in advance, being rather the result of formation and breakage-coalescence dynamics and therefore of complex phenomena related to flow dynamics and interfacial effects. In the present work, Euler–Euler Reynolds-averaged flow simulations of an air-lift reactor are reported. All bubbles …
A generalized model of elastic foundation based on long-range interactions: Integral and fractional model
2009
The common models of elastic foundations are provided by supposing that they are composed by elastic columns with some interactions between them, such as contact forces that yield a differential equation involving gradients of the displacement field. In this paper, a new model of elastic foundation is proposed introducing into the constitutive equation of the foundation body forces depending on the relative vertical displacements and on a distance-decaying function ruling the amount of interactions. Different choices of the distance-decaying function correspond to different kind of interactions and foundation behavior. The use of an exponential distance-decaying function yields an integro-d…
The mechanically-based approach to 3D non-local linear elasticity theory: Long-range central interactions
2010
Abstract This paper presents the generalization to a three-dimensional (3D) case of a mechanically-based approach to non-local elasticity theory, recently proposed by the authors in a one-dimensional (1D) case. The proposed model assumes that the equilibrium of a volume element is attained by contact forces between adjacent elements and by long-range forces exerted by non-adjacent elements. Specifically, the long-range forces are modelled as central body forces depending on the relative displacement between the centroids of the volume elements, measured along the line connecting the centroids. Further, the long-range forces are assumed to be proportional to a proper, material-dependent, dis…
Mechanically-based approach to non-local elasticity: Variational principles
2010
Abstract The mechanically-based approach to non-local elastic continuum, will be captured through variational calculus, based on the assumptions that non-adjacent elements of the solid may exchange central body forces, monotonically decreasing with their interdistance, depending on the relative displacement, and on the volume products. Such a mechanical model is investigated introducing primarily the dual state variables by means of the virtual work principle. The constitutive relations between dual variables are introduced defining a proper, convex, potential energy. It is proved that the solution of the elastic problem corresponds to a global minimum of the potential energy functional. Mo…
One-dimensional heterogeneous solids with uncertain elastic modulus in presence of long-range interactions: Interval versus stochastic analysis
2013
The analysis of one-dimensional non-local elastic solids with uncertain Young's modulus is addressed. Non-local effects are represented as long-range central body forces between non-adjacent volume elements. For comparison purpose, the fluctuating elastic modulus of the material is modeled following both a probabilistic and a non-probabilistic approach. To this aim, a novel definition of the interval field concept, able to limit the overestimation affecting ordinary interval analysis, is introduced. Approximate closed-form expressions are derived for the bounds of the interval displacement field as well as for the mean-value and variance of the stochastic response.