The Modeling of Magnetorheological Elastomers: A State-of-the-Art Review

The magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) are novel multifunctional materials wherein their viscoelastic properties can be varied instantly under an application of applied magnetic field. Due to their field-dependent stiffness and damping properties, MREs are widely used in the development and design of MRE-based adaptive vibration isolators and absorbers and also biomedical engineering. Moreover, MREs due to their inherent magnetostriction effect have enormous potential for the development of soft actuators. The dynamic behavior of MREs is affected by various material parameters (e.g., matrix and particle types, particle concentration, additives) as well as mechanical and magnetic loading parameters (e.g., frequency, amplitude, temperature, magnetic flux density). Understanding and predicting the effect of materials and loading parameters on the response behavior of MREs are of paramount importance for the design of MRE-based adaptive structures and systems. This review paper mainly aims to provide a comprehensive study of material constitutive models to predict the nonlinear magnetomechanical behavior of MREs. Particular emphasis is paid to physics-based models including continuum- and microstructure-based models. Moreover, phenomenological models describing the dynamic magnetoviscoelastic behavior of MREs as well as the effect of temperature on the magnetomechanical behavior of such materials are properly addressed.     

野草入侵模糊算法的半主动空气悬架研究

为了抑制由路面不平引起的车辆振动,结合磁流变阻尼器和空气弹簧的变阻尼/刚度特性,设计了含内置永磁体式磁流变阻尼器的半主动空气悬架系统.基于电磁学原理,对内置永磁体式磁流变阻尼器的力学特性建模.建立了1/4车辆二自由度动力学模型,并利用野草入侵算法对常规模糊算法规则进行优化,开发了野草入侵-模糊混合控制策略对内置永磁体磁流变阻尼器的空气悬架进行半主动控制.为验证该控制策略在磁流变空气悬架的半主动控制效果,进行了C级路面随机输入及凸块脉冲输入仿真分析,仿真结果可知,野草入侵-模糊控制策略能有效地提高半主动悬架系统的综合性能.并且通过台架试验进一步表明,利用该控制策略能够使车身振动加速度及悬架动挠度分别减小25.87%、35.13%.     

Towards a continuous microfluidic rheometer

In a previous paper we presented a way to measure the rheological properties of complex fluids on a microfluidic chip (Guillot et al., Langmuir 22:6438, 2006). The principle of our method is to use parallel flows between two immiscible fluids as a pressure sensor. In fact, in a such flow, both fluids flow side by side and the size occupied by each fluid stream depends only on both flow rates and on both viscosities. We use this property to measure the viscosity of one fluid knowing the viscosity of the other one, both flow rates and the relative size of both streams in a cross-section. We showed that using a less viscous fluid as a reference fluid allows to define a mean shear rate with a low standard deviation in the other fluid. This method allows us to measure the flow curve of a fluid with less than 250 μL of fluid. In this paper we implement this principle in a fully automated set up which controls the flow rate, analyzes the picture and calculates the mean shear rate and the viscosity of the studied fluid. We present results obtained for Newtonian fluids and complex fluids using this set up and we compare our data with cone and plate rheometer measurements. By adding a mixing stage in the fluidic network we show how this set up can be used to characterize in a continuous way the evolution of the rheological properties as a function of the formulation composition. We illustrate this by measuring the rheological curve of four formulations of polyethylene oxide solution with only 1.3 mL of concentrated polyethylene oxide solution. This method could be very useful in screening processes where the viscosity range and the behavior of the fluid to an applied stress must be evaluated.     

Large-scale protein identification of human urine proteome by multi-dimensional LC and MS/MS

Urine is a human specimen that is easily obtained non-invasively for clinical diagnosis. We attempted to enhance the resolution of current human urine proteomes and construct a comprehensive reference database for advanced studies, such as the discovery of biomarkers for renal diseases. Multi-dimensional LC-MS/MS was coupled with de novo sequencing and database matching. The proposed approach improved the identification of not only the proteins, but also the post-translational sites of urinary proteins. We identified 165, 200 and 259 unique gene products in the urine proteomes from males, females and pregnant women, respectively. When all of the results were combined and the redundancies removed, a total of 1095 distinct peptides were identified. Of these, 1016 peptides were associated with 334 unique gene products. In this study, over 100 gene products, including some disease-related proteins, were detected in urine for the first time by proteomic approaches. Various proteins with novel post-translational hydroxylation were identified using the MASCOT program and de novo sequencing. All proteins with peptide information were summarized into a comprehensive urine protein database. We believe that this comprehensive urine proteome database will assist in the identification of urinary proteins/polypeptides whose spectra are difficult to interpret in the discovery of urinary biomarkers.     

Multicomponent diffusion in phase-separating polymer blends with different frictional interactions: a mean-friction model

We present a compact formula for describing the mean frictional forces acting on a molecule in multicomponent systems. The friction-based diffusion theory of Zielinski and Hanley was extended to newly include the friction-average molar velocity as a reference frame. The results showed that the previous diffusion theories are unified by the friction-average concept by properly choosing the average velocity. The present model based on the diffusivity-related molar average velocity provides better predictions for the diffusive flux in a ternary miscible liquid compared to the other existing theories. The application of the model in phase-separating ternary systems revealed that the introduction of a highly diffusive third component into demixing polymer blends promotes a particular enhancement of the spinodal decomposition due to the difference in the frictional interactions between polymers.     

Quantum Phase Transition in the BCS-to-BEC Evolution of p-wave Fermi Gases

We discuss the possibility of a quantum phase transition in ultra-cold spin-polarized Fermi gases which exhibit a p-wave Feshbach resonance. We show that when fermionic atoms form a condensate that can be externally tuned between the BCS and BEC limits, the zero temperature compressibility and the spin susceptibility of the fermionic gas are non-analytic functions of the two-body bound state energy. This non-analyticity is due to a massive rearrangement of the momentum distribution in the ground state of the system. Furthermore, we show that the low temperature superfluid density is also non-analytic and exhibits a dramatic change in behavior when the critical value of the bound state energy is crossed.     

温度和应变频率对电流变体（ER）的力学参数的影响

通过对玉米粉／玉米油电流变体（ＥＲ）的力学参数测试，研究了电场强度（Ｅ）、温度（Ｔ）和应变频率（ｆ）对ＥＲ储能模量（Ｇ′）、耗散模量（Ｇ＂）及粘度系数（η′、η＂）的影响。实验结果表明：Ｇ′随Ｅ和ｆ的增大而增大；Ｇ＂随Ｅ的增大而增大，而随ｆ的变化具有峰值特征，最大值发生在１５～３０Ｈｚ之间；η′、η＂随Ｅ和ｆ的变化与Ｇ′、Ｇ＂的变化趋势相同；而温度的升高均使Ｇ′、Ｇ＂、η′和η＂值降低。     

不同冲击波强度下流体界面运动变化的数值模拟

采用数值模拟的方法对不同冲击波强度条件下界面的运动变化进行了数值模拟，探讨了冲击波强度对界面运动变化的影响，该研究为提高不同流体间的混合效果提供了依据。