Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science

Exact closed-form solutions for the free vibration analysis of multiple cracked FGM nanobeams with arbitrary boundary conditions based on the Nonlocal Elasticity Theory (NET) and the Timoshenko beam theory are presented. The NET considering the size effect of nanostructures is applied. FGM properties vary nonlinearly along the height of the beam. A crack model using two springs with stiffness depending on the crack depth is applied. The proposed solutions are provided explicitly as functions of integration constants determined from the standard boundary conditions. Frequency equations, that established in the form of the determinant of the matrix 3 × 3 order for arbitrary boundary conditions, are applied to analyse free vibration. Expressions for the mode shapes are given explicitly. The effects of geometry, material, nonlocal and crack parameters on the free vibration of the multiple cracked nanobeam are then analysed in detail.

In this paper, an analytical approach for nonlinear buckling and post-buckling behavior of stiffened porous functionally graded plate rested on Pasternak's elastic foundation under mechanical load in thermal environment is presented. The orthogonal and/or oblique stiffeners are attached to the surface of plate and are included in the calculation by improving the Lekhnitskii's smeared stiffener technique in the framework of higher-order shear deformation plate theory. The complex equilibrium and stability equations are established based on the Reddy's higher-order shear deformation plate theory and taken into account the geometrical nonlinearity of von Kármán. The solution forms of displacements satisfying the different boundary conditions are chosen, the stress function method and the Galerkin procedure are used to solve the problem. The good agreements of the present analytical solution are validated by making the comparisons of the present results with other results. In addition, the effects of porosity distribution, stiffener, volume fraction index, thermal environment, elastic foundation… on the critical buckling load and post-buckling response of porous functionally graded material plates are numerically investigated.

A new nonlinear approach on the buckling and postbuckling of functionally graded orthogonal and/or spiral-stiffened circular cylindrical shells subjected to torsional loads is proposed in this paper. The shells skin are stiffened by eccentrically rings, stringers, and/or spiral stiffeners at the surface of shells assuming that the material distribution laws of shell skin and stiffeners are graded by two distribution models. Lekhnitskii’s smeared stiffeners technique is improved for spiral stiffeners with effect of thermal terms. This is the significant novelty and scientific contribution of this paper. Theoretical formulations were established by using the Donnell shell theory taking into account the geometrical nonlinearity of von Kármán. The obtained results investigated in numerical forms show effects of volume fraction exponent of shell skin and stiffeners, geometrical parameter and stiffeners on the torsional buckling, and postbuckling behavior of functionally graded cylindrical shells. Especially, very large effects of spiral stiffeners on torsional stability behavior are obtained in comparison with same quantity material of orthogonal stiffeners.

An improved transverse shear stiffness for vibration and buckling analysis of functionally graded sandwich plates based on the first-order shear deformation theory is proposed in this paper. The transverse shear stress obtained from the in-plane stress and equilibrium equation allows to analytically derive an improved transverse shear stiffness and associated shear correction factor of the functionally graded sandwich plate. Sandwich plates with functionally graded faces and both homogeneous hardcore and softcore are considered. The material property is assumed to be isotropic at each point and vary through the plate thickness according to a power-law distribution of the volume fraction of the constituents. Equations of motion and boundary conditions are derived from Hamilton’s principle. The Navier-type solutions are obtained for simply supported boundary conditions, and exact formulae are proposed and compared with the existing solutions to verify the validity of the developed model. Numerical results are obtained for simply supported functionally graded sandwich plates made of three sets of material combinations of metal and ceramic, Al/Al₂O₃, Al/SiC and Al/WC to investigate the effects of the power-law index, thickness ratio of layer, material contrast on the shear correction factors, natural frequencies and critical buckling loads as well as load–frequency curves.

A nonlocal sinusoidal plate model for micro/nanoscale plates is developed based on Eringen’s nonlocal elasticity theory and sinusoidal shear deformation plate theory. The small-scale effect is considered in the former theory while the transverse shear deformation effect is included in the latter theory. The proposed model accounts for sinusoidal variations of transverse shear strains through the thickness of the plate, and satisfies the stress-free boundary conditions on the plate surfaces, thus a shear correction factor is not required. Equations of motion and boundary conditions are derived from Hamilton’s principle. Analytical solutions for bending, buckling, and vibration of simply supported plates are presented, and the obtained results are compared with the existing solutions. The effects of small scale and shear deformation on the responses of the micro/nanoscale plates are investigated.

