Sample records for jacket taffeta mesh

  1. Variable pressure thermal insulating jacket

    DOEpatents

    Nelson, Paul A.; Malecha, Richard F.; Chilenskas, Albert A.

    1994-01-01

    A device for controlled insulation of a thermal device. The device includes a thermal jacket with a closed volume able to be evacuated to form an insulating jacket around the thermal source. A getter material is in communcation with the closed volume of the thermal jacket. The getter material can absorb and desorb a control gas to control gas pressure in the volume of the thermal jacket to control thermal conductivity in the thermal jacket.

  2. Variable pressure thermal insulating jacket

    DOEpatents

    Nelson, P.A.; Malecha, R.F.; Chilenskas, A.A.

    1994-09-20

    A device for controlled insulation of a thermal device is disclosed. The device includes a thermal jacket with a closed volume able to be evacuated to form an insulating jacket around the thermal source. A getter material is in communication with the closed volume of the thermal jacket. The getter material can absorb and desorb a control gas to control gas pressure in the volume of the thermal jacket to control thermal conductivity in the thermal jacket. 10 figs.

  3. CUTTING AND WEDGING JACKET REMOVER

    DOEpatents

    Freedman, M.; Raynor, S.

    1959-04-01

    A tool is presented for stripping cladded jackets from fissionable fuel elements. The tool is a tube which fits closely around the jacket and which has two cutting edges at opposite sides of one end. These cutting edges are adjusted to penetrate only the jacket so that by moving the edges downward the jacket is cut into two pieces.

  4. CORROSION RESISTANT JACKETED METAL BODY

    DOEpatents

    Brugmann, E.W.

    1958-08-26

    Reactor faul elements of the elongated cylindrical type which are jacketed in a corrosion resistant material are described. Each feel element is comprised of a plurality of jacketed cylinders of fissionable material in end to end abutting relationship, the jackets being welded together at their adjoining ends to retain the individual segments together and seat the interior of the jackets.

  5. 46 CFR 180.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Life jackets. 180.71 Section 180.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket... life jackets equal to at least 10% of the number of persons permitted on board must be provided, or...

  6. 46 CFR 180.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Life jackets. 180.71 Section 180.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket... life jackets equal to at least 10% of the number of persons permitted on board must be provided, or...

  7. 46 CFR 180.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Life jackets. 180.71 Section 180.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket... life jackets equal to at least 10% of the number of persons permitted on board must be provided, or...

  8. 46 CFR 180.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Life jackets. 180.71 Section 180.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket... life jackets equal to at least 10% of the number of persons permitted on board must be provided, or...

  9. 46 CFR 180.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Life jackets. 180.71 Section 180.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket... life jackets equal to at least 10% of the number of persons permitted on board must be provided, or...

  10. METHOD OF JACKETING A FISSIONABLE BODY

    DOEpatents

    Creutz, E.C.

    1960-02-16

    A method for jacketing fuel elements is described. A fissionablc body ts fitted into a steel jacket, and a steel rimmed closure disk is inserted into the open end of the jacket. The jacket is then drawn through a die, aind the rim of the disk is welded to the jacket to form an impervious seal.

  11. Regeneratively Cooled Porous Media Jacket

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mungas, Greg (Inventor); Fisher, David J. (Inventor); London, Adam Pollok (Inventor); Fryer, Jack Merrill (Inventor)

    2013-01-01

    The fluid and heat transfer theory for regenerative cooling of a rocket combustion chamber with a porous media coolant jacket is presented. This model is used to design a regeneratively cooled rocket or other high temperature engine cooling jacket. Cooling jackets comprising impermeable inner and outer walls, and porous media channels are disclosed. Also disclosed are porous media coolant jackets with additional structures designed to transfer heat directly from the inner wall to the outer wall, and structures designed to direct movement of the coolant fluid from the inner wall to the outer wall. Methods of making such jackets are also disclosed.

  12. 46 CFR 117.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Life jackets. 117.71 Section 117.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATIONS FOR MORE THAN 49 PASSENGERS LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket must be provided for each person...

  13. 46 CFR 117.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Life jackets. 117.71 Section 117.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATIONS FOR MORE THAN 49 PASSENGERS LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket must be provided for each person...

  14. 46 CFR 117.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Life jackets. 117.71 Section 117.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATIONS FOR MORE THAN 49 PASSENGERS LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket must be provided for each person...

  15. 46 CFR 117.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Life jackets. 117.71 Section 117.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATIONS FOR MORE THAN 49 PASSENGERS LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket must be provided for each person...

  16. 46 CFR 117.71 - Life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Life jackets. 117.71 Section 117.71 Shipping COAST GUARD... OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATIONS FOR MORE THAN 49 PASSENGERS LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.71 Life jackets. (a) An adult life jacket must be provided for each person...

  17. JACKETED URANIUM SLUG

    DOEpatents

    Ohlinger, L.A.; Cooper, C.M.

    1958-10-01

    Fuel elements for nuclear reactors are described. Eacb fuel element is comprised of a solid cylindrical slug containing fissionable material enclosed within a fluid tight jacket of neutron permeable material such as aluminum. The jacket is provided with a flexible end cap and with a sealing member having a substantially fluid-tight fit within the jacket in tight abutment with the end cap and the end of the slug. A fluid passage is provided between the end of the slug and the cap whereby leakage fiuid is principally directed to the end of the slug. In this manner, any reaction between the fissionable material and fiuid which may take place occurs more rapidly at the end of the slug than along the sides between the slug and the jacket, thereby causing longitudinal expansion of the fuel element prior to radial expansion. The longitudinal expansion can be readily detected and the fuel element removed from the coolant tube before radial expansion causes it to become jammed in the tube.

  18. WELDED JACKETED URANIUM BODY

    DOEpatents

    Gurinsky, D.H.

    1958-08-26

    A fuel element is presented for a neutronic reactor and is comprised of a uranium body, a non-fissionable jacket surrounding sald body, thu jacket including a portion sealed by a weld, and an inclusion in said sealed jacket at said weld of a fiux having a low neutron capture cross-section. The flux is provided by combining chlorine gas and hydrogen in the intense heat of-the arc, in a "Heliarc" welding muthod, to form dry hydrochloric acid gas.

  19. 46 CFR 180.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 180.75 Section 180.75 Shipping COAST...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each life jacket carried on a vessel on oceans, coastwise, or Great Lakes route, must have a life jacket...

  20. 46 CFR 117.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 117.75 Section 117.75 Shipping COAST... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each life jacket carried on a vessel on an oceans, coastwise, or Great Lakes route, must have a life jacket light approved in accordance...

  1. 46 CFR 180.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 180.75 Section 180.75 Shipping COAST...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each life jacket carried on a vessel on oceans, coastwise, or Great Lakes route, must have a life jacket...

  2. 46 CFR 117.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 117.75 Section 117.75 Shipping COAST... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each life jacket carried on a vessel on an oceans, coastwise, or Great Lakes route, must have a life jacket light approved in accordance...

  3. 46 CFR 117.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 117.75 Section 117.75 Shipping COAST... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each life jacket carried on a vessel on an oceans, coastwise, or Great Lakes route, must have a life jacket light approved in accordance...

  4. 46 CFR 117.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 117.75 Section 117.75 Shipping COAST... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each life jacket carried on a vessel on an oceans, coastwise, or Great Lakes route, must have a life jacket light approved in accordance...

  5. 46 CFR 117.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 117.75 Section 117.75 Shipping COAST... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each life jacket carried on a vessel on an oceans, coastwise, or Great Lakes route, must have a life jacket light approved in accordance...

  6. CORROSION RESISTANT JACKETED METAL BODY

    DOEpatents

    Brugmann, E.W.

    1958-08-26

    Jacketed metal bodies of the type used as fuel elements for nuclear reactors, which contain an internal elongated body of fissionable material jacketed in a corrosion resistant metal are described. The ends of the internal bodies are provided with screw threads having a tapered outer end. The jacket material overlaps the ends and extends into the tapered section of the screw threaded opening. Screw caps with a mating tapered section are screwed into the ends of the body to compress the jacket material in the tapered sections to provtde an effective seal against corrosive gases and liquids.

  7. Plating Patches On Heat-Exchanger Jackets

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Loureiro, Henry; Kubik, Frank

    1989-01-01

    Permanent repairs made without welding. Technique used to repair nickel-alloy nozzle jacket of Space Shuttle main engine. Applicable to other metal heat-exchanger jackets with similar configurations. Does not require welding, brazing, soldering, or other operations involving high temperatures and consequent damage to surrounding areas. Portion of jacket around damaged area removed by grinding and polishing out to edges adjacent to tube/jacket braze bonds. Spaces between tubes filled with wax preventing contamination of spaces during subsequent plating.

  8. Postexercise Cooling Rates in 2 Cooling Jackets

    PubMed Central

    Brade, Carly; Dawson, Brian; Wallman, Karen; Polglaze, Ted

    2010-01-01

    Abstract Context: Cooling jackets are a common method for removing stored heat accumulated during exercise. To date, the efficiency and practicality of different types of cooling jackets have received minimal investigation. Objective: To examine whether a cooling jacket containing a phase-change material (PC17) results in more rapid postexercise cooling than a gel cooling jacket and a no-jacket (control) condition. Design: Randomized, counterbalanced design with 3 experimental conditions. Setting: Participants exercised at 75% V̇o2max workload in a hot climate chamber (temperature  =  35.0 ± 1.4°C, relative humidity  =  52 ± 4%) for 30 minutes, followed by postexercise cooling for 30 minutes in cool laboratory conditions (ambient temperature  =  24.9 ± 1.8°C, relative humidity  =  39% ± 10%). Patients or Other Participants: Twelve physically active men (age  =  21.3 ± 1.1 years, height  =  182.7 ± 7.1 cm, body mass  =  76.2 ± 9.5 kg, sum of 6 skinfolds  =  50.5 ± 6.9 mm, body surface area  =  1.98 ± 0.14 m2, V̇o2max  =  49.0 ± 7.0 mL·kg−1·min−1) participated. Intervention(s): Three experimental conditions, consisting of a PC17 jacket, a gel jacket, and no jacket. Main Outcome Measure(s): Core temperature (TC), mean skin temperature (TSk), and TC cooling rate (°C/min). Results: Mean peak TC postexercise was 38.49 ± 0.42°C, 38.57 ± 0.41°C, and 38.55 ± 0.40°C for the PC17 jacket, gel jacket, and control conditions, respectively. No differences were observed in peak TC cooling rates among the PC17 jacket (0.038 ± 0.007°C/min), gel jacket (0.040 ± 0.009°C/min), and control (0.034 ± 0.010°C/min, P > .05) conditions. Between trials, no differences were calculated for mean TSk cooling. Conclusions: Similar cooling rates for all 3 conditions indicate that there is no benefit associated with wearing the PC17 or gel jacket. PMID:20210620

  9. CORROSION RESISTANT JACKETED METAL BODY

    DOEpatents

    Brugmann, E.W.

    1958-08-26

    S>Metal jacketed metallic bodies of the type used as feel elements fer nuclear reactors are presented. The fuel element is comprised of a plurality of jacketed cylindrical bodies joined in end to end abutting relationship. The abutting ends of the internal fissionable bodies are provided with a mating screw and thread means for joining the two together. The jacket material is of a corrosion resistant metal and overlaps the abutting ends of the internal bodies, thereby effectively sealing these bodies from contact with exteral reactive gases and liquids.

  10. Fire Protection Jacket

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    1991-01-01

    NERAC, Inc., Tolland, CT, aided Paul Monroe Engineering, Orange, CA, in the development of their PC1200 Series Fire Protection Jacket that protects the oil conduit system on an offshore drilling platform from the intense hydrocarbon fires that cause buckling and could cause structural failure of the platform. The flame-proof jacketing, which can withstand temperatures of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours or more, was developed from a combination of ceramic cloth (similar to the ceramic in Space Shuttle tiles), and laminates used in space suits.

  11. 46 CFR 117.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 117.78 Section 117.78 Shipping... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places distributed throughout...

  12. 46 CFR 117.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 117.78 Section 117.78 Shipping... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places distributed throughout...

  13. 46 CFR 117.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 117.78 Section 117.78 Shipping... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places distributed throughout...

  14. 46 CFR 117.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 117.78 Section 117.78 Shipping... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places distributed throughout...

  15. 46 CFR 117.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 117.78 Section 117.78 Shipping... Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 117.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places distributed throughout...

  16. 46 CFR 180.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 180.78 Section 180.78 Shipping...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places...

  17. 46 CFR 180.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 180.78 Section 180.78 Shipping...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places...

  18. 46 CFR 180.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 180.78 Section 180.78 Shipping...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places...

  19. 46 CFR 180.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 180.78 Section 180.78 Shipping...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places...

  20. 46 CFR 180.78 - Stowage of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Stowage of life jackets. 180.78 Section 180.78 Shipping...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.78 Stowage of life jackets. (a) General. Unless otherwise stated in this section, life jackets must be stored in convenient places...

  1. 46 CFR 185.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 185.516 Section 185.516 Shipping...) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places...

  2. 46 CFR 185.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 185.516 Section 185.516 Shipping...) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places...

  3. 46 CFR 185.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 185.516 Section 185.516 Shipping...) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places...

  4. 46 CFR 185.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 185.516 Section 185.516 Shipping...) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places...

  5. 46 CFR 185.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 185.516 Section 185.516 Shipping...) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places...

  6. 46 CFR 122.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 122.516 Section 122.516 Shipping... Emergencies § 122.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places that are regularly accessible...

  7. 46 CFR 122.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 122.516 Section 122.516 Shipping... Emergencies § 122.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places that are regularly accessible...

  8. 46 CFR 122.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 122.516 Section 122.516 Shipping... Emergencies § 122.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places that are regularly accessible...

  9. 46 CFR 122.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 122.516 Section 122.516 Shipping... Emergencies § 122.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places that are regularly accessible...

  10. 46 CFR 122.516 - Life jacket placards.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Life jacket placards. 122.516 Section 122.516 Shipping... Emergencies § 122.516 Life jacket placards. (a) Placards containing instructions for the donning and use of the life jackets aboard the vessel must be posted in conspicuous places that are regularly accessible...

  11. JACKETED FISSIONABLE MEMBER

    DOEpatents

    Boller, E.R.; Robinson, J.W.

    1960-09-13

    A fuel element design for a nuclear reactor is presented. The fuel element comprises a cylindrical fuel body having a portion of smaller diameter at each end thereof with an annular flange at the extreme ends of these portions of smaller diameter. An end cap fits over the ends of the fuel body and has an internal annular groove adapted to receive the flange. The fuel body and end caps are disposed in a cup-shaped jacket, a closure disc completing the enclosure of the fuel body, and tht caps are bonded over their entire periphery to the jacket.

  12. 46 CFR 180.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 180.75 Section 180.75 Shipping COAST...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each... light approved in accordance with § 161.012 in subchapter Q of this chapter, or other standard specified...

  13. 46 CFR 180.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 180.75 Section 180.75 Shipping COAST...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each... light approved in accordance with § 161.012 in subchapter Q of this chapter, or other standard specified...

  14. 46 CFR 180.75 - Life jacket lights.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Life jacket lights. 180.75 Section 180.75 Shipping COAST...) LIFESAVING EQUIPMENT AND ARRANGEMENTS Ring Life Buoys and Life Jackets § 180.75 Life jacket lights. (a) Each... light approved in accordance with § 161.012 in subchapter Q of this chapter, or other standard specified...

  15. Water jacket for solid particle solar receiver

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Wasyluk, David T.

    A solar receiver includes: water jacket panels each having a light-receiving side and a back side with a watertight sealed plenum defined in-between; light apertures passing through the watertight sealed plenums to receive light from the light-receiving sides of the water jacket panels; a heat transfer medium gap defined between the back sides of the water jacket panels and a cylindrical back plate; and light channeling tubes optically coupled with the light apertures and extending into the heat transfer medium gap. In some embodiments ends of the light apertures at the light receiving side of the water jacket panel aremore » welded together to define at least a portion of the light-receiving side. A cylindrical solar receiver may be constructed using a plurality of such water jacket panels arranged with their light-receiving sides facing outward.« less

  16. Jacketed lamp bulb envelope

    DOEpatents

    MacLennan, Donald A.; Turner, Brian P.; Gitsevich, Aleksandr; Bass, Gary K.; Dolan, James T.; Kipling, Kent; Kirkpatrick, Douglas A.; Leng, Yongzhang; Levin, Izrail; Roy, Robert J.; Shanks, Bruce; Smith, Malcolm; Trimble, William C.; Tsai, Peter

    2001-01-01

    A jacketed lamp bulb envelope includes a ceramic cup having an open end and a partially closed end, the partially closed end defining an aperture, a lamp bulb positioned inside the ceramic cup abutting the aperture, and a reflective ceramic material at least partially covering a portion of the bulb not abutting the aperture. The reflective ceramic material may substantially fill an interior volume of the ceramic cup not occupied by the bulb. The ceramic cup may include a structural feature for aiding in alignment of the jacketed lamp bulb envelope in a lamp. The ceramic cup may include an external flange about a periphery thereof. One example of a jacketed lamp bulb envelope includes a ceramic cup having an open end and a closed end, a ceramic washer covering the open end of the ceramic cup, the washer defining an aperture therethrough, a lamp bulb positioned inside the ceramic cup abutting the aperture, and a reflective ceramic material filling an interior volume of the ceramic cup not occupied by the bulb. A method of packing a jacketed lamp bulb envelope of the type comprising a ceramic cup with a lamp bulb disposed therein includes the steps of filling the ceramic cup with a flowable slurry of reflective material, and applying centrifugal force to the cup to pack the reflective material therein.

  17. Ported jacket for use in deformation measurement apparatus

    DOEpatents

    Wagner, L.A.; Senseny, P.E.; Mellegard, K.D.; Olsberg, S.B.

    1990-03-06

    A device for allowing deformation measurement of a jacketed specimen when the specimen is loaded includes an elastomeric specimen container or jacket surrounding a specimen while the specimen is being loaded by a test apparatus. The specimen jacket wall is compressible, and the wall follows and allows deformation of the specimen. The jacket wall of compressible material is provided with at least one opening and a thin layer or shim of substantially non-compressible (metal) material which covers and seals this opening. An extensometer is then positioned with its specimen engaging contact members engaging the substantially non-compressible material to measure the deformation of the specimen when the specimen is loaded, without compressibility effects of the jacket. 9 figs.

  18. 46 CFR 185.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 185.508 Section 185.508... TONS) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including...

  19. 46 CFR 185.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 185.508 Section 185.508... TONS) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including...

  20. 46 CFR 185.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 185.508 Section 185.508... TONS) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including...

  1. 46 CFR 185.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 185.508 Section 185.508... TONS) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including...

  2. 46 CFR 185.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 185.508 Section 185.508... TONS) OPERATIONS Preparations for Emergencies § 185.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including...

