On fiber dispersion models: exclusion of compressed fibers and spurious model comparisons

Fiber dispersion in collagenous soft tissues has an important influence on the mechanical response, and the modeling of the collagen fiber architecture and its mechanics has developed significantly over the last few years. The purpose of this paper is twofold, first to develop a method for excluding compressed fibers within a dispersion for the generalized structure tensor (GST) model, which several times in the literature has been claimed not to be possible, and second to draw attention to several erroneous and misleading statements in the literature concerning the relative values of the GST and the angular integration (AI) models. For the GST model we develop a rather simple method involving a deformation dependent dispersion parameter that allows the mechanical influence of compressed fibers within a dispersion to be excluded. The theory is illustrated by application to simple extension and simple shear in order to highlight the effect of exclusion. By means of two examples we also show that the GST and the AI models have equivalent predictive power, contrary to some claims in the literature. We conclude that from the theoretical point of view neither of these two models is superior to the other. However, as is well known and as we now emphasize, the GST model has proved to be very successful in modeling the data from experiments on a wide range of tissues, and it is easier to analyze and simpler to implement than the AI approach, and the related computational effort is much lower

Anwendungsbereiche der isothermalen Mikrokalorimetrie in der Urologie: Eine Übersicht

Zusammenfassung: Die isothermale Mikrokalorimetrie (IMC) ist ein nicht spezifisches Wärmemessverfahren. Die hohe Sensitivität des Verfahrens (0,2μW) erlaubt den Nachweis kleinster Wärmemengen z.B. produziert von Mikroorganismen oder eukaryoten Zellen. Ziel dieser Übersichtsarbeit ist es, technische Grundlagen mikrokalorimetrischer Messungen zu vermitteln sowie über Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft dieser vielversprechenden Technologie im urologischen Kontext zu berichte

Immersed boundary-finite element model of fluid-structure interaction in the aortic root

It has long been recognized that aortic root elasticity helps to ensure efficient aortic valve closure, but our understanding of the functional importance of the elasticity and geometry of the aortic root continues to evolve as increasingly detailed in vivo imaging data become available. Herein, we describe fluid-structure interaction models of the aortic root, including the aortic valve leaflets, the sinuses of Valsalva, the aortic annulus, and the sinotubular junction, that employ a version of Peskin's immersed boundary (IB) method with a finite element (FE) description of the structural elasticity. We develop both an idealized model of the root with three-fold symmetry of the aortic sinuses and valve leaflets, and a more realistic model that accounts for the differences in the sizes of the left, right, and noncoronary sinuses and corresponding valve cusps. As in earlier work, we use fiber-based models of the valve leaflets, but this study extends earlier IB models of the aortic root by employing incompressible hyperelastic models of the mechanics of the sinuses and ascending aorta using a constitutive law fit to experimental data from human aortic root tissue. In vivo pressure loading is accounted for by a backwards displacement method that determines the unloaded configurations of the root models. Our models yield realistic cardiac output at physiological pressures, with low transvalvular pressure differences during forward flow, minimal regurgitation during valve closure, and realistic pressure loads when the valve is closed during diastole. Further, results from high-resolution computations demonstrate that IB models of the aortic valve are able to produce essentially grid-converged dynamics at practical grid spacings for the high-Reynolds number flows of the aortic root

Lepton-Flavor Violation via Right-Handed Neutrino Yukawa Couplings in Supersymmetric Standard Model

Various lepton-flavor violating (LFV) processes in the supersymmetric standard model with right-handed neutrino supermultiplets are investigated in detail. It is shown that large LFV rates are obtained when $\tan \beta$ is large. In the case where the mixing matrix in the lepton sector has a similar structure as the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix and the third-generation Yukawa coupling is as large as that of the top quark, the branching ratios can be as large as $Br(\mu\rightarrow e\gamma)\simeq 10^{-11}$ and $Br(\tau\rightarrow\mu\gamma)\simeq 10^{-7}$, which are within the reach of future experiments. If we assume a large mixing angle solution to the atmospheric neutrino problem, rate for the process $\tau\rightarrow\mu\gamma$ becomes larger. We also discuss the difference between our case and the case of the minimal $SU(5)$ grand unified theory

Physics with the KLOE-2 experiment at the upgraded DAϕ\phiNE

Investigation at a $\phi$--factory can shed light on several debated issues in particle physics. We discuss: i) recent theoretical development and experimental progress in kaon physics relevant for the Standard Model tests in the flavor sector, ii) the sensitivity we can reach in probing CPT and Quantum Mechanics from time evolution of entangled kaon states, iii) the interest for improving on the present measurements of non-leptonic and radiative decays of kaons and eta/eta$^\prime$ mesons, iv) the contribution to understand the nature of light scalar mesons, and v) the opportunity to search for narrow di-lepton resonances suggested by recent models proposing a hidden dark-matter sector. We also report on the $e^+ e^-$ physics in the continuum with the measurements of (multi)hadronic cross sections and the study of gamma gamma processes.Comment: 60 pages, 41 figures; added affiliation for one of the authors; added reference to section

Isotropic versus anisotropic growth description for abdominal aortic aneurysm evolution

Motivated by the lack of experimental data, we investigate the influence of different growth kinematics on the abdominal aortic aneurysm growth. We model the tissue’s mechanical response by a microstructure-motivated material law. The mass changes of the constituents are governed by growth and remodeling algorithms. The tissue volume change is computed from the volume changes of individual constituents. We consider four different volume growth assumptions: no volume growth (NVG), isotropic (IVG), in-plane (PVG) and in-thickness (TVG). The results suggest that NVG and TVG are most suitable for modeling aneurysm growth, while IVG and PVG produced unrealistic results

Comparison of a multi-layer structural model for arterial walls with a fung-type model, and issues of material stability

The goals of this paper are (i) to re-examine the constitutive law for the description of the (passive) highly nonlinear and anisotropic response of healthy elastic arteries introduced recently by the authors, (ii) to show how the mechanical response of a carotid artery under inflation and extension predicted by the structural model compares with that for a three-dimensional form of Fung-type strain-energy function, (iii) to provide a new set of material parameters that can be used in a finite element program, and (iv) to show that the model has certain mathematical features that are important from the point of view of material and numerical stability

A new constitutive framework for arterial wall mechanics and a comparative study of material models

In this paper we develop a new constitutive law for the description of the (passive) mechanical response of arterial tissue. The artery is modeled as a thick-walled nonlinearly elastic circular cylindrical tube consisting of two layers corresponding to the media and adventitia (the solid mechanically relevant layers in healthy tissue). Each layer is treated as a fiber-reinforced material with the fibers corresponding to the collagenous component of the material and symmetrically disposed with respect to the cylinder axis. The resulting constitutive law is orthotropic in each layer. Fiber orientations obtained from a statistical analysis of histological sections from each arterial layer are used. A specific form of the law, which requires only three material parameters for each layer, is used to study the response of an artery under combined axial extension, inflation and torsion. The characteristic and very important residual stress in an artery in vitro is accounted for by assuming that the natural (unstressed and unstrained) configuration of the material corresponds to an open sector of a tube, which is then closed by an initial bending to form a load-free, but stressed, circular cylindrical configuration prior to application of the extension, inflation and torsion. The effect of residual stress on the stress distribution through the deformed arterial wall in the physiological state is examined. The model is fitted to available data on arteries and its predictions are assessed for the considered combined loadings. It is explained how the new model is designed to avoid certain mechanical, mathematical and computational deficiencies evident in currently available phenomenological models. A critical review of these models is provided by way of background to the development of the new model