project

Physical stresses may bring us unhappy experiences, pain and sourness, even worse, the fracture of bones. Tennis elbow is not a syndrome appearing among tennis players. I believe most of us have this kind unpleasant experience occasionally. Pain or sourness accompanies laterally after over-using our muscle in the same region, waking up with a sour arm after overusing the computer last night, for instance. Surveying some papers I find doctors use MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to observe how stresses build up in the pain region and how severe stresses induce fracture.

I am preforming my research at the Microrobotics Laboratory. Here I am will be designing systems for a micromechanical fish. One of the researchers in the lab has been prototpying a design for the fin mechanism. For this project, I plan to analyze and optimize her design using ABAQUS. The need for this is clear: due to the size and inertia restrictions of working on the millimeter scale, it is important to not overdesign the systems. We will be working near the limits of the materials.

In the ventricle of the heart, the cells (myocytes) are not isotropically arranged. Myocytes are cylindrically shaped and align edge to edge, and then form a large sheet of parallel rows of aligned cells. This "sheet" is wrapped around itself to form the thick wall of the heart. Myocytes are mechanically coupled to each other by desmosomes, and are electrically coupled to each other by connexins. These connections are extremely important in assuring the heart beats synchronously.

In this project, I will attempt to analyze the stresses and vibrations produced by a stroke of a golfer on the club in order to determine the drivers “sweet spot.”  The sweet spot is the spot on the clubface, which causes the lease amount of vibration and force transfer to the golfers hand thus giving the golfer the best energy transfer, feel and therefore, the best drive. (Cross, The Sweet Spot of a baseball bat)   Anyone who plays golf can quickly approximate the location of the sweet spot so I will attempt to verify its location through finite element analysis.

Each student creates a project that addresses a phenomenon or issue in plasticity theory, and presents it in class after the winter break. The scope of the projects is very wide: experimental, computational, or a critical discussion of one or more papers. The project contributes 30% of the grade, distributed as follows:

• 5%: November 30 Thursday. Post your project proposal in iMechanica.

1. Title. ES 246 project: e.g. Plastic buckling of plates.
2. Tags. Use the following tags: ES 246, plasticity, Fall 2006, project
3. Body. (i) Describe the project. (ii) Cite at least 1 journal article.

• 5%: December 7 Thursday. Post a comment to critique the project proposal of at least 1 classmate.

Updated on 11 October 2008.  Each student creates a distinct project that (a) addresses a phenomenon, and (b) involves a serious use of ABAQUS.   To get some inspiration, see projects of students who took this course in the past.

The project contributes 25% to the grade, distributed as follows.