  3. BARRIERS TO LIFE JACKET USE AMONG ADULT RECREATIONAL BOATERS

    PubMed Central

    Quistberg, D. Alex; Quan, Linda; Ebel, Beth E.; Bennett, Elizabeth E.; Mueller, Beth A.

    2015-01-01

    Objective To identify barriers to life jacket use. Design Cross-sectional survey. Setting Nine public boat ramps in western Washington State, USA, August-November, 2008. Participants 675 adult boaters (>18 years) on motor boats <26 feet long. Main outcome Low or no life jacket use (0–50% of time) versus high life jacket use (51–100% of time). Results Low/no life jacket use (0%–50% of time) was associated with longer boat length (per foot, risk ratio [RR] 1.03, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.02–1.05), alcohol use (RR 1.11, 95% CI 1.01–1.20), perception of life jackets as “uncomfortable” (RR 1.29, 95%CI 1.09–1.52), perceived greater level of swimming ability (RR 1.25, 95% CI 1.03–1.53 for “expert swimmer”), and possibly with lack of confidence that a life jacket may save one from drowning (RR 1.13, 95%CI 0.96–1.32). Low life jacket use was less likely when a child was onboard (RR 0.88, 95% CI 0.79–0.99), or if the respondent had taken a boating safety class (RR 0.94, 95% CI 0.87–1.01). Conclusions Life jacket use may increase with more comfortable devices, such as inflatable life jackets, and with increased awareness of their efficacy in preventing drowning. Boater education classes may be associated with increased life jacket use among adults. PMID:24686261

  4. 30 CFR 57.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 57.15020 Section 57.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... Protection Surface Only § 57.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is...

  5. 30 CFR 56.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 56.15020 Section 56.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... § 56.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is danger from...

  6. 30 CFR 57.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 57.15020 Section 57.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... Protection Surface Only § 57.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is...

  7. 46 CFR 122.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 122.508 Section 122.508... Preparations for Emergencies § 122.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including, but not limited to: (1...

  8. 46 CFR 122.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 122.508 Section 122.508... Preparations for Emergencies § 122.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including, but not limited to: (1...

  9. 30 CFR 56.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 56.15020 Section 56.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... § 56.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is danger from...

  10. 30 CFR 57.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 57.15020 Section 57.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... Protection Surface Only § 57.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is...

  11. 46 CFR 122.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 122.508 Section 122.508... Preparations for Emergencies § 122.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including, but not limited to: (1...

  12. 30 CFR 56.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 56.15020 Section 56.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... § 56.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is danger from...

  13. 30 CFR 57.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 57.15020 Section 57.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... Protection Surface Only § 57.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is...

  14. 30 CFR 56.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 56.15020 Section 56.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... § 56.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is danger from...

  15. 30 CFR 57.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 57.15020 Section 57.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... Protection Surface Only § 57.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is...

  16. 46 CFR 122.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 122.508 Section 122.508... Preparations for Emergencies § 122.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including, but not limited to: (1...

  17. 46 CFR 122.508 - Wearing of life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Wearing of life jackets. 122.508 Section 122.508... Preparations for Emergencies § 122.508 Wearing of life jackets. (a) The master of a vessel shall require passengers to don life jackets when possible hazardous conditions exist, including, but not limited to: (1...

  18. 30 CFR 56.15020 - Life jackets and belts.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-07-01

    ... 30 Mineral Resources 1 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Life jackets and belts. 56.15020 Section 56.15020 Mineral Resources MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR METAL AND NONMETAL... § 56.15020 Life jackets and belts. Life jackets or belts shall be worn where there is danger from...

  19. Vacuum-jacketed transfer line installation technique

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Bowers, W. M.

    1968-01-01

    Rolling-type spacers in the form of steel balls retained in appropriate sleeves affixed at intervals to the exterior of the transfer line facilitate the installation of a vacuum-jacketed line. They act as standoffs to position the transfer line concentrically within the vacuum jacket line.

  20. JacketSE: An Offshore Wind Turbine Jacket Sizing Tool; Theory Manual and Sample Usage with Preliminary Validation

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Damiani, Rick

    This manual summarizes the theory and preliminary verifications of the JacketSE module, which is an offshore jacket sizing tool that is part of the Wind-Plant Integrated System Design & Engineering Model toolbox. JacketSE is based on a finite-element formulation and on user-prescribed inputs and design standards' criteria (constraints). The physics are highly simplified, with a primary focus on satisfying ultimate limit states and modal performance requirements. Preliminary validation work included comparing industry data and verification against ANSYS, a commercial finite-element analysis package. The results are encouraging, and future improvements to the code are recommended in this manual.

  1. JACKETED FUEL ELEMENTS FOR GRAPHITE MODERATED REACTORS

    DOEpatents

    Szilard, L.; Wigner, E.P.; Creutz, E.C.

    1959-05-12

    Fuel elements for a heterogeneous, fluid cooled, graphite moderated reactor are described. The fuel elements are comprised of a body of natural uranium hermetically sealed in a jacket of corrosion resistant material. The jacket, which may be aluminum or some other material which is non-fissionable and of a type having a low neutron capture cross-section, acts as a barrier between the fissioning isotope and the coolant or moderator or both. The jacket minimizes the tendency of the moderator and coolant to become radioactive and/or contaminated by fission fragments from the fissioning isotope.

  2. Thermal-leak analyzer for vacuum-jacketed lines

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Heisman, R. M.; Iceland, W. F.; Ruppe, E. P.

    1978-01-01

    Technique involves coating suspected area with water-soluble black paint that gives even, infrared emission. Painted area is warmed with heat gun; an infrared scanner is used to detect cooled spot on jacket exterior. Introduction of atmospheric pressure into jacket intensifies leak jet and improves test sensitivity.

  3. Lightweight Vacuum Jacket for Cryogenic Insulation. Volume 1

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Barclay, D. L.; Bell, J. E.; Brogren, E. W.; Straayer, J. W.

    1975-01-01

    The feasibility of producing a lightweight vacuum jacket using state-of-the-art technology and materials was examined. Design and analytical studies were made on a full-scale, orbital maneuvering system fuel tank. Preliminary design details were made for the tank assembly, including an optimized vacuum jacket and multilayer insulation system. A half-scale LH2 test model was designed and fabricated, and a force/stiffness proof test was conducted on the vacuum jacket. A vacuum leak rate of .000001 atmosphere ml of helium per second was measured, approximately 1500 hours of vacuum pressure were sustained, and 29 vacuum-pressure cycles were experienced prior to failure.

  4. JACKETING URANIUM

    DOEpatents

    Saller, H.A.; Keeler, J.R.

    1959-07-14

    The bonding to uranium of sheathing of iron or cobalt, or nickel, or alloys thereof is described. The bonding is accomplished by electro-depositing both surfaces to be joined with a coating of silver and amalgamating or alloying the silver layer with mercury or indium. Then the silver alloy is homogenized by exerting pressure on an assembly of the uranium core and the metal jacket, reducing the area of assembly and heating the assembly to homogenize by diffusion.

  5. The confining effectiveness of NiTiNb and NiTi SMA wire jackets for concrete

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Choi, Eunsoo; Chung, Young-Soo; Choi, Jun-Hyeok; Kim, Hong-Taek; Lee, Hacksoo

    2010-03-01

    The purpose of this study is to assess the confining effectiveness of shape memory alloy (SMA) wire jackets for concrete. The performance of SMA wire jackets was compared to that of steel jackets. A prestrained martensitic SMA wire was wrapped around a concrete cylinder and then heated by a heating jacket. In the process, a confining stress around the cylinder was developed in the SMA wire due to the shape memory effect; this jacketing method can increase the strength and ductility of the cylinder under an axial compressive load. In this study, NiTi and NiTiNb SMA wires of 1.0 mm in diameter were used for the confinement. Recovery tests were conducted on the wires to assess their recovery and residual stress. The confinement by SMA wire jackets increased the strength slightly and greatly increased the ductility compared to the strength and ductility of plain concrete cylinders. The NiTiNb SMA wire jacket showed better performance than that of the NiTi SMA wire jacket. The confining effectiveness of the SMA wire jackets of this study was estimated to be similar to that of the steel jackets. This study showed the potential of the SMA wire jacketing method to retrofit reinforced concrete columns and protect them from seismic risks.

  6. Splice connector with internal heat transfer jacket

    DOEpatents

    Silva, Frank A.; Mayer, Robert W.

    1977-01-01

    A heat transfer jacket is placed over the terminal portions of the conductors of a pair of high voltage cables which are connected in a splice connection wherein a housing surrounds the connected conductor portions, the heat transfer jacket extending longitudinally between the confronting ends of a pair of adaptor sleeves placed upon the insulation of the cables to engage and locate the adaptor sleeves relative to one another, and laterally between the conductors and the housing to provide a path of relatively high thermal conductivity between the connected conductor portions and the housing.

  7. Expected damages of retrofitted bridges with RC jacketing

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Montes, O.; Jara, J. M.; Jara, M.; Olmos, B. A.

    2015-07-01

    The bridge infrastructure in many countries of the world consists of medium span length structures built several decades ago and designed for very low seismic forces. Many of them are reinforced concrete structures that according to the current code regulations have to be rehabilitated to increase their seismic capacity. One way to reduce the vulnerability of the bridges is by using retrofitting techniques that increase the strength of the structure or by incorporating devices to reduce the seismic demand. One of the most common retrofit techniques of the bridges substructures is the use of RC jacketing; this research assesses the expected damages of seismically deficient medium length highway bridges retrofitted with reinforced concrete jacketing, by conducting a parametric study. We select a suite of twenty accelerograms of subduction earthquakes recorded close to the Pacific Coast in Mexico. The original structures consist of five 30 m span simple supported bridges with five pier heights of 5 m, 10 m, 15 m 20 and 25 m and the analyses include three different jacket thickness and three steel ratios. The bridges were subjected to the seismic records and non-linear time history analyses were carried out by using the OpenSEEs Plataform. Results allow selecting the reinforced concrete jacketing that better improves the expected seismic behavior of the bridge models.

  8. Mobile communication jacket for people with severe speech impairment.

    PubMed

    Lampe, Renée; Blumenstein, Tobias; Turova, Varvara; Alves-Pinto, Ana

    2018-04-01

    Cerebral palsy is a movement disorder caused by damage to motor control areas of the developing brain during early childhood. Motor disorders can also affect the ability to produce clear speech and to communicate. The aim of this study was to develop and to test a prototype of an assistive tool with an embedded mobile communication device to support patients with severe speech impairments. A prototype was developed by equipping a cycling jacket with a display, a small keyboard, a LED and an alarm system, all controlled by a microcontroller. Functionality of the prototype was tested in six participants (aged 7-20 years) with cerebral palsy and global developmental disorder and three healthy persons. A patient questionnaire consisting of seven items was used as an evaluation tool. A working prototype of the communication jacket was developed and tested. The questionnaire elicited positive responses from participants. Improvements to correct revealed weaknesses were proposed. Enhancements like voice output of pre-selected phrases and enlarged display were implemented. Integration in a jacket makes the system mobile and continuously available to the user. The communication jacket may be of great benefit to patients with motor and speech impairments. Implications for Rehabilitation The communication jacket developed can be easily used by people with movement and speech impairment. All technical components are integrated in a garment and do not have to be held with the hands or transported separately. The system is adaptable to individual use. Both expected and unexpected events can be dealt with, which contributes to the quality of life and self-fulfilment.

  9. The effect on engine performance of change in jacket-water outlet temperature

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Garlock, E A; Ellis, Greer

    1933-01-01

    Tests made on a Curtiss D-12 engine in the Altitude Laboratory at the Bureau of Standards show the following effects on engine performance of change in jacket-water outlet temperature: 1) Friction at all altitudes is a linear function of the jacket-water temperature, decreasing with increasing temperature. 2) The brake horsepower below an altitude of about 9,000 feet decreases, and at higher altitudes increases, with jacket-water temperature. 3) The brake specific fuel consumption tends to decrease, at all altitudes, with increasing jacket-water temperature. 4) The percentage change in brake power output is roughly equal to the algebraic sum of the percentage change in volumetric efficiency and mechanical efficiency.

  10. Method of preventing leakage of a fluid along and through an insulating jacket of a thermocouple

    DOEpatents

    Thermos, Anthony Constantine; Rahal, Fadi Elias

    2002-01-01

    A thermocouple assembly includes a thermocouple; a plurality of lead wires extending from the thermocouple; an insulating jacket extending along and enclosing the plurality of leads; and at least one internally sealed area within the insulating jacket to prevent fluid leakage along and within the insulating jacket. The invention also provides a method of preventing leakage of a fluid along and through an insulating jacket of a thermocouple including the steps of a) attaching a plurality of lead wires to a thermocouple; b) adding a heat sensitive pseudo-wire to extend along the plurality of lead wires; c) enclosing the lead wires and pseudo-wire inside an insulating jacket; d) locally heating axially spaced portions of the insulating jacket to a temperature which melts the pseudo-wire and fuses it with an interior surface of the jacket.

  11. Destabilization and intracranial fragmentation of a full metal jacket bullet.

    PubMed

    Farrugia, A; Raul, J S; Geraut, A; Tortel, M C; Ludes, B

    2009-10-01

    We report a case with an atypical entrance wound as a result of a destabilized full metal jacket bullet penetration. The destabilized bullet by an impact with the dorsal hand experiences a yawing to tumbling motion in flight. The large angle of yaw induces a larger presenting profile upon impact that contributes, associated to a rapid deceleration, to a greater mechanical force on the projectile structure and a fragmentation into core and jacket. Forensic pathologists have to be aware that the metal jacket bullet could tend to break up outside or inside the body particularly after a shooting through a target. This phenomenon induces atypical entrance wounds and atypical X-ray presentation. 2009 Elsevier Ltd and Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine.

  12. Yellow jackets may be an underestimated component of an ant-seed mutualism

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Bale, M.T.; Zettler, J.A.; Robinson, B.A.; Spira, T.P.; Allen, Craig R.

    2003-01-01

    Yellow jackets (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) are attracted to the typically ant-dispersed seeds of trilliums and will take seeds from ants in the genus Aphaenogaster. To determine if yellow jacket, Vespula maculifrons (Buysson), presence interferes with seed foraging by ants, we presented seeds of Trillium discolor Wray to three species (A. texana carolinensis Wheeler, Formica schaufussi Mayr, and Solenopsis invicta Buren) of seed-carrying ants in areas where vespids were present or excluded. We found that interspecific aggression between yellow jackets and ants is species specific. Vespid presence decreased average foraging time and increased foraging efficiency of two of the three ant species studied, a situation that might reflect competition for a limited food source. We also found that yellow jackets removed more seeds than ants, suggestive that vespids are important, albeit underestimated, components of ant-seed mutualisms.

  13. Infrared detector Dewars - Increased LN2 hold time and vacuum jacket life spans

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Jennings, D. E.; Boyd, W. J.; Blass, W. E.

    1976-01-01

    IR detector Dewars commonly suffer from shorter than desired LN2 hold times and insulation jacket vacuum corruption over relatively short time periods. In an attempt to solve this problem for a 9144 detector Dewar, small 1 liter/s appendage ion pumps were selected for continuous pumping of the vacuum jackets. This procedure extended LN2 hold times from 20 to 60 h and virtually eliminated vacuum jacket corruption. Thus the detector systems are usable continuously over periods of 6 months or more.

  14. Lightweight Vacuum Jacket for Cryogenic Insulation - Appendices to Final Report. Volume 2

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Barclay, D. L.; Bell, J. E.; Brogren, E. W.; Straayer, J. W.

    1975-01-01

    The feasibility is demonstrated of producing a lightweight vacuum jacket using state-of-the-art technology and materials. Design and analytical studies were made on an orbital maneuvering system fuel tank. Preliminary design details were completed for the tank assembly which included an optimized vacuum jacket and multilayered insulation system. A half-scale LH2 test model was designed and fabricated and a force/stiffness proof test was conducted on the vacuum jacket. A vacuum leak rate of 0.00001 was measured, approximately 1500 hours of vacuum pressure was sustained, and 29 vacuum pressure cycles were experienced prior to failure. For vol. 1, see N75-26192.

  15. Piano jacket for perceiving and playing music for patients with cerebral palsy.

    PubMed

    Lampe, Renée; Turova, Varvara; Alves-Pinto, Ana

    2017-12-23

    Patients with cerebral palsy with severe motor disabilities are limited not only in everyday life activities but also in choice of their hobbies. Playing a musical instrument is for the majority not possible, even though music constitutes a central component of many relaxation activities for people with disabilities. To give affected patients the opportunity to make music and to learn piano playing through somatosensory perception, a prototype of piano jacket was developed. A cycling jacket was equipped with boxes, each representing a musical note, incorporated into the sleeves. Each box contains vibration motors and LEDs. These can be used to translate the sequences of piano key presses performed at an external E-piano. An additional operation mode allows the user to actively play a melody himself by touching the same boxes that also incorporate touch sensor components. A working prototype of the piano jacket was developed. The sensory piano jacket provides patients with cerebral palsy and contractures the possibility to develop sensorimotor skills, motor abilities and participation in music-related activities. The jacket is planned to be used in music lessons. Implications for Rehabilitation The system is suitable even for patients with severe motor disabilities and especially joint contractures. Excellent handling through large easily accessible communication buttons. All building blocks are held in a garment, which allows for easy portability and gripping comfort.

  16. Factors associated with life jacket use among cabin sailboat and day sailor boaters in the United States.

    PubMed

    Spitzer, Natalie; Phillips, Maile T; Chow, Wendy; Mangione, Thomas W

    2018-06-01

    In 2015, drowning accounted for 68% of the 626 recreational boating related deaths in the United States. Although life jackets are estimated to prevent between 50% to 80% of boating deaths, approximately 83% of sailboat-related drowning victims were reported to not be wearing life jackets. Life jacket use among adult boaters has remained consistently low across most boat types and may vary by boater, boating, and environmental conditions. Although many risky environmental and boating factors may be associated with a higher risk of boating death, drowning occurs in all situations and it is useful to understand adult life jacket wearing behaviors in differing boating situations. This study uses observational survey data from 61318 adult sailors collected during the summer months of 1999 - 2017 from 124 selected study sites across 30 states in the US. Life jacket use was compared for day sailors and cabin sailboats by multiple boating, boater, and environmental conditions using Chi-square tests for equality of proportions. Results of these tests led to a choice of 3 informative and scientifically compelling variables to summarize variation in life jacket use for each sailboat type. Odds ratios were calculated comparing life jacket use from each boating situation to the lowest risk situation as determined by the 3 selected variables. These variables were represented in a tree diagram, detailing the additive impact of each factor. Following these analyses, all boating conditions were categorized to be risky or non-risky and a count variable was created for each observation based on the number of risks present. Cochran-Armitage trend tests were conducted to test for linearity in life jacket use for both boat types. The overall life jacket wear rate was higher among adults in day sailor sailboats (51.6%) compared to cabin sailboats (13.8%) and in all measured demographic, boating, and environmental circumstances. Comparing high-risk cabin sailboat conditions of low water

  17. 46 CFR 117.72 - Personal flotation devices carried in addition to life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Personal flotation devices carried in addition to life jackets. 117.72 Section 117.72 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (CONTINUED) SMALL... approved life jackets required to be worn during drills and emergencies. (b) Wearable marine buoyant...