This paper presents the simulation study of internal flow of open-end swirl injectors under steady and oscillating ambient pressures. A two-dimensional swirl axisymmetric model based on the volume of fluid method was developed to study the effect of ambient pressure on the internal flow of open-end swirl injectors. The response of injector flow to the ambient pressure oscillation was investigated by superimposing periodical oscillation of ambient pressure at the spout outlet. The results show that the variation of ambient pressure affects the liquid phase volumetric fraction within the gas–liquid shear layer. The spray angle near the wall remains constant independent of the ambient pressure. The velocity distribution on different axial sections rarely varies with ambient pressure. When the ambient pressure oscillated, the ambient pressure oscillation would cause the flow rate oscillation at the spout. The phase delay between the flow rate oscillation at spout and the ambient pressure oscillation is proportional to the oscillation frequency.

In this paper, an analytical approach for nonlinear buckling and post-buckling behavior of stiffened porous functionally graded plate rested on Pasternak's elastic foundation under mechanical load in thermal environment is presented. The orthogonal and/or oblique stiffeners are attached to the surface of plate and are included in the calculation by improving the Lekhnitskii's smeared stiffener technique in the framework of higher-order shear deformation plate theory. The complex equilibrium and stability equations are established based on the Reddy's higher-order shear deformation plate theory and taken into account the geometrical nonlinearity of von Kármán. The solution forms of displacements satisfying the different boundary conditions are chosen, the stress function method and the Galerkin procedure are used to solve the problem. The good agreements of the present analytical solution are validated by making the comparisons of the present results with other results. In addition, the effects of porosity distribution, stiffener, volume fraction index, thermal environment, elastic foundation… on the critical buckling load and post-buckling response of porous functionally graded material plates are numerically investigated.

An investigation of the micro-grooving performance of abrasive air jet (AAJ) on quartz crystals is presented and discussed. An experimental study was carried out first to understand the effect of process parameters on the major grooving performance measures such as groove depth, groove width, kerf taper, and surface roughness. Plausible trends for these grooving performance measures with respect to the various process variables, such as air pressure, nozzle traverse speed, jet impact angle, and abrasive mass flowrate, are discussed. It is found that AAJ is an effective technology for micromachining of quartz crystals and the grooving performance can be improved or optimized by selecting the process parameters properly. Predictive models are then developed for quantitatively estimating the micro-grooving performance. The models are finally verified by an experiment. It shows that the model predictions are in good agreement with the experimental results under the corresponding conditions.

Body-fitted and Cartesian grid methods are two typical types of numerical approaches used for modelling fluid–structure interaction problems. Despite their extensive applications, there is a lack of comparing the performance of these two types of approaches. In order to do this, the present paper presents benchmark numerical solutions for two two-dimensional fluid–structure interaction problems: flow-induced vibration of a highly flexible plate in an axial flow and a pitching flexible plate. The solutions are obtained by using two partitioned fluid–structure interaction methods including the deforming-spatial-domain/stabilized space–time fluid–structure interaction solver and the immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method. The deforming-spatial-domain/stabilized space–time fluid–structure interaction solver employs the body-fitted-grid deforming-spatial-domain/stabilized space–time method for the fluid motions and the finite-difference method for the structure vibrations. A new mesh update strategy is developed to prevent severe mesh distortion in cases where the boundary does not oscillate periodically or needs a long time to establish a periodic motion. The immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method uses lattice Boltzmann method as fluid solver and the same finite-difference method as structure solver. In addition, immersed boundary method is used in the immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann solver to handle the fluid–structure interaction coupling. Results for the characteristic force coefficients, tail position, plate deformation pattern and the vorticity fields are presented and discussed. The present results will be useful for evaluating the performance and accuracy of existing and new numerical methodologies for fluid–structure interaction.

The exoskeleton-type system is a brand new type of man—machine intelligent system. It fully combines human intelligence and machine power so that machine intelligence and human operator's power are both enhanced. Therefore, it achieves a high-level performance that neither could separately. This paper describes the basic exoskeleton concepts from biological system to man—machine intelligent systems. It is followed by an overview of the development history of exoskeleton-type systems and their two main applications in teleoperation and human power augmentation. Besides the key technologies in exoskeleton-type systems, the research is presented from several viewpoints of the biomechanical design, system structure modelling, cooperation and function allocation, control strategy, and safety evaluation.