Edge Effects in Moderately Thick Plates under Creep-Damage Conditions

The late F.P.J. Rimrott has published during his scientific life more than 200 refereed articles and conference papers. Various papers among them were devoted to the creep and plasticity analysis in metallic thin-walled structural elements mostly published in the period from 1958 till 1964. With regard to this early period below we discuss finite element solutions for moderately thick plates under creep-damage conditions based on shell and solid type finite elements. The results illustrate the time-dependent stress redistributions in the edge zones. We show that the transverse normal and shear stresses may have a significant influence on the damage evolution and must be considered in numerical lifetime estimations

Numerical Analysis of a Steam Turbine Rotor subjected to Thermo-Mechanical Cyclic Loads

The contribution at hand discusses the thermo-mechanical analysis of a steam turbine rotor, made of a heat-resistant steel. Thereby, the analysis accounts for the complicated geometry of a real steam turbine rotor, subjected to practical and complex thermo-mechanical boundary conditions. Various thermo-mechanical loading cycles are taken into account, including different starting procedures (cold and warm starts). Within the thermal analysis using the FE code ABAQUS, instationary steam temperatures as well as heat transfer coefficients are prescribed, and the resulting temperature field serves as input for the subsequent structural analysis. In order to describe the mechanical behavior of the heat-resistant steel, which exhibits significant rate-dependent inelasticity combined with hardening and softening phenomena, a robust nonlinear constitutive approach, the binary mixture model, is employed and implemented in ABAQUS in two different ways, i.e. using explicit as well as implicit  methods for the time integration of the governing evolution equations. The numerical performance, the required computational effort, and the obtained accuracy of both integration methods are examined with reference to the thermo-mechanical analysis of a steam turbine rotor, as a typical practical example for the numerical analysis of a complex component. In addition, the obtained temperature, stress, and strain fields in the steam turbine rotor are discussed in detail, and the influence of the different starting procedures is examined closely

Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur Modellierung und numerischen Berechnung mehrschichtiger Rotationsschalen

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Variationslösungen für schubstarre Platten (II)

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Lebensdauerabschätzung dünnwandiger Flächentragwerke auf der Grundlage phänomenologischer Materialmodelle für Kriechen und Schädigung

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Variationslösungen für schubstarre Platten (I)

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Ecological and Biological Response of Benthic Foraminifera Under Oxygen-Depleted Conditions: Evidence from Laboratory Approaches

Laboratory experiments are a valuable way to elucidate physiological and ecological processes of benthic foraminifera under oxygen-depleted conditions. Experimentally tested survival rates and other experiments show high tolerance of many species under low oxic to anoxic conditions. Laboratory observations raised different assumptions to explain the physiological adaptations to this tolerance. Denitrification processes seem to be one important mechanism. Nevertheless, foraminifera try to colonize sediment horizons with optimal species-specific oxygen concentrations. Experimental settings demonstrated the importance of oxygen gradients for the orientation in sediments. At the same time, foraminifera change the oxygen concentration in their microenvironment by respiration. Despite high bioturbation, they do not appear to influence the flux of oxygen into the sediment. Experimental working in oxygen-depleted environments needs a reliable determination of living foraminifera during the experiment, e.g., different biochemical techniques. Additionally, electrochemical or optical oxygen sensors that measure the oxygen concentration are necessary

Deciphering the complexities of the wheat flour proteome using quantitative two-dimensional electrophoresis, three proteases and tandem mass spectrometry

BACKGROUND: Wheat flour is one of the world's major food ingredients, in part because of the unique end-use qualities conferred by the abundant glutamine- and proline-rich gluten proteins. Many wheat flour proteins also present dietary problems for consumers with celiac disease or wheat allergies. Despite the importance of these proteins it has been particularly challenging to use MS/MS to distinguish the many proteins in a flour sample and relate them to gene sequences. RESULTS: Grain from the extensively characterized spring wheat cultivar Triticum aestivum 'Butte 86' was milled to white flour from which proteins were extracted, then separated and quantified by 2-DE. Protein spots were identified by separate digestions with three proteases, followed by tandem mass spectrometry analysis of the peptides. The spectra were used to interrogate an improved protein sequence database and results were integrated using the Scaffold program. Inclusion of cultivar specific sequences in the database greatly improved the results, and 233 spots were identified, accounting for 93.1% of normalized spot volume. Identified proteins were assigned to 157 wheat sequences, many for proteins unique to wheat and nearly 40% from Butte 86. Alpha-gliadins accounted for 20.4% of flour protein, low molecular weight glutenin subunits 18.0%, high molecular weight glutenin subunits 17.1%, gamma-gliadins 12.2%, omega-gliadins 10.5%, amylase/protease inhibitors 4.1%, triticins 1.6%, serpins 1.6%, purinins 0.9%, farinins 0.8%, beta-amylase 0.5%, globulins 0.4%, other enzymes and factors 1.9%, and all other 3%. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first successful effort to identify the majority of abundant flour proteins for a single wheat cultivar, relate them to individual gene sequences and estimate their relative levels. Many genes for wheat flour proteins are not expressed, so this study represents further progress in describing the expressed wheat genome. Use of cultivar-specific contigs helped to overcome the difficulties of matching peptides to gene sequences for members of highly similar, rapidly evolving storage protein families. Prospects for simplifying this process for routine analyses are discussed. The ability to measure expression levels for individual flour protein genes complements information gained from efforts to sequence the wheat genome and is essential for studies of effects of environment on gene expression

Temperature and nitrogen supply interact to determine protein distribution gradients in the wheat grain endosperm

Gradients exist in the distribution of storage proteins in the wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) endosperm and determine the milling properties and protein recovery rate of the grain. A novel image analysis technique was developed to quantify both the gradients in protein concentration, and the size distribution of protein bodies within the endosperm of wheat plants grown under two different (20 °C or 28 °C) post-anthesis temperatures, and supplied with a nutrient solution with either high or low nitrogen content. Under all treatment combinations protein concentration was greater in the endosperm cells closest to the aleurone layer, and decreased towards the centre of the two lobes of the grain, i.e. a negative gradient. This was accompanied by a decrease in size of protein bodies from the outer to the inner endosperm layers in all but one of the treatments. Elevated post-anthesis temperature had the effect of increasing the magnitude of the negative gradients in both protein concentration and protein body size, whilst limiting nitrogen supply decreased the gradients