  18. 46 CFR 117.72 - Personal flotation devices carried in addition to life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 4 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Personal flotation devices carried in addition to life jackets. 117.72 Section 117.72 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (CONTINUED) SMALL... approved life jackets required to be worn during drills and emergencies. (b) Wearable marine buoyant...

  19. Arikan and Alamouti matrices based on fast block-wise inverse Jacket transform

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Moon Ho; Khan, Md Hashem Ali; Kim, Kyeong Jin

    2013-12-01

    Recently, Lee and Hou (IEEE Signal Process Lett 13: 461-464, 2006) proposed one-dimensional and two-dimensional fast algorithms for block-wise inverse Jacket transforms (BIJTs). Their BIJTs are not real inverse Jacket transforms from mathematical point of view because their inverses do not satisfy the usual condition, i.e., the multiplication of a matrix with its inverse matrix is not equal to the identity matrix. Therefore, we mathematically propose a fast block-wise inverse Jacket transform of orders N = 2 k , 3 k , 5 k , and 6 k , where k is a positive integer. Based on the Kronecker product of the successive lower order Jacket matrices and the basis matrix, the fast algorithms for realizing these transforms are obtained. Due to the simple inverse and fast algorithms of Arikan polar binary and Alamouti multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) non-binary matrices, which are obtained from BIJTs, they can be applied in areas such as 3GPP physical layer for ultra mobile broadband permutation matrices design, first-order q-ary Reed-Muller code design, diagonal channel design, diagonal subchannel decompose for interference alignment, and 4G MIMO long-term evolution Alamouti precoding design.

  20. An Innovative Cooling Jacket to Combat Heat Intolerance in Children with Anhidrosis.

    PubMed

    Inamadar, Arun C; Palit, Aparna; Khurana, Neha

    2017-07-01

    Hyperthermia and heat intolerance are distressing symptoms in patients with anhidrosis. Body cooling devices are an integral part of management of these patients. A cooling jacket made from easily available materials has been invented for a girl with congenital insensitivity to pain and anhidrosis with severe heat intolerance. This innovative cooling jacket may be helpful for anhidrotic children in resource-poor situations. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  1. Comparing the cyclic behavior of concrete cylinders confined by shape memory alloy wire or steel jackets

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Park, Joonam; Choi, Eunsoo; Park, Kyoungsoo; Kim, Hong-Taek

    2011-09-01

    Shape memory alloy (SMA) wire jackets for concrete are distinct from conventional jackets of steel or fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) since they provide active confinement which can be easily achieved due to the shape memory effect of SMAs. This study uses NiTiNb SMA wires of 1.0 mm diameter to confine concrete cylinders with the dimensions of 300 mm × 150 mm (L × D). The NiTiNb SMAs have a relatively wider temperature hysteresis than NiTi SMAs; thus, they are more suitable for the severe temperature-variation environments to which civil structures are exposed. Steel jackets of passive confinement are also prepared in order to compare the cyclic behavior of actively and passively confined concrete cylinders. For this purpose, monotonic and cyclic compressive loading tests are conducted to obtain axial and circumferential strain. Both strains are used to estimate the volumetric strains of concrete cylinders. Plastic strains from cyclic behavior are also estimated. For the cylinders jacketed by NiTiNb SMA wires, the monotonic axial behavior differs from the envelope of cyclic behavior. The plastic strains of the actively confined concrete show a similar trend to those of passive confinement. This study proposed plastic strain models for concrete confined by SMA wire or steel jackets. For the volumetric strain, the active jackets of NiTiNb SMA wires provide more energy dissipation than the passive jacket of steel.

  2. Using the HELIOS facility for assessment of bundle-jacket thermal coupling in a CICC

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lacroix, B.; Rousset, B.; Cloez, H.; Decool, P.; Duchateau, J. L.; Hoa, C.; Luchier, N.; Nicollet, S.; Topin, F.

    2016-12-01

    In a Cable In Conduit Conductor (CICC) cooled by forced circulation of supercritical helium, the heat exchange in the bundle region can play a significant role for conductor safe operation, while remaining a quite uncertain parameter. Heat exchange between bundle and jacket depends on the relative contributions of convective heat transfer due to the helium flow inside the bundle and of thermal resistance due to the wrappings between the cable and the conduit. In order to qualify this thermal coupling at realistic operating conditions, a dedicated experiment on a 1.2 m sample of ITER Toroidal Field (TF) dummy conductor was designed and performed in the HELIOS test facility at CEA Grenoble. Several methods were envisaged, and the choice was made to assess bundle-jacket heat transfer coefficient by measuring the temperature of a solid copper cylinder inserted over the conductor jacket and submitted to heat deposition on its outer surface. The mock-up was manufactured and tested in spring 2015. Bundle-jacket heat transfer coefficient was found in the range 300-500 W m-2 K-1. Results analysis suggests that the order of magnitude of convective heat transfer coefficient inside bundle is closer to Colburn-Reynolds analogy than to Dittus-Boelter correlation, and that bundle-jacket thermal coupling is mainly limited by thermal resistance due to wrappings. A model based on an equivalent layer of stagnant helium between wraps and jacket was proposed and showed a good consistency with the experiment, with relevant values for the helium layer thickness.

  3. METHOD OF JACKETING URANIUM BODIES

    DOEpatents

    Maloney, J.O.; Haines, E.B.; Tepe, J.B.

    1958-08-26

    An improved process is presented for providing uranium slugs with thin walled aluminum jackets. Since aluminum has a slightiy higher coefficient of thermal expansion than does uraaium, both uranium slugs and aluminum cans are heated to an elevated temperature of about 180 C, and the slug are inserted in the cans at that temperature. During the subsequent cooling of the assembly, the aluminum contracts more than does the uranium and a tight shrink fit is thus assured.

  4. Steam jacket dynamics in underground coal gasification

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Otto, Christopher; Kempka, Thomas

    2017-04-01

    Underground coal gasification (UCG) has the potential to increase the world-wide hydrocarbon reserves by utilization of deposits not economically mineable by conventional methods. In this context, UCG involves combusting coal in-situ to produce a high-calorific synthesis gas, which can be applied for electricity generation or chemical feedstock production. Apart from high economic potentials, in-situ combustion may cause environmental impacts such as groundwater pollution by by-product leakage. In order to prevent or significantly mitigate these potential environmental concerns, UCG reactors are generally operated below hydrostatic pressure to limit the outflow of UCG process fluids into overburden aquifers. This pressure difference effects groundwater inflow into the reactor and prevents the escape of product gas. In the close reactor vicinity, fluid flow determined by the evolving high reactor temperatures, resulting in the build-up of a steam jacket. Numerical modeling is one of the key components to study coupled processes in in-situ combustion. We employed the thermo-hydraulic numerical simulator MUFITS (BINMIXT module) to address the influence of reactor pressure dynamics as well as hydro-geological coal and caprock parameters on water inflow and steam jacket dynamics. The US field trials Hanna and Hoe Creek (Wyoming) were applied for 3D model validation in terms of water inflow matching, whereby the good agreement between our modeling results and the field data indicates that our model reflects the hydrothermal physics of the process. In summary, our validated model allows a fast prediction of the steam jacket dynamics as well as water in- and outflows, required to avoid aquifer contamination during the entire life cycle of in-situ combustion operations.

  5. Advanced Main Combustion Chamber structural jacket strength analysis

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Johnston, L. M.; Perkins, L. A.; Denniston, C. L.; Price, J. M.

    1993-04-01

    The structural analysis of the Advanced Main Combustion Chamber (AMCC) is presented. The AMCC is an advanced fabrication concept of the Space Shuttle Main Engine main combustion chamber (MCC). Reduced cost and fabrication time of up to 75 percent were the goals of the AMCC with cast jacket with vacuum plasma sprayed or platelet liner. Since the cast material for the AMCC is much weaker than the wrought material for the MCC, the AMCC is heavier and strength margins much lower in some areas. Proven hand solutions were used to size the manifolds cutout tee areas for combined pressure and applied loads. Detailed finite element strength analyses were used to size the manifolds, longitudinal ribs, and jacket for combined pressure and applied local loads. The design of the gimbal actuator strut attachment lugs were determined by finite element analyses and hand solutions.

  6. A jacket for assisting sensorimotor-related impairments and spatial perception

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Blumenstein, Tobias; Turova, Varvara; Alves-Pinto, Ana; Lampe, Renée

    2017-04-01

    A sensorimotor jacket, which is able to measure distances to nearby objects with ultrasonic sensors and to transmit information about distances via vibrating transducers, has been designed with the aim of improving the spatial awareness of patients with cerebral palsy and to facilitate spatial orientation for blind people. The efficiency was tested for patients diagnosed with cerebral palsy, blind participants and healthy people. A positive impact of the sensorimotor jacket on the performance in a spatial task has been established both in patients with cerebral palsy and blind participants. Moreover, for patients with cerebral palsy, the training effect was visible after only three training exercises.

  7. PROCESS FOR PRODUCING JACKETED BODIES

    DOEpatents

    Saller, H.A.

    1958-01-21

    A method is given for enclosing a metallic core within an outer protective jacket, such as in the production of fuel elements for neutronic reactors. The method comprises the steps of inserting the body of a first metal into an aperture in a frame of a second metal, placing a sheet of the second metal on each of opposite sides of the assembled body and frame, and bonding the sheets to the body and the frame and the body and the frame to one another.

  8. METHOD OF JACKETING FISSIONABLE MATERIALS

    DOEpatents

    Foster, L.M.

    1959-02-01

    An improvement is presented in the jacketing of a metal body accomplished by electroplating upon that portion of the metal container to be protected from the bonding material a niatcrial such as Cr which is impermeable to the bonding material. After the bonding operation the electroplate is removed and the metal container surfuce, unimpaired, may be welded to a cap which effects a closure. Generally in such an operation the metal body is U, the metal container is Al and the bonding material is a Zn alloy.

  9. 46 CFR 185.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 185.730 Section 185.730 Shipping COAST GUARD... liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. (a) An... inflated rescue boats must be in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. All repairs must be made...

  10. 46 CFR 185.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 185.730 Section 185.730 Shipping COAST GUARD... liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. (a) An... inflated rescue boats must be in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. All repairs must be made...

  11. 46 CFR 185.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 185.730 Section 185.730 Shipping COAST GUARD... liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. (a) An... inflated rescue boats must be in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. All repairs must be made...

  12. THE MAN&RSQUO;S JACKET DESIGN FOR DISASSEMBLY: AN IMPLEMENTATION OF C2CAD FRAMEWORK

    EPA Science Inventory

    The C2CAD model served as the basis in the man’s jacket design and production. In man’s jackets, both natural and synthetic materials are commonly used for fabrics, threads, and buttons. To promote disassembly and value retention, we minimized material diversity an...

  13. 46 CFR 122.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 122.730 Section 122.730 Shipping COAST GUARD..., inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. (a) An inflatable liferaft or inflatable buoyant... other standard specified by the Commandant. (e) Repair and maintenance of inflated rescue boats must be...

  14. 46 CFR 122.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 122.730 Section 122.730 Shipping COAST GUARD..., inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. (a) An inflatable liferaft or inflatable buoyant... other standard specified by the Commandant. (e) Repair and maintenance of inflated rescue boats must be...

  15. 46 CFR 122.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 122.730 Section 122.730 Shipping COAST GUARD..., inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. (a) An inflatable liferaft or inflatable buoyant... other standard specified by the Commandant. (e) Repair and maintenance of inflated rescue boats must be...

  16. Systematic determination of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in outdoor jackets.

    PubMed

    Gremmel, Christoph; Frömel, Tobias; Knepper, Thomas P

    2016-10-01

    Sixteen outdoor jackets were purchased in 2011/12 and analyzed for 23 different perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). The jackets were selected based on their origin of production, price, market, and textile, such as polyester, nylon, polyamide, and content of poly(tetrafluoroethylene) membranes. Two robust analytical methods based on high pressure liquid chromatography combined with tandem mass spectrometry, as well as two liquid extractions, were developed enabling the analysis of PFASs with widely different physico-chemical properties. The jackets were found to contain PFASs in a range between 0.03 and 719 μg/m(2). Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) was omnipresent (0.02-171 μg/m(2)), although at lower concentrations compared to the precursors of perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs), namely fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOHs) (<0.001-698 μg/m(2)). Perfluoroalkane sulfonic acids and their putative precursors, in particular perfluoroalkane sulfonamides, were detected much less frequently at concentrations up to 5 μg/m(2). To determine the effect of the volatility of FTOHs, four selected jackets were stored in a sealed bag in the dark at room temperature and re-analyzed after 3.5 years. Only 10%-20% of the initial concentration of 8:2-FTOH and 20%-50% of 10:2-FTOH were found, whereas the concentrations of PFOA and perfluorodecanoic acid increased significantly. This supports the hypothesis that PFAS concentrations in textiles are also strongly dependent on age, and conditions of transport and storage. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Differences in the element contents between gunshot entry wounds with full-jacketed bullet and lead bullet.

    PubMed

    Wunnapuk, Klintean; Durongkadech, Piya; Minami, Takeshi; Ruangyuttikarn, Werawan; Tohno, Setsuko; Vichairat, Karnda; Azuma, Cho; Sribanditmongkol, Pongruk; Tohno, Yoshiyuki

    2007-01-01

    To elucidate characteristics of gunshot residues in gunshot entry wounds with full-jacketed and lead bullets, element contents in entry gunshot wounds and control skins were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). It was found that a high content of Fe and Zn was deposited in the gunshot entry wounds with full-jacketed bullet, whereas a high content of Pb was deposited in the gunshot entry wounds with lead (unjacked) bullet. It should be noted that the content of Pb was significantly higher in the gunshot entry wounds with lead bullet than in those with full-jacketed bullet. Regarding the relationships among elements, it was found that there were significant direct correlations between Pb and either Sb or Ba contents in both gunshot entry wounds with full-jacketed and lead bullets. As Pb increased in both gunshot entry wounds, Sb and Ba also increased in the wounds.

  18. Clinical Performance of Pedo Jacket Crowns in Maxillary Anterior Primary Teeth.

    PubMed

    Castro, Aimee; Badr, Sherine B Y; El-Badrawy, Wafa; Kulkarni, Gajanan

    2016-09-15

    To assess the clinical performance of Pedo Jacket crowns for restoration of carious primary anterior teeth. A total of 129 carious primary incisors and canines of 48 children younger than 71 months of age- were restored with Pedo Jacket crowns and resin-modified glass ionomer cementation. They were assessed for: ease of use; presence of recurrent decay; wear; partial or complete loss of the crown; color stability; gingival health; and overall clinical success over a 12-month follow-up. The patient's behavior at the restorative appointment during crown placement was also assessed. An overall clinical success of 89.5 percent of the teeth in 87.3 percent of the children was seen one year later. The crowns were easy to use, even in uncooperative children. The color stability, wear, plaque accumulation, and gingival health were acceptable. Discoloration, wear, or complete loss of the crown were found in 13.1 percent, 5.4 percent, and 7.6 percent of children, respectively. Although not statistically significant, failures were associated with poor patient cooperation at the time of crown placement, poor oral hygiene, or operator error. Pedo Jacket crowns are a viable treatment alternative for carious maxillary primary anterior teeth.

  19. Travel health: a survey of life jacket designs currently in use on commercial aircraft.

    PubMed

    Bauer, Irmgard L

    2002-01-01

    Although any travel harbors potential health problems, travel across water poses the additional risk of involuntary contact with water in the event of an emergency. Studies suggest that fatal boat-related accidents have occurred due to the passengers' inability to don their life jackets. With the dramatic increase of long-haul flights, it was decided to investigate if potential safety hazards can be identified leading to similar problems in relation to the life jackets provided onboard aircraft. It was assumed that the variety of designs combined with a possible lack of attention paid to safety instructions could represent such a problem. Safety instruction cards in passengers' seat pockets usually depict the life jacket model used on a particular aircraft. Ninety-eight such safety cards from 53 airlines were analyzed and categorized to identify the range and variety of designs currently in use. Twelve different categories of life jacket models could be distinguished with some airlines using more than one model. It was also found that not all cards show a clear depiction of the models used, the cards of two airlines show two different designs on the same cards, and two other companies chose to change the model halfway through the pictured donning procedure. There is a wide variety of life jacket designs in use with the safety cards not always giving accurate instructions. This variety also has implications for the safety demonstration at the beginning of a flight. Further research is recommended into a range of topics, one being the quality and content of these instructions, and also into other personal floating devices provided for the safety of travelers in the event of an emergency over water.

  20. Viability of Bismuth as a Green Substitute for Lead in Jacketed .357 Magnum Revolver Bullets

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jenkins, Joel

    In seeking to develop environmentally friendly lead-free non-toxic bullets, the research ballistically evaluated the performance of copper-jacketed handgun bullets containing a pure bismuth core. The lead was first removed from 140 grain Hornady(TM) XTPRTM bullets of 38 caliber (.357 diameter) by melting. The empty jackets were then refilled with pure bismuth, including the forming of a correctly sized hollow-point cavity. Due to the lower density of bismuth as compared to lead, the bismuth-cored bullets consistently weighed 125 gains. Conveniently this allowed direct comparison to commercially available 125 grain Hornady(TM) XTPRTM lead-cored bullets of 38 caliber. Both bismuth-cored and lead-cored versions of the 125 grain bullets had identical nose dimensions and jacket material, the only dimensional difference being the bullet length below the cannelure. Shooting took place at an outdoor range using a 357 Magnum Ruger(TM) SP101RTM revolver with 3" barrel as the test weapon. FBI protocols were followed when firing through clothing, wallboard, plywood, steel plates and laminated glass. Wound paths and bullets were captured in ballistic gelatin, with data collected for velocity, penetration, expansion, and weight retention. Bismuth compared favorably with lead in all but the laminated glass test, where it under penetrated due to jacket separation.

  1. Documentation for MeshKit - Reactor Geometry (&mesh) Generator

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Jain, Rajeev; Mahadevan, Vijay

    2015-09-30

    This report gives documentation for using MeshKit’s Reactor Geometry (and mesh) Generator (RGG) GUI and also briefly documents other algorithms and tools available in MeshKit. RGG is a program designed to aid in modeling and meshing of complex/large hexagonal and rectilinear reactor cores. RGG uses Argonne’s SIGMA interfaces, Qt and VTK to produce an intuitive user interface. By integrating a 3D view of the reactor with the meshing tools and combining them into one user interface, RGG streamlines the task of preparing a simulation mesh and enables real-time feedback that reduces accidental scripting mistakes that could waste hours of meshing.more » RGG interfaces with MeshKit tools to consolidate the meshing process, meaning that going from model to mesh is as easy as a button click. This report is designed to explain RGG v 2.0 interface and provide users with the knowledge and skills to pilot RGG successfully. Brief documentation of MeshKit source code, tools and other algorithms available are also presented for developers to extend and add new algorithms to MeshKit. RGG tools work in serial and parallel and have been used to model complex reactor core models consisting of conical pins, load pads, several thousands of axially varying material properties of instrumentation pins and other interstices meshes.« less

  2. An Adaptive Mesh Algorithm: Mapping the Mesh Variables

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Scannapieco, Anthony J.

    2016-07-25

    Both thermodynamic and kinematic variables must be mapped. The kinematic variables are defined on a separate kinematic mesh; it is the duel mesh to the thermodynamic mesh. The map of the kinematic variables is done by calculating the contributions of kinematic variables on the old thermodynamic mesh, mapping the kinematic variable contributions onto the new thermodynamic mesh and then synthesizing the mapped kinematic variables on the new kinematic mesh. In this document the map of the thermodynamic variables will be described.

  3. The technique of numerical research of cooling medium flow in the water jacket of self-lubricated bearing

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Raikovskiy, N. A.; Tretyakov, A. V.; Abramov, S. A.; Nazmeev, F. G.; Pavlichev, S. V.

    2017-08-01

    The paper presents a numerical study method of the cooling medium flowing in the water jacket of self-lubricating sliding bearing based on ANSYS CFX. The results of numerical calculations have satisfactory convergence with the empirical data obtained on the testbed. Verification data confirm the possibility of applying this numerical technique for the analysis of coolant flowings in the self-lubricating bearing containing the water jacket.

  4. A comparison study of offshore wind support structures with monopiles and jackets for U.S. waters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Damiani, R.; Dykes, K.; Scott, G.

    2016-09-01

    U.S. experience in offshore wind is limited, and high costs are expected unless innovations are introduced in one or multiple aspects of the project, from the installed technology to the balance of system (BOS). The substructure is the main single component responsible for the BOS capital expenditure (CapEx) and thus one that, if improved, could yield significant levelized cost of energy (LCOE) savings. For projects in U.S. waters, multimember lattice structures (also known as jackets) can render required stiffness for transitional water depths at potentially lower costs than monopiles (MPs). In this study, we used a systems engineering approach to evaluate the LCOE of prototypical wind power plants at six locations along the eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico for both types of support structures. Using a reference wind turbine and actual metocean conditions for the selected sites, we calculated loads for a parked and an operational situation, and we optimized the MP- and jacket-based support structures to minimize their overall mass. Using a suite of cost models, we then computed their associated LCOE. For all water depths, the MP-based configurations were heavier than their jacket counterparts, but the overall costs for the MPs were less than they were for jackets up to depths of slightly less than 30m. When the associated manufacturing and installation costs were included, jackets resulted in lower LCOE for depths greater than 40m. These results can be used by U.S. stakeholders to understand the potential for different technologies at different sites, but the methodology illustrated in this study can be further employed to analyze the effects of innovations and design choices throughout wind power plant systems.

  5. Optimal startup control of a jacketed tubular reactor.

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Hahn, D. R.; Fan, L. T.; Hwang, C. L.

    1971-01-01

    The optimal startup policy of a jacketed tubular reactor, in which a first-order, reversible, exothermic reaction takes place, is presented. A distributed maximum principle is presented for determining weak necessary conditions for optimality of a diffusional distributed parameter system. A numerical technique is developed for practical implementation of the distributed maximum principle. This involves the sequential solution of the state and adjoint equations, in conjunction with a functional gradient technique for iteratively improving the control function.

  6. Mechanical and Chemical Properties of Harvested Hypalon Cable Jacket Subjected to Accelerated Thermal Aging

    DOE PAGES

    Duckworth, Robert C.; Kidder, Michelle K.; Aytug, Tolga; ...

    2018-02-27

    We report that for nuclear power plants (NPPs) considering second license renewal for operation beyond 60 years, knowledge of long-term operation, condition monitoring, and viability for the reactor components including reactor pressure vessel, concrete structures, and cable systems is essential. Such knowledge will provide NPP owners/operators with a basis for predicting performance and estimating the costs associated with monitoring or replacement programs for the affected systems. For cable systems that encompass a wide variety of materials, manufacturers, and in-plant locations, accelerated aging of harvested cable jacket and insulation can provide insight into a remaining useful life and methods for monitoring.more » Accelerated thermal aging in air at temperatures between 80°C and 120°C was conducted on a multiconductor control rod drive mechanism cable manufactured by Boston Insulated Wire (BIW). The cable, which had been in service for over 30 years, was jacketed with Hypalon and insulated with ethylene propylene rubber. From elongation at break (EAB) measurements and supporting Arrhenius analysis of the jacket material, an activation energy of 97.84 kJ/mol was estimated, and the time to degradation, as represented by 50% EAB at the expected maximum operating temperature of 45°C, was estimated to be 80 years. These values were slightly below previous measurements on similar BIW Hypalon cable jacket and could be attributed to either in-service degradation or variations in material properties from production variations. Lastly, results from indenter modulus measurements and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy suggest possible markers that could be beneficial in monitoring cable conditions.« less

  7. Mechanical and Chemical Properties of Harvested Hypalon Cable Jacket Subjected to Accelerated Thermal Aging

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Duckworth, Robert C.; Kidder, Michelle K.; Aytug, Tolga

    We report that for nuclear power plants (NPPs) considering second license renewal for operation beyond 60 years, knowledge of long-term operation, condition monitoring, and viability for the reactor components including reactor pressure vessel, concrete structures, and cable systems is essential. Such knowledge will provide NPP owners/operators with a basis for predicting performance and estimating the costs associated with monitoring or replacement programs for the affected systems. For cable systems that encompass a wide variety of materials, manufacturers, and in-plant locations, accelerated aging of harvested cable jacket and insulation can provide insight into a remaining useful life and methods for monitoring.more » Accelerated thermal aging in air at temperatures between 80°C and 120°C was conducted on a multiconductor control rod drive mechanism cable manufactured by Boston Insulated Wire (BIW). The cable, which had been in service for over 30 years, was jacketed with Hypalon and insulated with ethylene propylene rubber. From elongation at break (EAB) measurements and supporting Arrhenius analysis of the jacket material, an activation energy of 97.84 kJ/mol was estimated, and the time to degradation, as represented by 50% EAB at the expected maximum operating temperature of 45°C, was estimated to be 80 years. These values were slightly below previous measurements on similar BIW Hypalon cable jacket and could be attributed to either in-service degradation or variations in material properties from production variations. Lastly, results from indenter modulus measurements and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy suggest possible markers that could be beneficial in monitoring cable conditions.« less

  8. A Comparison Study of Offshore Wind Support Structures with Monopiles and Jackets for U.S. Waters: Preprint

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Damiani, Rick; Dykes, Katherine; Scott, George

    2016-08-01

    U.S. experience in offshore wind is limited, and high costs are expected unless innovations are introduced in one or multiple aspects of the project, from the installed technology to the balance of system (BOS). The substructure is the main single component responsible for the BOS capital expenditure (CapEx) and thus one that, if improved, could yield significant levelized cost of energy (LCOE) savings. For projects in U.S. waters, multimember, lattice structures (also known as jackets) can render required stiffness for transitional water depths at potentially lower costs than monopiles (MPs). In this study, we used a systems engineering approach tomore » evaluate the LCOE of prototypical wind power plants at six locations along the eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico for both types of support structures. Using a reference wind turbine and actual metocean conditions for the selected sites, we calculated loads for a parked and an operational situation, and we optimized the MP- and jacket-based support structures to minimize their overall mass. Using a suite of cost models, we then computed their associated LCOE. For all water depths, the MP-based configurations were heavier than their jacket counterparts, but the overall costs for the MPs were less than they were for jackets up to depths of slightly less than 30 m. When the associated manufacturing and installation costs were included, jackets resulted in lower LCOE for depths greater than 40 m. These results can be used by U.S. stakeholders to understand the potential for different technologies at different sites, but the methodology illustrated in this study can be further employed to analyze the effects of innovations and design choices throughout wind power plant systems.« less

  9. An Adaptive Mesh Algorithm: Mesh Structure and Generation

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Scannapieco, Anthony J.

    2016-06-21

    The purpose of Adaptive Mesh Refinement is to minimize spatial errors over the computational space not to minimize the number of computational elements. The additional result of the technique is that it may reduce the number of computational elements needed to retain a given level of spatial accuracy. Adaptive mesh refinement is a computational technique used to dynamically select, over a region of space, a set of computational elements designed to minimize spatial error in the computational model of a physical process. The fundamental idea is to increase the mesh resolution in regions where the physical variables are represented bymore » a broad spectrum of modes in k-space, hence increasing the effective global spectral coverage of those physical variables. In addition, the selection of the spatially distributed elements is done dynamically by cyclically adjusting the mesh to follow the spectral evolution of the system. Over the years three types of AMR schemes have evolved; block, patch and locally refined AMR. In block and patch AMR logical blocks of various grid sizes are overlaid to span the physical space of interest, whereas in locally refined AMR no logical blocks are employed but locally nested mesh levels are used to span the physical space. The distinction between block and patch AMR is that in block AMR the original blocks refine and coarsen entirely in time, whereas in patch AMR the patches change location and zone size with time. The type of AMR described herein is a locally refi ned AMR. In the algorithm described, at any point in physical space only one zone exists at whatever level of mesh that is appropriate for that physical location. The dynamic creation of a locally refi ned computational mesh is made practical by a judicious selection of mesh rules. With these rules the mesh is evolved via a mesh potential designed to concentrate the nest mesh in regions where the physics is modally dense, and coarsen zones in regions where the physics is

  10. Natural frequency and vibration analysis of jacket type foundation for offshore wind power

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hung, Y.-C.; Chang, Y.-Y.; Chen, S.-Y.

    2017-12-01

    There are various types of foundation structure for offshore wind power, engineers may assess the condition of ocean at wind farm, and arrange the transportation, installation of each structure members, furthermore, considering the ability of manufacture steel structure as well, then make an optimum design. To design jacket offshore structure, unlike onshore cases, offshore structure also need to estimate the wave excitation effect. The aim of this paper is to study the difference of natural frequency between different kinds of structural stiffness and discuss the effect of different setting of boundary condition during analysis, besides, compare this value with the natural frequency of sea wave, in order to avoid the resonance effect. In this paper, the finite element analysis software ABAQUS is used to model and analyze the natural vibration behavior of the jacket structure.

  11. Mesh Algorithms for PDE with Sieve I: Mesh Distribution

    DOE PAGES

    Knepley, Matthew G.; Karpeev, Dmitry A.

    2009-01-01

    We have developed a new programming framework, called Sieve, to support parallel numerical partial differential equation(s) (PDE) algorithms operating over distributed meshes. We have also developed a reference implementation of Sieve in C++ as a library of generic algorithms operating on distributed containers conforming to the Sieve interface. Sieve makes instances of the incidence relation, or arrows, the conceptual first-class objects represented in the containers. Further, generic algorithms acting on this arrow container are systematically used to provide natural geometric operations on the topology and also, through duality, on the data. Finally, coverings and duality are used to encode notmore » only individual meshes, but all types of hierarchies underlying PDE data structures, including multigrid and mesh partitions. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the framework, we show how the mesh partition data can be represented and manipulated using the same fundamental mechanisms used to represent meshes. We present the complete description of an algorithm to encode a mesh partition and then distribute a mesh, which is independent of the mesh dimension, element shape, or embedding. Moreover, data associated with the mesh can be similarly distributed with exactly the same algorithm. The use of a high level of abstraction within the Sieve leads to several benefits in terms of code reuse, simplicity, and extensibility. We discuss these benefits and compare our approach to other existing mesh libraries.« less

  12. Control of heat transfer in continuous-feeding Czochralski-silicon crystal growth with a water-cooled jacket

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhao, Wenhan; Liu, Lijun

    2017-01-01

    The continuous-feeding Czochralski method is an effective method to reduce the cost of single crystal silicon. By promoting the crystal growth rate, the cost can be reduced further. However, more latent heat will be released at the melt-crystal interface under a high crystal growth rate. In this study, a water-cooled jacket was applied to enhance the heat transfer at the melt-crystal interface. Quasi-steady-state numerical calculation was employed to investigate the impact of the water-cooled jacket on the heat transfer at the melt-crystal interface. Latent heat released during the crystal growth process at the melt-crystal interface and absorbed during feedstock melting at the feeding zone was modeled in the simulations. The results show that, by using the water-cooled jacket, heat transfer in the growing crystal is enhanced significantly. Melt-crystal interface deflection and thermal stress increase simultaneously due to the increase of radial temperature at the melt-crystal interface. With a modified heat shield design, heat transfer at the melt-crystal interface is well controlled. The crystal growth rate can be increased by 20%.

  13. Assessment of adhesion formation to intra-abdominal polypropylene mesh and polytetrafluoroethylene mesh.

    PubMed

    Matthews, Brent D; Pratt, Broc L; Pollinger, Harrison S; Backus, Charles L; Kercher, Kent W; Sing, R F; Heniford, B Todd

    2003-10-01

    The development of intra-abdominal adhesions, bowel obstruction, and enterocutaneous fistulas are potentially severe complications related to the intraperitoneal placement of prosthetic biomaterials. The purpose of this study was to determine the natural history of adhesion formation to polypropylene mesh and two types of polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) mesh when placed intraperitoneally in a rabbit model that simulates laparoscopic ventral hernia repair. Thirty New Zealand white rabbits were used for this study. A 10-cm midline incision was performed for intra-abdominal access and a 2 cm x 2 cm piece of mesh (n = 60) was sewn to an intact peritoneum on each side of the midline. Two types of ePTFE mesh (Dual Mesh and modified Dual Mesh, W.L. Gore & Assoc., Flagstaff, AZ) and polypropylene mesh were compared. The rate of adhesion formation was evaluated by direct visualization using microlaparoscopy (2-mm endoscope/trocar) at 7 days, 3 weeks, 9 weeks, and 16 weeks after mesh implantation. Adhesions to the prosthetic mesh were scored for extent (%) using the Modified Diamond Scale (0 = 0%, 1 50%). At necropsy the mesh was excised en bloc with the anterior abdominal wall for histological evaluation of mesothelial layer growth. The mean adhesion score for the polypropylene mesh was significantly greater (P < 0.05) than Dual Mesh at 9 weeks and 16 weeks and modified Dual Mesh at 7 days, 9 weeks, and 16 weeks. Fifty-five percent (n = 11) of the polypropylene mesh had adhesions to small intestine or omentum at necropsy compared to 30% (n = 6) of the Dual Mesh and 20% (n = 4) of the modified Dual Mesh. There was a significantly greater percentage (P < 0.003) of ePTFE mesh mesothelialized at explant (modified Dual Mesh 44.2%; Dual Mesh 55.8%) compared to the polypropylene mesh (12.9%). Serial microlaparoscopic evaluation of intraperitoneally implanted polypropylene mesh and ePTFE mesh in a rabbit model revealed a progression of adhesions to

  14. Surgical mesh for ventral incisional hernia repairs: Understanding mesh design

    PubMed Central

    Rastegarpour, Ali; Cheung, Michael; Vardhan, Madhurima; Ibrahim, Mohamed M; Butler, Charles E; Levinson, Howard

    2016-01-01

    Surgical mesh has become an indispensable tool in hernia repair to improve outcomes and reduce costs; however, efforts are constantly being undertaken in mesh development to overcome postoperative complications. Common complications include infection, pain, adhesions, mesh extrusion and hernia recurrence. Reducing the complications of mesh implantation is of utmost importance given that hernias occur in hundreds of thousands of patients per year in the United States. In the present review, the authors present the different types of hernia meshes, discuss the key properties of mesh design, and demonstrate how each design element affects performance and complications. The present article will provide a basis for surgeons to understand which mesh to choose for patient care and why, and will explain the important technological aspects that will continue to evolve over the ensuing years. PMID:27054138

  15. Hexahedral Mesh Untangling

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    KNUPP,PATRICK

    2000-12-13

    We investigate a well-motivated mesh untangling objective function whose optimization automatically produces non-inverted elements when possible. Examples show the procedure is highly effective on simplicial meshes and on non-simplicial (e.g., hexahedral) meshes constructed via mapping or sweeping algorithms. The current whisker-weaving (WW) algorithm in CUBIT usually produces hexahedral meshes that are unsuitable for analyses due to inverted elements. The majority of these meshes cannot be untangled using the new objective function. The most likely source of the difficulty is poor mesh topology.

  16. Update on Development of Mesh Generation Algorithms in MeshKit

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Jain, Rajeev; Vanderzee, Evan; Mahadevan, Vijay

    2015-09-30

    MeshKit uses a graph-based design for coding all its meshing algorithms, which includes the Reactor Geometry (and mesh) Generation (RGG) algorithms. This report highlights the developmental updates of all the algorithms, results and future work. Parallel versions of algorithms, documentation and performance results are reported. RGG GUI design was updated to incorporate new features requested by the users; boundary layer generation and parallel RGG support were added to the GUI. Key contributions to the release, upgrade and maintenance of other SIGMA1 libraries (CGM and MOAB) were made. Several fundamental meshing algorithms for creating a robust parallel meshing pipeline in MeshKitmore » are under development. Results and current status of automated, open-source and high quality nuclear reactor assembly mesh generation algorithms such as trimesher, quadmesher, interval matching and multi-sweeper are reported.« less

  17. Array-based, parallel hierarchical mesh refinement algorithms for unstructured meshes

    DOE PAGES

    Ray, Navamita; Grindeanu, Iulian; Zhao, Xinglin; ...

    2016-08-18

    In this paper, we describe an array-based hierarchical mesh refinement capability through uniform refinement of unstructured meshes for efficient solution of PDE's using finite element methods and multigrid solvers. A multi-degree, multi-dimensional and multi-level framework is designed to generate the nested hierarchies from an initial coarse mesh that can be used for a variety of purposes such as in multigrid solvers/preconditioners, to do solution convergence and verification studies and to improve overall parallel efficiency by decreasing I/O bandwidth requirements (by loading smaller meshes and in memory refinement). We also describe a high-order boundary reconstruction capability that can be used tomore » project the new points after refinement using high-order approximations instead of linear projection in order to minimize and provide more control on geometrical errors introduced by curved boundaries.The capability is developed under the parallel unstructured mesh framework "Mesh Oriented dAtaBase" (MOAB Tautges et al. (2004)). We describe the underlying data structures and algorithms to generate such hierarchies in parallel and present numerical results for computational efficiency and effect on mesh quality. Furthermore, we also present results to demonstrate the applicability of the developed capability to study convergence properties of different point projection schemes for various mesh hierarchies and to a multigrid finite-element solver for elliptic problems.« less

  18. The Role of Chronic Mesh Infection in Delayed-Onset Vaginal Mesh Complications or Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections: Results From Explanted Mesh Cultures.

    PubMed

    Mellano, Erin M; Nakamura, Leah Y; Choi, Judy M; Kang, Diana C; Grisales, Tamara; Raz, Shlomo; Rodriguez, Larissa V

    2016-01-01

    Vaginal mesh complications necessitating excision are increasingly prevalent. We aim to study whether subclinical chronically infected mesh contributes to the development of delayed-onset mesh complications or recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs). Women undergoing mesh removal from August 2013 through May 2014 were identified by surgical code for vaginal mesh removal. Only women undergoing removal of anti-incontinence mesh were included. Exclusion criteria included any women undergoing simultaneous prolapse mesh removal. We abstracted preoperative and postoperative information from the medical record and compared mesh culture results from patients with and without mesh extrusion, de novo recurrent UTIs, and delayed-onset pain. One hundred seven women with only anti-incontinence mesh removed were included in the analysis. Onset of complications after mesh placement was within the first 6 months in 70 (65%) of 107 and delayed (≥6 months) in 37 (35%) of 107. A positive culture from the explanted mesh was obtained from 82 (77%) of 107 patients, and 40 (37%) of 107 were positive with potential pathogens. There were no significant differences in culture results when comparing patients with delayed-onset versus immediate pain, extrusion with no extrusion, and de novo recurrent UTIs with no infections. In this large cohort of patients with mesh removed for a diverse array of complications, cultures of the explanted vaginal mesh demonstrate frequent low-density bacterial colonization. We found no differences in culture results from women with delayed-onset pain versus acute pain, vaginal mesh extrusions versus no extrusions, or recurrent UTIs using standard culture methods. Chronic prosthetic infections in other areas of medicine are associated with bacterial biofilms, which are resistant to typical culture techniques. Further studies using culture-independent methods are needed to investigate the potential role of chronic bacterial infections in delayed vaginal mesh

  19. Covalent immobilization of metal organic frameworks onto chemical resistant poly(ether ether ketone) jacket for stir bar extraction.

    PubMed

    Wang, Chenlu; Zhou, Wei; Liao, Xiaoyan; Wang, Xuemei; Chen, Zilin

    2018-09-26

    Preparation of stir bar extraction (SBSE) device with high physical and chemical stability is important and challenging by date. A novel poly (ether ether ketone) (PEEK) tube with excellent mechanical property and chemical stability was firstly used as jacket of metal bar for preparation of stir bar. By employing covalent modification method, the inherent chemical resistant problem of PEEK which restricts the modification of sorbents was well solved. After functionalization, plenty of benzoic acid groups were formed onto the PEEK jacket. Metal organic frameworks of aluminium-based Materials of Institute Lavoisier-68 (MIL-68) was in situ immobilized onto the PEEK surface (MIL-68@PEEK) by the bonding with benzoic acid groups. Afterwards, a facile dumbbell-shaped structure was designed for reducing the friction between sorbents and bottom of container. Due to superior property of the PEEK jacket and the covalent modification method, the MIL-68 modified PEEK jacket SBSE device showed good robustness. After coupling with HPLC-MS/MS, the MIL-68@PEEK-based SBSE device was used to analyse of three parabens including methyl paraben, ethyl paraben and propyl paraben. The method had low limit detection up to 1 pg mL -1 with good linearity (R 2  ≥ 0.9978) and good reproducibility (relative standard deviation ≤ 9.74%). The method has been applied to the detection of parabens in cosmetics and rabbit plasma after painted with cosmetics with recoveries between 73.25% and 104.23%. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. Mesh Oriented datABase

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Tautges, Timothy J.

    MOAB is a component for representing and evaluating mesh data. MOAB can store stuctured and unstructured mesh, consisting of elements in the finite element "zoo". The functional interface to MOAB is simple yet powerful, allowing the representation of many types of metadata commonly found on the mesh. MOAB is optimized for efficiency in space and time, based on access to mesh in chunks rather than through individual entities, while also versatile enough to support individual entity access. The MOAB data model consists of a mesh interface instance, mesh entities (vertices and elements), sets, and tags. Entities are addressed through handlesmore » rather than pointers, to allow the underlying representation of an entity to change without changing the handle to that entity. Sets are arbitrary groupings of mesh entities and other sets. Sets also support parent/child relationships as a relation distinct from sets containing other sets. The directed-graph provided by set parent/child relationships is useful for modeling topological relations from a geometric model or other metadata. Tags are named data which can be assigned to the mesh as a whole, individual entities, or sets. Tags are a mechanism for attaching data to individual entities and sets are a mechanism for describing relations between entities; the combination of these two mechanisms isa powerful yet simple interface for representing metadata or application-specific data. For example, sets and tags can be used together to describe geometric topology, boundary condition, and inter-processor interface groupings in a mesh. MOAB is used in several ways in various applications. MOAB serves as the underlying mesh data representation in the VERDE mesh verification code. MOAB can also be used as a mesh input mechanism, using mesh readers induded with MOAB, or as a t’anslator between mesh formats, using readers and writers included with MOAB.« less

  1. 46 CFR 180.72 - Personal flotation devices carried in addition to life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Personal flotation devices carried in addition to life jackets. 180.72 Section 180.72 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (CONTINUED) SMALL... emergencies. (b) Wearable marine buoyant devices that include “ski vests,” “boating vests,” and “fishing vests...

  2. 46 CFR 180.72 - Personal flotation devices carried in addition to life jackets.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... 46 Shipping 7 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Personal flotation devices carried in addition to life jackets. 180.72 Section 180.72 Shipping COAST GUARD, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (CONTINUED) SMALL... emergencies. (b) Wearable marine buoyant devices that include “ski vests,” “boating vests,” and “fishing vests...

  3. Discharge lamp with reflective jacket

    DOEpatents

    MacLennan, Donald A.; Turner, Brian P.; Kipling, Kent

    2001-01-01

    A discharge lamp includes an envelope, a fill which emits light when excited disposed in the envelope, a source of excitation power coupled to the fill to excite the fill and cause the fill to emit light, and a reflector disposed around the envelope and defining an opening, the reflector being configured to reflect some of the light emitted by the fill back into the fill while allowing some light to exit through the opening. The reflector may be made from a material having a similar thermal index of expansion as compared to the envelope and which is closely spaced to the envelope. The envelope material may be quartz and the reflector material may be either silica or alumina. The reflector may be formed as a jacket having a rigid structure which does not adhere to the envelope. The lamp may further include an optical clement spaced from the envelope and configured to reflect an unwanted component of light which exited the envelope back into the envelope through the opening in the reflector. Light which can be beneficially recaptured includes selected wavelength regions, a selected polarization, and selected angular components.

  4. Additional Studies on Clothing Treatments for Personal Protection against Biting Flies

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1979-09-01

    length Jackets with attached hoods, the separate hoods were made of mesh fabric consisting of polyester filaments that give some abrasion resistance and...conditions was carried out using a sling psychrometer and anemometer to give data on dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. Insect specimens...treated the experimental items. Mrs. J. Whalen made the Jackets and hoods. UNCLASSIFIED

  5. Toward An Unstructured Mesh Database

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rezaei Mahdiraji, Alireza; Baumann, Peter Peter

    2014-05-01

    Unstructured meshes are used in several application domains such as earth sciences (e.g., seismology), medicine, oceanography, cli- mate modeling, GIS as approximate representations of physical objects. Meshes subdivide a domain into smaller geometric elements (called cells) which are glued together by incidence relationships. The subdivision of a domain allows computational manipulation of complicated physical structures. For instance, seismologists model earthquakes using elastic wave propagation solvers on hexahedral meshes. The hexahedral con- tains several hundred millions of grid points and millions of hexahedral cells. Each vertex node in the hexahedrals stores a multitude of data fields. To run simulation on such meshes, one needs to iterate over all the cells, iterate over incident cells to a given cell, retrieve coordinates of cells, assign data values to cells, etc. Although meshes are used in many application domains, to the best of our knowledge there is no database vendor that support unstructured mesh features. Currently, the main tool for querying and manipulating unstructured meshes are mesh libraries, e.g., CGAL and GRAL. Mesh li- braries are dedicated libraries which includes mesh algorithms and can be run on mesh representations. The libraries do not scale with dataset size, do not have declarative query language, and need deep C++ knowledge for query implementations. Furthermore, due to high coupling between the implementations and input file structure, the implementations are less reusable and costly to maintain. A dedicated mesh database offers the following advantages: 1) declarative querying, 2) ease of maintenance, 3) hiding mesh storage structure from applications, and 4) transparent query optimization. To design a mesh database, the first challenge is to define a suitable generic data model for unstructured meshes. We proposed ImG-Complexes data model as a generic topological mesh data model which extends incidence graph model to multi

  6. Robust moving mesh algorithms for hybrid stretched meshes: Application to moving boundaries problems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Landry, Jonathan; Soulaïmani, Azzeddine; Luke, Edward; Ben Haj Ali, Amine

    2016-12-01

    A robust Mesh-Mover Algorithm (MMA) approach is designed to adapt meshes of moving boundaries problems. A new methodology is developed from the best combination of well-known algorithms in order to preserve the quality of initial meshes. In most situations, MMAs distribute mesh deformation while preserving a good mesh quality. However, invalid meshes are generated when the motion is complex and/or involves multiple bodies. After studying a few MMA limitations, we propose the following approach: use the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) function to produce the displacement field, then apply the Geometric Element Transformation Method (GETMe) smoothing algorithms to improve the resulting mesh quality, and use an untangler to revert negative elements. The proposed approach has been proven efficient to adapt meshes for various realistic aerodynamic motions: a symmetric wing that has suffered large tip bending and twisting and the high-lift components of a swept wing that has moved to different flight stages. Finally, the fluid flow problem has been solved on meshes that have moved and they have produced results close to experimental ones. However, for situations where moving boundaries are too close to each other, more improvements need to be made or other approaches should be taken, such as an overset grid method.

  7. 46 CFR 185.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... inflatable liferaft or inflatable buoyant apparatus must be serviced at a facility specifically approved by... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 185.730 Section 185.730 Shipping COAST GUARD... Operational Readiness, Maintenance, and Inspection of Lifesaving Equipment § 185.730 Servicing of inflatable...

  8. 46 CFR 185.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... inflatable liferaft or inflatable buoyant apparatus must be serviced at a facility specifically approved by... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 185.730 Section 185.730 Shipping COAST GUARD... Operational Readiness, Maintenance, and Inspection of Lifesaving Equipment § 185.730 Servicing of inflatable...

  9. Vacuum jacketed composite propulsion feedlines for cryogenic launch and space vehicles, volume 1. [development of glass fiber composite for strength and protection from handling damage

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Spond, D. E.; Laintz, D. J.; Hall, C. A.; Dulaigh, D. E.

    1974-01-01

    Thin metallic liners that provide leak-free service in cryogenic propulsion systems are overwrapped with a glass-fiber composite that provides strength and protection from handling damage. The resultant tube is lightweight, strong, and has a low thermal flux. The inside commodity flow line and the outside vacuum jacket were fabricated using this method. Several types of vacuum jackets were fabricated and tested at operating temperatures from 294 to 21 K (+70 to minus 423 F) and operating pressure up to 69 N/cm2 (100 psi). The primary objective of the program was to develop vacuum jacket concepts, using previously developed concepts for the inner line. All major program objectives were met resulting in a design concept that is adaptable to a wide range of aerospace vehicle requirements. Major items of development included convolution of thin metallic sections up to 46 cm (18 in.) in diameter, design and fabrication of an extremely lightweight tension membrane concept for the vacuum jacket, and analytical tools that predict the failure mode and levels.

  10. Automatic Mesh Generation of Hybrid Mesh on Valves in Multiple Positions in Feedline Systems

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Ross, Douglass H.; Ito, Yasushi; Dorothy, Fredric W.; Shih, Alan M.; Peugeot, John

    2010-01-01

    Fluid flow simulations through a valve often require evaluation of the valve in multiple opening positions. A mesh has to be generated for the valve for each position and compounding. The problem is the fact that the valve is typically part of a larger feedline system. In this paper, we propose to develop a system to create meshes for feedline systems with parametrically controlled valve openings. Herein we outline two approaches to generate the meshes for a valve in a feedline system at multiple positions. There are two issues that must be addressed. The first is the creation of the mesh on the valve for multiple positions. The second is the generation of the mesh for the total feedline system including the valve. For generation of the mesh on the valve, we will describe the use of topology matching and mesh generation parameter transfer. For generation of the total feedline system, we will describe two solutions that we have implemented. In both cases the valve is treated as a component in the feedline system. In the first method the geometry of the valve in the feedline system is replaced with a valve at a different opening position. Geometry is created to connect the valve to the feedline system. Then topology for the valve is created and the portion of the topology for the valve is topology matched to the standard valve in a different position. The mesh generation parameters are transferred and then the volume mesh for the whole feedline system is generated. The second method enables the user to generate the volume mesh on the valve in multiple open positions external to the feedline system, to insert it into the volume mesh of the feedline system, and to reduce the amount of computer time required for mesh generation because only two small volume meshes connecting the valve to the feedline mesh need to be updated.

  11. MeSH Now: automatic MeSH indexing at PubMed scale via learning to rank.

    PubMed

    Mao, Yuqing; Lu, Zhiyong

    2017-04-17

    MeSH indexing is the task of assigning relevant MeSH terms based on a manual reading of scholarly publications by human indexers. The task is highly important for improving literature retrieval and many other scientific investigations in biomedical research. Unfortunately, given its manual nature, the process of MeSH indexing is both time-consuming (new articles are not immediately indexed until 2 or 3 months later) and costly (approximately ten dollars per article). In response, automatic indexing by computers has been previously proposed and attempted but remains challenging. In order to advance the state of the art in automatic MeSH indexing, a community-wide shared task called BioASQ was recently organized. We propose MeSH Now, an integrated approach that first uses multiple strategies to generate a combined list of candidate MeSH terms for a target article. Through a novel learning-to-rank framework, MeSH Now then ranks the list of candidate terms based on their relevance to the target article. Finally, MeSH Now selects the highest-ranked MeSH terms via a post-processing module. We assessed MeSH Now on two separate benchmarking datasets using traditional precision, recall and F 1 -score metrics. In both evaluations, MeSH Now consistently achieved over 0.60 in F-score, ranging from 0.610 to 0.612. Furthermore, additional experiments show that MeSH Now can be optimized by parallel computing in order to process MEDLINE documents on a large scale. We conclude that MeSH Now is a robust approach with state-of-the-art performance for automatic MeSH indexing and that MeSH Now is capable of processing PubMed scale documents within a reasonable time frame. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/Lu/Demo/MeSHNow/ .

  12. 46 CFR 122.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... Inspection of Lifesaving Equipment § 122.730 Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus... apparatus must be serviced at a facility specifically approved by the Commandant for the particular brand... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 122.730 Section 122.730 Shipping COAST GUARD...

  13. 46 CFR 122.730 - Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and...

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... Inspection of Lifesaving Equipment § 122.730 Servicing of inflatable liferafts, inflatable buoyant apparatus... apparatus must be serviced at a facility specifically approved by the Commandant for the particular brand... apparatus, inflatable life jackets, and inflated rescue boats. 122.730 Section 122.730 Shipping COAST GUARD...

  14. MOAB : a mesh-oriented database.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Tautges, Timothy James; Ernst, Corey; Stimpson, Clint

    A finite element mesh is used to decompose a continuous domain into a discretized representation. The finite element method solves PDEs on this mesh by modeling complex functions as a set of simple basis functions with coefficients at mesh vertices and prescribed continuity between elements. The mesh is one of the fundamental types of data linking the various tools in the FEA process (mesh generation, analysis, visualization, etc.). Thus, the representation of mesh data and operations on those data play a very important role in FEA-based simulations. MOAB is a component for representing and evaluating mesh data. MOAB can storemore » structured and unstructured mesh, consisting of elements in the finite element 'zoo'. The functional interface to MOAB is simple yet powerful, allowing the representation of many types of metadata commonly found on the mesh. MOAB is optimized for efficiency in space and time, based on access to mesh in chunks rather than through individual entities, while also versatile enough to support individual entity access. The MOAB data model consists of a mesh interface instance, mesh entities (vertices and elements), sets, and tags. Entities are addressed through handles rather than pointers, to allow the underlying representation of an entity to change without changing the handle to that entity. Sets are arbitrary groupings of mesh entities and other sets. Sets also support parent/child relationships as a relation distinct from sets containing other sets. The directed-graph provided by set parent/child relationships is useful for modeling topological relations from a geometric model or other metadata. Tags are named data which can be assigned to the mesh as a whole, individual entities, or sets. Tags are a mechanism for attaching data to individual entities and sets are a mechanism for describing relations between entities; the combination of these two mechanisms is a powerful yet simple interface for representing metadata or application

  15. Adaptive Meshing Techniques for Viscous Flow Calculations on Mixed Element Unstructured Meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mavriplis, D. J.

    1997-01-01

    An adaptive refinement strategy based on hierarchical element subdivision is formulated and implemented for meshes containing arbitrary mixtures of tetrahendra, hexahendra, prisms and pyramids. Special attention is given to keeping memory overheads as low as possible. This procedure is coupled with an algebraic multigrid flow solver which operates on mixed-element meshes. Inviscid flows as well as viscous flows are computed an adaptively refined tetrahedral, hexahedral, and hybrid meshes. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated by generating an adapted hexahedral mesh containing 3 million vertices on a relatively inexpensive workstation.

  16. Improvements to the Unstructured Mesh Generator MESH3D

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Thomas, Scott D.; Baker, Timothy J.; Cliff, Susan E.

    1999-01-01

    The AIRPLANE process starts with an aircraft geometry stored in a CAD system. The surface is modeled with a mesh of triangles and then the flow solver produces pressures at surface points which may be integrated to find forces and moments. The biggest advantage is that the grid generation bottleneck of the CFD process is eliminated when an unstructured tetrahedral mesh is used. MESH3D is the key to turning around the first analysis of a CAD geometry in days instead of weeks. The flow solver part of AIRPLANE has proven to be robust and accurate over a decade of use at NASA. It has been extensively validated with experimental data and compares well with other Euler flow solvers. AIRPLANE has been applied to all the HSR geometries treated at Ames over the course of the HSR program in order to verify the accuracy of other flow solvers. The unstructured approach makes handling complete and complex geometries very simple because only the surface of the aircraft needs to be discretized, i.e. covered with triangles. The volume mesh is created automatically by MESH3D. AIRPLANE runs well on multiple platforms. Vectorization on the Cray Y-MP is reasonable for a code that uses indirect addressing. Massively parallel computers such as the IBM SP2, SGI Origin 2000, and the Cray T3E have been used with an MPI version of the flow solver and the code scales very well on these systems. AIRPLANE can run on a desktop computer as well. AIRPLANE has a future. The unstructured technologies developed as part of the HSR program are now targeting high Reynolds number viscous flow simulation. The pacing item in this effort is Navier-Stokes mesh generation.

  17. Unstructured mesh generation and adaptivity

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mavriplis, D. J.

    1995-01-01

    An overview of current unstructured mesh generation and adaptivity techniques is given. Basic building blocks taken from the field of computational geometry are first described. Various practical mesh generation techniques based on these algorithms are then constructed and illustrated with examples. Issues of adaptive meshing and stretched mesh generation for anisotropic problems are treated in subsequent sections. The presentation is organized in an education manner, for readers familiar with computational fluid dynamics, wishing to learn more about current unstructured mesh techniques.

  18. Streaming simplification of tetrahedral meshes.

    PubMed

    Vo, Huy T; Callahan, Steven P; Lindstrom, Peter; Pascucci, Valerio; Silva, Cláudio T

    2007-01-01

    Unstructured tetrahedral meshes are commonly used in scientific computing to represent scalar, vector, and tensor fields in three dimensions. Visualization of these meshes can be difficult to perform interactively due to their size and complexity. By reducing the size of the data, we can accomplish real-time visualization necessary for scientific analysis. We propose a two-step approach for streaming simplification of large tetrahedral meshes. Our algorithm arranges the data on disk in a streaming, I/O-efficient format that allows coherent access to the tetrahedral cells. A quadric-based simplification is sequentially performed on small portions of the mesh in-core. Our output is a coherent streaming mesh which facilitates future processing. Our technique is fast, produces high quality approximations, and operates out-of-core to process meshes too large for main memory.

  19. MeshVoro: A Three-Dimensional Voronoi Mesh Building Tool for the TOUGH Family of Codes

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Freeman, C. M.; Boyle, K. L.; Reagan, M.

    2013-09-30

    Few tools exist for creating and visualizing complex three-dimensional simulation meshes, and these have limitations that restrict their application to particular geometries and circumstances. Mesh generation needs to trend toward ever more general applications. To that end, we have developed MeshVoro, a tool that is based on the Voro (Rycroft 2009) library and is capable of generating complex threedimensional Voronoi tessellation-based (unstructured) meshes for the solution of problems of flow and transport in subsurface geologic media that are addressed by the TOUGH (Pruess et al. 1999) family of codes. MeshVoro, which includes built-in data visualization routines, is a particularly usefulmore » tool because it extends the applicability of the TOUGH family of codes by enabling the scientifically robust and relatively easy discretization of systems with challenging 3D geometries. We describe several applications of MeshVoro. We illustrate the ability of the tool to straightforwardly transform a complex geological grid into a simulation mesh that conforms to the specifications of the TOUGH family of codes. We demonstrate how MeshVoro can describe complex system geometries with a relatively small number of grid blocks, and we construct meshes for geometries that would have been practically intractable with a standard Cartesian grid approach. We also discuss the limitations and appropriate applications of this new technology.« less

  20. Integration of Mesh Optimization with 3D All-Hex Mesh Generation, LDRD Subcase 3504340000, Final Report

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    KNUPP,PATRICK; MITCHELL,SCOTT A.

    1999-11-01

    In an attempt to automatically produce high-quality all-hex meshes, we investigated a mesh improvement strategy: given an initial poor-quality all-hex mesh, we iteratively changed the element connectivity, adding and deleting elements and nodes, and optimized the node positions. We found a set of hex reconnection primitives. We improved the optimization algorithms so they can untangle a negative-Jacobian mesh, even considering Jacobians on the boundary, and subsequently optimize the condition number of elements in an untangled mesh. However, even after applying both the primitives and optimization we were unable to produce high-quality meshes in certain regions. Our experiences suggest that manymore » boundary configurations of quadrilaterals admit no hexahedral mesh with positive Jacobians, although we have no proof of this.« less

  1. [Analysis of mesh related complications after trans-vaginal mesh-augmented pelvic floor reconstruction surgery].

    PubMed

    Zhang, Kun; Han, Jin-song; Zhu, Fu-li; Yao, Ying

    2012-09-01

    To evaluate the complications after trans-vaginal mesh-augmented pelvic floor reconstruction in treatment of pelvic organ prolapse (POP). From February 2007 to October 2009, vaginal mesh procedures were performed on 91 women with POP stage III-IV in Peking University Third Hospital. The operative complications were studied. Ninety patients underwent successful surgery among 91 patients. Follow-up rate was 94% (85/90) at a median follow-up of 28.4 (15 - 44) months. One patient underwent intraoperative organ injuries, and 10 patients had postoperation mesh-related complications. The rate of mesh-related complications was 2% (2/85), 2% (2/85), 4% (3/85), 4% (3/85) on 6, 6 - 12, 12 - 24 and more than 24 months following up, respectively. Seven patients underwent conservative treatment and the symptoms were improved. Three patients underwent the second surgery, and the symptoms were cured or relieved. The incidence of mesh-related complications was low, and interventions were effective in vaginal mesh procedure.

  2. Adaptive Skin Meshes Coarsening for Biomolecular Simulation

    PubMed Central

    Shi, Xinwei; Koehl, Patrice

    2011-01-01

    In this paper, we present efficient algorithms for generating hierarchical molecular skin meshes with decreasing size and guaranteed quality. Our algorithms generate a sequence of coarse meshes for both the surfaces and the bounded volumes. Each coarser surface mesh is adaptive to the surface curvature and maintains the topology of the skin surface with guaranteed mesh quality. The corresponding tetrahedral mesh is conforming to the interface surface mesh and contains high quality tetrahedral that decompose both the interior of the molecule and the surrounding region (enclosed in a sphere). Our hierarchical tetrahedral meshes have a number of advantages that will facilitate fast and accurate multigrid PDE solvers. Firstly, the quality of both the surface triangulations and tetrahedral meshes is guaranteed. Secondly, the interface in the tetrahedral mesh is an accurate approximation of the molecular boundary. In particular, all the boundary points lie on the skin surface. Thirdly, our meshes are Delaunay meshes. Finally, the meshes are adaptive to the geometry. PMID:21779137

  3. Bioprosthetic Mesh in Abdominal Wall Reconstruction

    PubMed Central

    Baumann, Donald P.; Butler, Charles E.

    2012-01-01

    Mesh materials have undergone a considerable evolution over the last several decades. There has been enhancement of biomechanical properties, improvement in manufacturing processes, and development of antiadhesive laminate synthetic meshes. The evolution of bioprosthetic mesh materials has markedly changed our indications and methods for complex abdominal wall reconstruction. The authors review the optimal properties of bioprosthetic mesh materials, their evolution over time, and their indications for use. The techniques to optimize outcomes are described using bioprosthetic mesh for complex abdominal wall reconstruction. Bioprosthetic mesh materials clearly have certain advantages over other implantable mesh materials in select indications. Appropriate patient selection and surgical technique are critical to the successful use of bioprosthetic materials for abdominal wall repair. PMID:23372454

  4. Improving Unstructured Mesh Partitions for Multiple Criteria Using Mesh Adjacencies

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Smith, Cameron W.; Rasquin, Michel; Ibanez, Dan

    The scalability of unstructured mesh based applications depends on partitioning methods that quickly balance the computational work while reducing communication costs. Zhou et al. [SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 32 (2010), pp. 3201{3227; J. Supercomput., 59 (2012), pp. 1218{1228] demonstrated the combination of (hyper)graph methods with vertex and element partition improvement for PHASTA CFD scaling to hundreds of thousands of processes. Our work generalizes partition improvement to support balancing combinations of all the mesh entity dimensions (vertices, edges, faces, regions) in partitions with imbalances exceeding 70%. Improvement results are then presented for multiple entity dimensions on up to one million processesmore » on meshes with over 12 billion tetrahedral elements.« less

  5. Improving Unstructured Mesh Partitions for Multiple Criteria Using Mesh Adjacencies

    DOE PAGES

    Smith, Cameron W.; Rasquin, Michel; Ibanez, Dan; ...

    2018-02-13

    The scalability of unstructured mesh based applications depends on partitioning methods that quickly balance the computational work while reducing communication costs. Zhou et al. [SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 32 (2010), pp. 3201{3227; J. Supercomput., 59 (2012), pp. 1218{1228] demonstrated the combination of (hyper)graph methods with vertex and element partition improvement for PHASTA CFD scaling to hundreds of thousands of processes. Our work generalizes partition improvement to support balancing combinations of all the mesh entity dimensions (vertices, edges, faces, regions) in partitions with imbalances exceeding 70%. Improvement results are then presented for multiple entity dimensions on up to one million processesmore » on meshes with over 12 billion tetrahedral elements.« less

  6. Ionizing radiation effects on ISS ePTFE jacketed cable assembly

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Koontz, S. L.; Golden, J. L.; Lorenz, M. J.; Pedley, M. D.

    2003-09-01

    Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is susceptible to embrittlement by ionizing radiation, is used as a primary material in the Mobile Transporter's (MT) Trailing Umbilical System (TUS) cable on the International Space Station (ISS). The TUS cable provides power and data service between the ISS truss and the MT. The TUS cable is normally stowed in an uptake reel and is fed out to follow the MT as it moves along rails on the ISS truss structure. For reliable electrical and mechanical performance, TUS cable polymeric materials must be capable of >3.5% elongation without cracking or breaking. The MT TUS cable operating temperature on ISS is expected to range between -100°C and +130°C. The on-orbit functional life requirement for the MT TUS cable is 10 years. Analysis and testing were performed to verify that the MT TUS cable would be able to meet full-life mechanical and electrical performance requirements, despite progressive embrittlement by the natural ionizing radiation environment. Energetic radiation belt electrons (trapped electrons) are the principal contributor to TUS cable radiation dose. TUS cable specimens were irradiated, in vacuum, with both energetic electrons and gamma rays. Electron beam energy was chosen to minimize charging effects on the non-conductive ePTFE (expanded PTFE) targets. Tensile testing was then performed, over the expected range of operating temperatures, as a function of radiation dose. When compared to the expected in-flight radiation dose/depth profile, atomic oxygen (AO) erosion of the radiation damaged TUS cable jacket surfaces is more rapid than the development of radiation induced embrittlement of the same surfaces. Additionally, the layered construction of the jacket prevents crack growth propagation, leaving the inner layer material compliant with the design elongation requirements. As a result, the TUS cable insulation design was verified to meet performance life requirements.

  7. Anisotropic evaluation of synthetic surgical meshes.

    PubMed

    Saberski, E R; Orenstein, S B; Novitsky, Y W

    2011-02-01

    The material properties of meshes used in hernia repair contribute to the overall mechanical behavior of the repair. The anisotropic potential of synthetic meshes, representing a difference in material properties (e.g., elasticity) in different material axes, is not well defined to date. Haphazard orientation of anisotropic mesh material can contribute to inconsistent surgical outcomes. We aimed to characterize and compare anisotropic properties of commonly used synthetic meshes. Six different polypropylene (Trelex(®), ProLite™, Ultrapro™), polyester (Parietex™), and PTFE-based (Dualmesh(®), Infinit) synthetic meshes were selected. Longitudinal and transverse axes were defined for each mesh, and samples were cut in each axis orientation. Samples underwent uniaxial tensile testing, from which the elastic modulus (E) in each axis was determined. The degree of anisotropy (λ) was calculated as a logarithmic expression of the ratio between the elastic modulus in each axis. Five of six meshes displayed significant anisotropic behavior. Ultrapro™ and Infinit exhibited approximately 12- and 20-fold differences between perpendicular axes, respectively. Trelex(®), ProLite™, and Parietex™ were 2.3-2.4 times. Dualmesh(®) was the least anisotropic mesh, without marked difference between the axes. Anisotropy of synthetic meshes has been underappreciated. In this study, we found striking differences between elastic properties of perpendicular axes for most commonly used synthetic meshes. Indiscriminate orientation of anisotropic mesh may adversely affect hernia repairs. Proper labeling of all implants by manufacturers should be mandatory. Understanding the specific anisotropic behavior of synthetic meshes should allow surgeons to employ rational implant orientation to maximize outcomes of hernia repair.

  8. A Proximal Straining Mesh Location Is Associated With De Novo Stress Urinary Incontinence After Transobturator Mesh Procedures.

    PubMed

    Huang, Wen-Chen; Yang, Jenn-Ming

    2017-03-01

    The purpose of this study was to explore the association between mesh location and de novo stress urinary incontinence (SUI) after transvaginal mesh procedures. We retrospectively analyzed a database of women who had received transvaginal mesh procedures for stage III or greater cystocele according to the Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification system. Only data for women who neither reported SUI preoperatively nor had received concomitant anti-incontinence surgery were included for analyses. The mesh location was investigated by sonography via the percentage of the urethra covered by mesh, defined as the number calculated by dividing the portion of the urethral length covered by mesh (the distance from the bladder neck to the point of the urethra, which was indicated by an imaginary line at the level of the lower [caudal] mesh end and perpendicular to the urethra) by the total urethral length (the distance from the bladder neck to the external urethral meatus) in the sagittal plane. The resting, straining, coughing, and squeezing mesh locations of women who did (n = 29) and did not (n = 54) report SUI at the 12-month follow-up were compared. At the 12-month follow-up, women who reported SUI had a significantly smaller straining percentage of the urethra covered by mesh (mean ± SD, 28.5% ± 9.6%) compared with continent women (35.2% ± 15.8%), indicating a more proximal straining mesh location. Sonography is useful in investigating the location of the transvaginal mesh. De novo SUI after transvaginal mesh procedures is associated with a more proximal straining mesh location. © 2017 by the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine.

  9. Adaptive mesh refinement and load balancing based on multi-level block-structured Cartesian mesh

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Misaka, Takashi; Sasaki, Daisuke; Obayashi, Shigeru

    2017-11-01

    We developed a framework for a distributed-memory parallel computer that enables dynamic data management for adaptive mesh refinement and load balancing. We employed simple data structure of the building cube method (BCM) where a computational domain is divided into multi-level cubic domains and each cube has the same number of grid points inside, realising a multi-level block-structured Cartesian mesh. Solution adaptive mesh refinement, which works efficiently with the help of the dynamic load balancing, was implemented by dividing cubes based on mesh refinement criteria. The framework was investigated with the Laplace equation in terms of adaptive mesh refinement, load balancing and the parallel efficiency. It was then applied to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations to simulate a turbulent flow around a sphere. We considered wall-adaptive cube refinement where a non-dimensional wall distance y+ near the sphere is used for a criterion of mesh refinement. The result showed the load imbalance due to y+ adaptive mesh refinement was corrected by the present approach. To utilise the BCM framework more effectively, we also tested a cube-wise algorithm switching where an explicit and implicit time integration schemes are switched depending on the local Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition in each cube.

  10. User Manual for the PROTEUS Mesh Tools

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Smith, Micheal A.; Shemon, Emily R

    2016-09-19

    PROTEUS is built around a finite element representation of the geometry for visualization. In addition, the PROTEUS-SN solver was built to solve the even-parity transport equation on a finite element mesh provided as input. Similarly, PROTEUS-MOC and PROTEUS-NEMO were built to apply the method of characteristics on unstructured finite element meshes. Given the complexity of real world problems, experience has shown that using commercial mesh generator to create rather simple input geometries is overly complex and slow. As a consequence, significant effort has been put into place to create multiple codes that help assist in the mesh generation and manipulation.more » There are three input means to create a mesh in PROTEUS: UFMESH, GRID, and NEMESH. At present, the UFMESH is a simple way to generate two-dimensional Cartesian and hexagonal fuel assembly geometries. The UFmesh input allows for simple assembly mesh generation while the GRID input allows the generation of Cartesian, hexagonal, and regular triangular structured grid geometry options. The NEMESH is a way for the user to create their own mesh or convert another mesh file format into a PROTEUS input format. Given that one has an input mesh format acceptable for PROTEUS, we have constructed several tools which allow further mesh and geometry construction (i.e. mesh extrusion and merging). This report describes the various mesh tools that are provided with the PROTEUS code giving both descriptions of the input and output. In many cases the examples are provided with a regression test of the mesh tools. The most important mesh tools for any user to consider using are the MT_MeshToMesh.x and the MT_RadialLattice.x codes. The former allows the conversion between most mesh types handled by PROTEUS while the second allows the merging of multiple (assembly) meshes into a radial structured grid. Note that the mesh generation process is recursive in nature and that each input specific for a given mesh tool (such as

  11. User Manual for the PROTEUS Mesh Tools

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Smith, Micheal A.; Shemon, Emily R.

    2015-06-01

    This report describes the various mesh tools that are provided with the PROTEUS code giving both descriptions of the input and output. In many cases the examples are provided with a regression test of the mesh tools. The most important mesh tools for any user to consider using are the MT_MeshToMesh.x and the MT_RadialLattice.x codes. The former allows the conversion between most mesh types handled by PROTEUS while the second allows the merging of multiple (assembly) meshes into a radial structured grid. Note that the mesh generation process is recursive in nature and that each input specific for a givenmore » mesh tool (such as .axial or .merge) can be used as “mesh” input for any of the mesh tools discussed in this manual.« less

  12. Staggered Mesh Ewald: An extension of the Smooth Particle-Mesh Ewald method adding great versatility

    PubMed Central

    Cerutti, David S.; Duke, Robert E.; Darden, Thomas A.; Lybrand, Terry P.

    2009-01-01

    We draw on an old technique for improving the accuracy of mesh-based field calculations to extend the popular Smooth Particle Mesh Ewald (SPME) algorithm as the Staggered Mesh Ewald (StME) algorithm. StME improves the accuracy of computed forces by up to 1.2 orders of magnitude and also reduces the drift in system momentum inherent in the SPME method by averaging the results of two separate reciprocal space calculations. StME can use charge mesh spacings roughly 1.5× larger than SPME to obtain comparable levels of accuracy; the one mesh in an SPME calculation can therefore be replaced with two separate meshes, each less than one third of the original size. Coarsening the charge mesh can be balanced with reductions in the direct space cutoff to optimize performance: the efficiency of StME rivals or exceeds that of SPME calculations with similarly optimized parameters. StME may also offer advantages for parallel molecular dynamics simulations because it permits the use of coarser meshes without requiring higher orders of charge interpolation and also because the two reciprocal space calculations can be run independently if that is most suitable for the machine architecture. We are planning other improvements to the standard SPME algorithm, and anticipate that StME will work synergistically will all of them to dramatically improve the efficiency and parallel scaling of molecular simulations. PMID:20174456

  13. Inconsistency in 9 mm bullets: correlation of jacket thickness to post-impact geometry measured with non-destructive X-ray computed tomography.

    PubMed

    Thornby, John; Landheer, Dirk; Williams, Tim; Barnes-Warden, Jane; Fenne, Paul; Norman, Danielle G; Attridge, Alex; Williams, Mark A

    2014-01-01

    Fundamental to any ballistic armour standard is the reference projectile to be defeated. Typically, for certification purposes, a consistent and symmetrical bullet geometry is assumed, however variations in bullet jacket dimensions can have far reaching consequences. Traditionally, characteristics and internal dimensions have been analysed by physically sectioning bullets--an approach which is of restricted scope and which precludes subsequent ballistic assessment. The use of a non-destructive X-ray computed tomography (CT) method has been demonstrated and validated (Kumar et al., 2011 [15]); the authors now apply this technique to correlate bullet impact response with jacket thickness variations. A set of 20 bullets (9 mm DM11) were selected for comparison and an image-based analysis method was employed to map jacket thickness and determine the centre of gravity of each specimen. Both intra- and inter-bullet variations were investigated, with thickness variations of the order of 200 μm commonly found along the length of all bullets and angular variations of up to 50 μm in some. The bullets were subsequently impacted against a rigid flat plate under controlled conditions (observed on a high-speed video camera) and the resulting deformed projectiles were re-analysed. The results of the experiments demonstrate a marked difference in ballistic performance between bullets from different manufacturers and an asymmetric thinning of the jacket is observed in regions of pre-impact weakness. The conclusions are relevant for future soft armour standards and provide important quantitative data for numerical model correlation and development. The implications of the findings of the work on the reliability and repeatability of the industry standard V50 ballistic test are also discussed. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Experimental Characterization and Modeling of Thermal Contact Resistance of Electric Machine Stator-to-Cooling Jacket Interface Under Interference Fit Loading

    DOE PAGES

    Cousineau, Justine Emily; Bennion, Kevin S.; Chieduko, Victor; ...

    2018-05-08

    Cooling of electric machines is a key to increasing power density and improving reliability. This paper focuses on the design of a machine using a cooling jacket wrapped around the stator. The thermal contact resistance (TCR) between the electric machine stator and cooling jacket is a significant factor in overall performance and is not well characterized. This interface is typically an interference fit subject to compressive pressure exceeding 5 MPa. An experimental investigation of this interface was carried out using a thermal transmittance setup using pressures between 5 and 10 MPa. Furthermore, the results were compared to currently available modelsmore » for contact resistance, and one model was adapted for prediction of TCR in future motor designs.« less

  15. Experimental Characterization and Modeling of Thermal Contact Resistance of Electric Machine Stator-to-Cooling Jacket Interface Under Interference Fit Loading

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Cousineau, Justine Emily; Bennion, Kevin S.; Chieduko, Victor

    Cooling of electric machines is a key to increasing power density and improving reliability. This paper focuses on the design of a machine using a cooling jacket wrapped around the stator. The thermal contact resistance (TCR) between the electric machine stator and cooling jacket is a significant factor in overall performance and is not well characterized. This interface is typically an interference fit subject to compressive pressure exceeding 5 MPa. An experimental investigation of this interface was carried out using a thermal transmittance setup using pressures between 5 and 10 MPa. Furthermore, the results were compared to currently available modelsmore » for contact resistance, and one model was adapted for prediction of TCR in future motor designs.« less

  16. First case of mesh infection due to Coccidioides spp. and literature review of fungal mesh infections after hernia repair.

    PubMed

    Forrester, Joseph D; Gomez, Carlos A; Forrester, Jared A; Nguyen, Mike; Gregg, David; Deresinski, Stan; Banaei, Niaz; Weiser, Thomas G

    2015-10-01

    Fungal mesh infections are a rare complication of hernia repairs with mesh. The first case of Coccidioides spp. mesh infection is described, and a systematic literature review of all known fungal mesh infections was performed. Nine cases of fungal mesh infection are reviewed. Female and male patients are equally represented, median age is 49.5 years, and critical illness and preinfection antibiotic use were common. Fungal mesh infections are rare, but potentially fatal, complications of hernias repaired with mesh. © 2015 Blackwell Verlag GmbH.

  17. Omental Lipid-Coated Mesh

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2011-06-16

    healing of hernia defects repaired with mesh . Pairing this angiogenic and inflammatory ability with biologic mesh is the goal. The use of...omental coating is encouraging. 10. ::’UD./CI.I I CI’IIVI::’ Omentum, Mesh , Hernia 𔃺. ::.CI.Utill , I.LA::’::’II"II.A IIUN UI": I-­ a -.-I’I-c­...-u...infection and wound healing . These benefits would be important in improving surgical care for all wounds , but they may greatly improve

  18. On Reducing Delay in Mesh-Based P2P Streaming: A Mesh-Push Approach

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Zheng; Xue, Kaiping; Hong, Peilin

    The peer-assisted streaming paradigm has been widely employed to distribute live video data on the internet recently. In general, the mesh-based pull approach is more robust and efficient than the tree-based push approach. However, pull protocol brings about longer streaming delay, which is caused by the handshaking process of advertising buffer map message, sending request message and scheduling of the data block. In this paper, we propose a new approach, mesh-push, to address this issue. Different from the traditional pull approach, mesh-push implements block scheduling algorithm at sender side, where the block transmission is initiated by the sender rather than by the receiver. We first formulate the optimal upload bandwidth utilization problem, then present the mesh-push approach, in which a token protocol is designed to avoid block redundancy; a min-cost flow model is employed to derive the optimal scheduling for the push peer; and a push peer selection algorithm is introduced to reduce control overhead. Finally, we evaluate mesh-push through simulation, the results of which show mesh-push outperforms the pull scheduling in streaming delay, and achieves comparable delivery ratio at the same time.

  19. Transrectal Mesh Erosion Requiring Bowel Resection.

    PubMed

    Kemp, Marta Maria; Slim, Karem; Rabischong, Benoît; Bourdel, Nicolas; Canis, Michel; Botchorishvili, Revaz

    To report a case of a transrectal mesh erosion as complication of laparoscopic promontofixation with mesh repair, necessitating bowel resection and subsequent surgical interventions. Sacrocolpopexy has become a standard procedure for vaginal vault prolapse [1], and the laparoscopic approach has gained popularity owing to more rapid recovery and less morbidity [2,3]. Mesh erosion is a well-known complication of surgical treatment for prolapse as reported in several negative evaluations, including a report from the US Food and Drug Administration in 2011 [4]. Mesh complications are more common after surgeries via the vaginal approach [5]; nonetheless, the incidence of vaginal mesh erosion after laparoscopic procedures is as high as 9% [6]. The incidence of transrectal mesh exposure after laparoscopic ventral rectopexy is roughly 1% [7]. The diagnosis may be delayed because of its rarity and variable presentation. In addition, polyester meshes, such as the mesh used in this case, carry a higher risk of exposure [8]. A 57-year-old woman experiencing genital prolapse, with the cervix classified as +3 according to the Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification system, underwent laparoscopic standard sacrocolpopexy using polyester mesh. Subtotal hysterectomy and bilateral adnexectomy were performed concomitantly. A 3-year follow-up consultation demonstrated no signs or symptoms of erosion of any type. At 7 years after the surgery, however, the patient presented with rectal discharge, diagnosed as infectious rectocolitis with the isolation of Clostridium difficile. She underwent a total of 5 repair surgeries in a period of 4 months, including transrectal resection of exposed mesh, laparoscopic ablation of mesh with digestive resection, exploratory laparoscopy with abscess drainage, and exploratory laparoscopy with ablation of residual mesh and transverse colostomy. She recovered well after the last intervention, exhibiting no signs of vaginal or rectal fistula and no recurrence

  20. GeneMesh: a web-based microarray analysis tool for relating differentially expressed genes to MeSH terms.

    PubMed

    Jani, Saurin D; Argraves, Gary L; Barth, Jeremy L; Argraves, W Scott

    2010-04-01

    An important objective of DNA microarray-based gene expression experimentation is determining inter-relationships that exist between differentially expressed genes and biological processes, molecular functions, cellular components, signaling pathways, physiologic processes and diseases. Here we describe GeneMesh, a web-based program that facilitates analysis of DNA microarray gene expression data. GeneMesh relates genes in a query set to categories available in the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) hierarchical index. The interface enables hypothesis driven relational analysis to a specific MeSH subcategory (e.g., Cardiovascular System, Genetic Processes, Immune System Diseases etc.) or unbiased relational analysis to broader MeSH categories (e.g., Anatomy, Biological Sciences, Disease etc.). Genes found associated with a given MeSH category are dynamically linked to facilitate tabular and graphical depiction of Entrez Gene information, Gene Ontology information, KEGG metabolic pathway diagrams and intermolecular interaction information. Expression intensity values of groups of genes that cluster in relation to a given MeSH category, gene ontology or pathway can be displayed as heat maps of Z score-normalized values. GeneMesh operates on gene expression data derived from a number of commercial microarray platforms including Affymetrix, Agilent and Illumina. GeneMesh is a versatile web-based tool for testing and developing new hypotheses through relating genes in a query set (e.g., differentially expressed genes from a DNA microarray experiment) to descriptors making up the hierarchical structure of the National Library of Medicine controlled vocabulary thesaurus, MeSH. The system further enhances the discovery process by providing links between sets of genes associated with a given MeSH category to a rich set of html linked tabular and graphic information including Entrez Gene summaries, gene ontologies, intermolecular interactions, overlays of genes onto KEGG

  1. Unstructured mesh algorithms for aerodynamic calculations

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mavriplis, D. J.

    1992-01-01

    The use of unstructured mesh techniques for solving complex aerodynamic flows is discussed. The principle advantages of unstructured mesh strategies, as they relate to complex geometries, adaptive meshing capabilities, and parallel processing are emphasized. The various aspects required for the efficient and accurate solution of aerodynamic flows are addressed. These include mesh generation, mesh adaptivity, solution algorithms, convergence acceleration, and turbulence modeling. Computations of viscous turbulent two-dimensional flows and inviscid three-dimensional flows about complex configurations are demonstrated. Remaining obstacles and directions for future research are also outlined.

  2. Method and system for mesh network embedded devices

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Wang, Ray (Inventor)

    2009-01-01

    A method and system for managing mesh network devices. A mesh network device with integrated features creates an N-way mesh network with a full mesh network topology or a partial mesh network topology.

  3. Scalable L-infinite coding of meshes.

    PubMed

    Munteanu, Adrian; Cernea, Dan C; Alecu, Alin; Cornelis, Jan; Schelkens, Peter

    2010-01-01

    The paper investigates the novel concept of local-error control in mesh geometry encoding. In contrast to traditional mesh-coding systems that use the mean-square error as target distortion metric, this paper proposes a new L-infinite mesh-coding approach, for which the target distortion metric is the L-infinite distortion. In this context, a novel wavelet-based L-infinite-constrained coding approach for meshes is proposed, which ensures that the maximum error between the vertex positions in the original and decoded meshes is lower than a given upper bound. Furthermore, the proposed system achieves scalability in L-infinite sense, that is, any decoding of the input stream will correspond to a perfectly predictable L-infinite distortion upper bound. An instantiation of the proposed L-infinite-coding approach is demonstrated for MESHGRID, which is a scalable 3D object encoding system, part of MPEG-4 AFX. In this context, the advantages of scalable L-infinite coding over L-2-oriented coding are experimentally demonstrated. One concludes that the proposed L-infinite mesh-coding approach guarantees an upper bound on the local error in the decoded mesh, it enables a fast real-time implementation of the rate allocation, and it preserves all the scalability features and animation capabilities of the employed scalable mesh codec.

  4. Multigrid techniques for unstructured meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mavriplis, D. J.

    1995-01-01

    An overview of current multigrid techniques for unstructured meshes is given. The basic principles of the multigrid approach are first outlined. Application of these principles to unstructured mesh problems is then described, illustrating various different approaches, and giving examples of practical applications. Advanced multigrid topics, such as the use of algebraic multigrid methods, and the combination of multigrid techniques with adaptive meshing strategies are dealt with in subsequent sections. These represent current areas of research, and the unresolved issues are discussed. The presentation is organized in an educational manner, for readers familiar with computational fluid dynamics, wishing to learn more about current unstructured mesh techniques.

  5. Meshes optimized for discrete exterior calculus (DEC).

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Mousley, Sarah C.; Deakin, Michael; Knupp, Patrick

    We study the optimization of an energy function used by the meshing community to measure and improve mesh quality. This energy is non-traditional because it is dependent on both the primal triangulation and its dual Voronoi (power) diagram. The energy is a measure of the mesh's quality for usage in Discrete Exterior Calculus (DEC), a method for numerically solving PDEs. In DEC, the PDE domain is triangulated and this mesh is used to obtain discrete approximations of the continuous operators in the PDE. The energy of a mesh gives an upper bound on the error of the discrete diagonal approximationmore » of the Hodge star operator. In practice, one begins with an initial mesh and then makes adjustments to produce a mesh of lower energy. However, we have discovered several shortcomings in directly optimizing this energy, e.g. its non-convexity, and we show that the search for an optimized mesh may lead to mesh inversion (malformed triangles). We propose a new energy function to address some of these issues.« less

  6. A methodology for quadrilateral finite element mesh coarsening

    DOE PAGES

    Staten, Matthew L.; Benzley, Steven; Scott, Michael

    2008-03-27

    High fidelity finite element modeling of continuum mechanics problems often requires using all quadrilateral or all hexahedral meshes. The efficiency of such models is often dependent upon the ability to adapt a mesh to the physics of the phenomena. Adapting a mesh requires the ability to both refine and/or coarsen the mesh. The algorithms available to refine and coarsen triangular and tetrahedral meshes are very robust and efficient. However, the ability to locally and conformally refine or coarsen all quadrilateral and all hexahedral meshes presents many difficulties. Some research has been done on localized conformal refinement of quadrilateral and hexahedralmore » meshes. However, little work has been done on localized conformal coarsening of quadrilateral and hexahedral meshes. A general method which provides both localized conformal coarsening and refinement for quadrilateral meshes is presented in this paper. This method is based on restructuring the mesh with simplex manipulations to the dual of the mesh. Finally, this method appears to be extensible to hexahedral meshes in three dimensions.« less

  7. A novel method for pair-matching using three-dimensional digital models of bone: mesh-to-mesh value comparison.

    PubMed

    Karell, Mara A; Langstaff, Helen K; Halazonetis, Demetrios J; Minghetti, Caterina; Frelat, Mélanie; Kranioti, Elena F

    2016-09-01

    The commingling of human remains often hinders forensic/physical anthropologists during the identification process, as there are limited methods to accurately sort these remains. This study investigates a new method for pair-matching, a common individualization technique, which uses digital three-dimensional models of bone: mesh-to-mesh value comparison (MVC). The MVC method digitally compares the entire three-dimensional geometry of two bones at once to produce a single value to indicate their similarity. Two different versions of this method, one manual and the other automated, were created and then tested for how well they accurately pair-matched humeri. Each version was assessed using sensitivity and specificity. The manual mesh-to-mesh value comparison method was 100 % sensitive and 100 % specific. The automated mesh-to-mesh value comparison method was 95 % sensitive and 60 % specific. Our results indicate that the mesh-to-mesh value comparison method overall is a powerful new tool for accurately pair-matching commingled skeletal elements, although the automated version still needs improvement.

  8. Auto-adaptive finite element meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Richter, Roland; Leyland, Penelope

    1995-01-01

    Accurate capturing of discontinuities within compressible flow computations is achieved by coupling a suitable solver with an automatic adaptive mesh algorithm for unstructured triangular meshes. The mesh adaptation procedures developed rely on non-hierarchical dynamical local refinement/derefinement techniques, which hence enable structural optimization as well as geometrical optimization. The methods described are applied for a number of the ICASE test cases are particularly interesting for unsteady flow simulations.

  9. Fog water collection effectiveness: Mesh intercomparisons

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Fernandez, Daniel; Torregrosa, Alicia; Weiss-Penzias, Peter; Zhang, Bong June; Sorensen, Deckard; Cohen, Robert; McKinley, Gareth; Kleingartner, Justin; Oliphant, Andrew; Bowman, Matthew

    2018-01-01

    To explore fog water harvesting potential in California, we conducted long-term measurements involving three types of mesh using standard fog collectors (SFC). Volumetric fog water measurements from SFCs and wind data were collected and recorded in 15-minute intervals over three summertime fog seasons (2014–2016) at four California sites. SFCs were deployed with: standard 1.00 m2 double-layer 35% shade coefficient Raschel; stainless steel mesh coated with the MIT-14 hydrophobic formulation; and FogHa-Tin, a German manufactured, 3-dimensional spacer fabric deployed in two orientations. Analysis of 3419 volumetric samples from all sites showed strong relationships between mesh efficiency and wind speed. Raschel mesh collected 160% more fog water than FogHa-Tin at wind speeds less than 1 m s–1 and 45% less for wind speeds greater than 5 m s–1. MIT-14 coated stainless-steel mesh collected more fog water than Raschel mesh at all wind speeds. At low wind speeds of < 1 m s–1 the coated stainless steel mesh collected 3% more and at wind speeds of 4–5 m s–1, it collected 41% more. FogHa-Tin collected 5% more fog water when the warp of the weave was oriented vertically, per manufacturer specification, than when the warp of the weave was oriented horizontally. Time series measurements of three distinct mesh across similar wind regimes revealed inconsistent lags in fog water collection and inconsistent performance. Since such differences occurred under similar wind-speed regimes, we conclude that other factors play important roles in mesh performance, including in-situ fog event and aerosol dynamics that affect droplet-size spectra and droplet-to-mesh surface interactions.

  10. Array-based Hierarchical Mesh Generation in Parallel

    DOE PAGES

    Ray, Navamita; Grindeanu, Iulian; Zhao, Xinglin; ...

    2015-11-03

    In this paper, we describe an array-based hierarchical mesh generation capability through uniform refinement of unstructured meshes for efficient solution of PDE's using finite element methods and multigrid solvers. A multi-degree, multi-dimensional and multi-level framework is designed to generate the nested hierarchies from an initial mesh that can be used for a number of purposes such as multi-level methods to generating large meshes. The capability is developed under the parallel mesh framework “Mesh Oriented dAtaBase” a.k.a MOAB. We describe the underlying data structures and algorithms to generate such hierarchies and present numerical results for computational efficiency and mesh quality. Inmore » conclusion, we also present results to demonstrate the applicability of the developed capability to a multigrid finite-element solver.« less

  11. Mesh-type acoustic vector sensor

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zalalutdinov, M. K.; Photiadis, D. M.; Szymczak, W. G.; McMahon, J. W.; Bucaro, J. A.; Houston, B. H.

    2017-07-01

    Motivated by the predictions of a theoretical model developed to describe the acoustic flow force exerted on closely spaced nano-fibers in a viscous medium, we have demonstrated a novel concept for a particle velocity-based directional acoustic sensor. The central element of the concept exploits the acoustically induced normal displacement of a fine mesh as a measure of the collinear projection of the particle velocity in the sound wave. The key observations are (i) the acoustically induced flow force on an individual fiber within the mesh is nearly independent of the fiber diameter and (ii) the mesh-flow interaction can be well-described theoretically by a nearest neighbor coupling approximation. Scaling arguments based on these two observations indicate that the refinement of the mesh down to the nanoscale leads to significant improvements in performance. The combination of the two dimensional nature of the mesh together with the nanoscale dimensions provides a dramatic gain in the total length of fiber exposed to the flow, leading to a sensitivity enhancement by orders of magnitude. We describe the fabrication of a prototype mesh sensor equipped with optical readout. Preliminary measurements carried out over a considerable bandwidth together with the results of numerical simulations are in good agreement with the theory, thus providing a proof of concept.

  12. Evolution of the mandibular mesh implant.

    PubMed

    Salyer, K E; Johns, D F; Holmes, R E; Layton, J G

    1977-07-01

    Between 1960 and 1972, the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital Maxillofacial Research Laboratory developed and made over 150 cast-mesh implants. Successive designs were ovoid, circular, and double-lumened in cross section to improve implant strength, surface area for bioattachment, and adjustability. Sleeves, collars, and bows were employed in the assembly of these implants, with an acrylic condylar head attached when indicated. In 1972, our laboratory developed a mandibular mesh tray, cast in one piece on a single sprue, with preservation of the vertically adjustable ramus. Stainless steel replaced Vitallium because of its greater malleability. Essentially, a lost-wax technique is used to cast the mesh tray. The model of a mandibular segment is duplicated as a refractory model. Mesh wax, made in our own custom-made die, is adapted to the refractory model. The unit is then sprued and invested. The wax is fired our of the mold in a gas furnace. Casting is done by the transferral of molten stainless steel from the crucible to the mold by centrifugal force in an electro-induction casting machine. Other mesh implants that have been developed are made from wire mesh, Dacron mesh, cast Ticonium, and hydroformed titanium.

  13. Comparison of the fracture resistances of glass fiber mesh- and metal mesh-reinforced maxillary complete denture under dynamic fatigue loading.

    PubMed

    Im, So-Min; Huh, Yoon-Hyuk; Cho, Lee-Ra; Park, Chan-Jin

    2017-02-01

    The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of reinforcing materials on the fracture resistances of glass fiber mesh- and Cr-Co metal mesh-reinforced maxillary complete dentures under fatigue loading. Glass fiber mesh- and Cr-Co mesh-reinforced maxillary complete dentures were fabricated using silicone molds and acrylic resin. A control group was prepared with no reinforcement (n = 15 per group). After fatigue loading was applied using a chewing simulator, fracture resistance was measured by a universal testing machine. The fracture patterns were analyzed and the fractured surfaces were observed by scanning electron microscopy. After cyclic loading, none of the dentures showed cracks or fractures. During fracture resistance testing, all unreinforced dentures experienced complete fracture. The mesh-reinforced dentures primarily showed posterior framework fracture. Deformation of the all-metal framework caused the metal mesh-reinforced denture to exhibit the highest fracture resistance, followed by the glass fiber mesh-reinforced denture ( P <.05) and the control group ( P <.05). The glass fiber mesh-reinforced denture primarily maintained its original shape with unbroken fibers. River line pattern of the control group, dimples and interdendritic fractures of the metal mesh group, and radial fracture lines of the glass fiber group were observed on the fractured surfaces. The glass fiber mesh-reinforced denture exhibits a fracture resistance higher than that of the unreinforced denture, but lower than that of the metal mesh-reinforced denture because of the deformation of the metal mesh. The glass fiber mesh-reinforced denture maintains its shape even after fracture, indicating the possibility of easier repair.

  14. Preventing Mesh Pore Collapse by Designing Mesh Pores With Auxetic Geometries: A Comprehensive Evaluation Via Computational Modeling.

    PubMed

    Knight, Katrina M; Moalli, Pamela A; Abramowitch, Steven D

    2018-05-01

    Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) meshes are exposed to predominately tensile loading conditions in vivo that can lead to pore collapse by 70-90%, decreasing overall porosity and providing a plausible mechanism for the contraction/shrinkage of mesh observed following implantation. To prevent pore collapse, we proposed to design synthetic meshes with a macrostructure that results in auxetic behavior, the pores expand laterally, instead of contracting when loaded. Such behavior can be achieved with a range of auxetic structures/geometries. This study utilized finite element analysis (FEA) to assess the behavior of mesh models with eight auxetic pore geometries subjected to uniaxial loading to evaluate their potential to allow for pore expansion while simultaneously providing resistance to tensile loading. Overall, substituting auxetic geometries for standard pore geometries yielded more pore expansion, but often at the expense of increased model elongation, with two of the eight auxetics not able to maintain pore expansion at higher levels of tension. Meshes with stable pore geometries that remain open with loading will afford the ingrowth of host tissue into the pores and improved integration of the mesh. Given the demonstrated ability of auxetic geometries to allow for pore size maintenance (and pore expansion), auxetically designed meshes have the potential to significantly impact surgical outcomes and decrease the likelihood of major mesh-related complications.

  15. Mesh refinement strategy for optimal control problems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Paiva, L. T.; Fontes, F. A. C. C.

    2013-10-01

    Direct methods are becoming the most used technique to solve nonlinear optimal control problems. Regular time meshes having equidistant spacing are frequently used. However, in some cases these meshes cannot cope accurately with nonlinear behavior. One way to improve the solution is to select a new mesh with a greater number of nodes. Another way, involves adaptive mesh refinement. In this case, the mesh nodes have non equidistant spacing which allow a non uniform nodes collocation. In the method presented in this paper, a time mesh refinement strategy based on the local error is developed. After computing a solution in a coarse mesh, the local error is evaluated, which gives information about the subintervals of time domain where refinement is needed. This procedure is repeated until the local error reaches a user-specified threshold. The technique is applied to solve the car-like vehicle problem aiming minimum consumption. The approach developed in this paper leads to results with greater accuracy and yet with lower overall computational time as compared to using a time meshes having equidistant spacing.

  16. Experimental duplication of the important physical evidence of the lapel bulge of the jacket worn by Governor Connally when bullet 399 went through him.

    PubMed

    Lattimer, J K; Laidlaw, A; Heneghan, P; Haubner, E J

    1994-05-01

    By duplicating the wound to the neck of President Kennedy, which caused bullet 399 to turn sideways, and having it then hit a Connally-type rib cage with shirt and jacket, we reproduced the right-sided bulge of the jacket worn by Connally, with lapel eversion, which is so significant in frame 224. The extensive damage to his shirtfront was from the hail of rib fragments and soft tissue, exactly as described with his own shirt. Our tumbling bullet then went on to fracture a radius and be recovered intact except that it was somewhat flattened and bent and had lead extruded from the rear, as did bullet 399. Fragments of this lead were scraped off on the ragged bone-ends of some of our fractured radiuses, just as with Governor Connally's radius. It is believed that this duplication of the jacket and lapel bulge of Governor Connally, which occurred dependably, when we reproduced the circumstances at Dallas, confirmed this very important detail in this technical demonstration of the findings in the shooting of President Kennedy and Governor Connally. The bulge and the lapel eversion of the jacket worn by Governor Connally, starting in Zapruder frame 224, does indeed establish, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the exact moment when bullet 399 went through him. The right arms of both men were seen to react simultaneously, immediately thereafter. It also permits us to establish that there was plenty of time (three and one-half seconds) between the first two shots (frames 160 to 224) and even more time (five seconds) between the last two shots (frames 224 to 313), for Oswald to reload, reacquire his target (the head of President Kennedy) plus two full seconds to lock onto it. If the bullet does not traverse the neck of President Kennedy, it does not cause Governor Connally's jacket and lapel to bulge. The lapel bulge is a very important bit of actual physical evidence in establishing the fact that one bullet hit both men and that Oswald had plenty of time to hit the President

  17. Mesh infrastructure for coupled multiprocess geophysical simulations

    DOE PAGES

    Garimella, Rao V.; Perkins, William A.; Buksas, Mike W.; ...

    2014-01-01

    We have developed a sophisticated mesh infrastructure capability to support large scale multiphysics simulations such as subsurface flow and reactive contaminant transport at storage sites as well as the analysis of the effects of a warming climate on the terrestrial arctic. These simulations involve a wide range of coupled processes including overland flow, subsurface flow, freezing and thawing of ice rich soil, accumulation, redistribution and melting of snow, biogeochemical processes involving plant matter and finally, microtopography evolution due to melting and degradation of ice wedges below the surface. In addition to supporting the usual topological and geometric queries about themore » mesh, the mesh infrastructure adds capabilities such as identifying columnar structures in the mesh, enabling deforming of the mesh subject to constraints and enabling the simultaneous use of meshes of different dimensionality for subsurface and surface processes. The generic mesh interface is capable of using three different open source mesh frameworks (MSTK, MOAB and STKmesh) under the hood allowing the developers to directly compare them and choose one that is best suited for the application's needs. We demonstrate the results of some simulations using these capabilities as well as present a comparison of the performance of the different mesh frameworks.« less

  18. Comparison of a lightweight polypropylene mesh (Optilene® LP) and a large-pore knitted PTFE mesh (GORE® INFINIT® mesh)--Biocompatibility in a standardized endoscopic extraperitoneal hernia model.

    PubMed

    Jacob, Dietmar A; Schug-Pass, Christine; Sommerer, Florian; Tannapfel, Andrea; Lippert, Hans; Köckerling, Ferdinand

    2012-02-01

    The use of a mesh with good biocompatibility properties is of decisive importance for the avoidance of recurrences and chronic pain in endoscopic hernia repair surgery. As we know from numerous experiments and clinical experience, large-pore, lightweight polypropylene meshes possess the best biocompatibility. However, large-pore meshes of different polymers may be used as well and might be an alternative solution. Utilizing a totally extraperitoneal technique in an established animal model, 20 domestic pigs were implanted with either a lightweight large-pore polypropylene (PP) mesh (Optilene® LP) or a medium-weight large-pore knitted polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE) mesh (GORE® INFINIT® mesh). After 94 days, the pigs were sacrificed and postmortem diagnostic laparoscopy was performed, followed by explantation of the specimens for macroscopic, histological and immunohistochemical evaluation. The mean mesh shrinkage rate was 14.2% for Optilene® LP vs. 24.7% for INFINIT® mesh (p = 0.017). The partial volume of the inflammatory cells was 11.2% for Optilene® LP vs. 13.9% for INFINIT (n.s.). CD68 was significantly higher for INFINIT (11.8% vs. 5.6%, p = 0.007). The markers of cell turnover, namely Ki67 and the apoptotic index, were comparable at 6.4% vs. 12.4% (n.s.) and 1.6% vs. 2.0% (n.s.). In the extracellular matrix, TGF-β was 35.4% for Optilene® LP and 31.0% for INFINIT® (n.s.). Collagen I (pos/300 μm) deposits were 117.8 and 114.9, respectively. In our experimental examinations, Optilene® LP and INFINIT® showed a comparable biocompatibility in terms of chronic inflammatory reaction; however, the shrinkage rate was significantly higher for INFINIT® after 3 months. The higher shrinkage rate of INFINIT® should be taken into account when choosing the mesh size for an adequate hernia overlap.

  19. Mesh fixation in laparoscopic incisional hernia repair: glue fixation provides attachment strength similar to absorbable tacks but differs substantially in different meshes.

    PubMed

    Rieder, Erwin; Stoiber, Martin; Scheikl, Verena; Poglitsch, Marcus; Dal Borgo, Andrea; Prager, Gerhard; Schima, Heinrich

    2011-01-01

    Laparoscopic ventral hernia repair has gained popularity among minimally invasive surgeons. However, mesh fixation remains a matter of discussion. This study was designed to compare noninvasive fibrin-glue attachment with tack fixation of meshes developed primarily for intra-abdominal use. It was hypothesized that particular mesh structures would substantially influence detachment force. For initial evaluation, specimens of laminated polypropylene/polydioxanone meshes were anchored to porcine abdominal walls by either helical titanium tacks or absorbable tacks in vitro. A universal tensile-testing machine was used to measure tangential detachment forces (TF). For subsequent experiments of glue fixation, polypropylene/polydioxanone mesh and 4 additional meshes with diverse particular mesh structure, ie, polyvinylidene fluoride/polypropylene mesh, a titanium-coated polypropylene mesh, a polyester mesh bonded with a resorbable collagen, and a macroporous condensed PTFE mesh were evaluated. TF tests revealed that fibrin-glue attachment was not substantially different from that achieved with absorbable tacks (median TF 7.8 Newton [N], range 1.3 to 15.8 N), but only when certain open porous meshes (polyvinylidene fluoride/polypropylene mesh: median 6.2 N, range 3.4 to 10.3 N; titanium-coated polypropylene mesh: median 5.2 N, range 2.1 to 11.7 N) were used. Meshes coated by an anti-adhesive barrier (polypropylene/polydioxanone mesh: median 3.1 N, range 1.7 to 5.8 N; polyester mesh bonded with a resorbable collagen: median 1.3 N, range 0.5 to 1.9 N), or the condensed PTFE mesh (median 3.1 N, range 2.1 to 7.0 N) provided a significantly lower TF (p < 0.01). Fibrin glue appears to be an appealing noninvasive option for mesh fixation in laparoscopic ventral hernia repair, but only if appropriate meshes are used. Glue can also serve as an adjunct to mechanical fixation to reduce the number of invasive tacks. Copyright © 2010 American College of Surgeons. Published by Elsevier

  20. Dynamic mesh for TCAD modeling with ECORCE

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Michez, A.; Boch, J.; Touboul, A.; Saigné, F.

    2016-08-01

    Mesh generation for TCAD modeling is challenging. Because densities of carriers can change by several orders of magnitude in thin areas, a significant change of the solution can be observed for two very similar meshes. The mesh must be defined at best to minimize this change. To address this issue, a criterion based on polynomial interpolation on adjacent nodes is proposed that adjusts accurately the mesh to the gradients of Degrees of Freedom. Furthermore, a dynamic mesh that follows changes of DF in DC and transient mode is a powerful tool for TCAD users. But, in transient modeling, adding nodes to a mesh induces oscillations in the solution that appears as spikes at the current collected at the contacts. This paper proposes two schemes that solve this problem. Examples show that using these techniques, the dynamic mesh generator of the TCAD tool ECORCE handle semiconductors devices in DC and transient mode.

  1. Comparison of the fracture resistances of glass fiber mesh- and metal mesh-reinforced maxillary complete denture under dynamic fatigue loading

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    PURPOSE The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of reinforcing materials on the fracture resistances of glass fiber mesh- and Cr–Co metal mesh-reinforced maxillary complete dentures under fatigue loading. MATERIALS AND METHODS Glass fiber mesh- and Cr–Co mesh-reinforced maxillary complete dentures were fabricated using silicone molds and acrylic resin. A control group was prepared with no reinforcement (n = 15 per group). After fatigue loading was applied using a chewing simulator, fracture resistance was measured by a universal testing machine. The fracture patterns were analyzed and the fractured surfaces were observed by scanning electron microscopy. RESULTS After cyclic loading, none of the dentures showed cracks or fractures. During fracture resistance testing, all unreinforced dentures experienced complete fracture. The mesh-reinforced dentures primarily showed posterior framework fracture. Deformation of the all-metal framework caused the metal mesh-reinforced denture to exhibit the highest fracture resistance, followed by the glass fiber mesh-reinforced denture (P<.05) and the control group (P<.05). The glass fiber mesh-reinforced denture primarily maintained its original shape with unbroken fibers. River line pattern of the control group, dimples and interdendritic fractures of the metal mesh group, and radial fracture lines of the glass fiber group were observed on the fractured surfaces. CONCLUSION The glass fiber mesh-reinforced denture exhibits a fracture resistance higher than that of the unreinforced denture, but lower than that of the metal mesh-reinforced denture because of the deformation of the metal mesh. The glass fiber mesh-reinforced denture maintains its shape even after fracture, indicating the possibility of easier repair. PMID:28243388

  2. Mesh for prolapse surgery: Why the fuss?

    PubMed

    Rajshekhar, Smita; Mukhopadhyay, Sambit; Klinge, Uwe

    2015-06-01

    Pelvic organ prolapse is a common gynaecological problem. Surgical techniques to repair prolapse have been constantly evolving to reduce the recurrence of prolapse and need for reoperation. Grafts made of synthetic and biological materials became popular in the last decade as they were intended to provide extra support to native tissue repairs. However, serious complications related to use of synthetic meshes have been reported and there is increasing medico-legal concern about mesh use in prolapse surgery. Some mesh products already have been withdrawn from the market and the FDA has introduced stricter surveillance of new and existing products. Large randomized studies comparing mesh with non-mesh procedures are lacking which creates uncertainty for the surgeon and their patients.The small cohorts of the RCTs available with short follow-up periods just allow the conclusion that the mesh repair can be helpful in the short to medium term but unfortunately are not able to prove safety for all patients. In particular, current clinical reports cannot define for which indication what material may be superior compared to non-mesh repair.Quality control through long-term individual and national mesh registries is needed to keep a record of all surgeons using mesh and all devices being used, monitoring their effectiveness and safety data. Meshes with better biocompatibility designed specifically for use in vaginal surgery may provide superior clinical results, where the reduction of complications may allow a wider range of indications. © The Author(s) 2015.

  3. Method of generating a surface mesh

    DOEpatents

    Shepherd, Jason F [Albuquerque, NM; Benzley, Steven [Provo, UT; Grover, Benjamin T [Tracy, CA

    2008-03-04

    A method and machine-readable medium provide a technique to generate and modify a quadrilateral finite element surface mesh using dual creation and modification. After generating a dual of a surface (mesh), a predetermined algorithm may be followed to generate and modify a surface mesh of quadrilateral elements. The predetermined algorithm may include the steps of generating two-dimensional cell regions in dual space, determining existing nodes in primal space, generating new nodes in the dual space, and connecting nodes to form the quadrilateral elements (faces) for the generated and modifiable surface mesh.

  4. Development of jacket platform tsunami risk rating system in waters offshore North Borneo

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, H. E.; Liew, M. S.; Mardi, N. H.; Na, K. L.; Toloue, Iraj; Wong, S. K.

    2016-09-01

    This work details the simulation of tsunami waves generated by seaquakes in the Manila Trench and their effect on fixed oil and gas jacket platforms in waters offshore North Borneo. For this study, a four-leg living quarter jacket platform located in a water depth of 63m is modelled in SACS v5.3. Malaysia has traditionally been perceived to be safe from the hazards of earthquakes and tsunamis. Local design practices tend to neglect tsunami waves and include no such provisions. In 2004, a 9.3 M w seaquake occurred off the northwest coast of Aceh, which generated tsunami waves that caused destruction in Malaysia totalling US 25 million and 68 deaths. This event prompted an awareness of the need to study the reliability of fixed offshore platforms scattered throughout Malaysian waters. In this paper, we present a review of research on the seismicity of the Manila Trench, which is perceived to be high risk for Southeast Asia. From the tsunami numerical model TUNA-M2, we extract computer-simulated tsunami waves at prescribed grid points in the vicinity of the platforms in the region. Using wave heights as input, we simulate the tsunami using SACS v5.3 structural analysis software of offshore platforms, which is widely accepted by the industry. We employ the nonlinear solitary wave theory in our tsunami loading calculations for the platforms, and formulate a platform-specific risk quantification system. We then perform an intensive structural sensitivity analysis and derive a corresponding platform-specific risk rating model.

  5. Doing Research in a Professional Development School and Why I Feel like Houdini in a Straight Jacket

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Neapolitan, Jane

    2004-01-01

    When the author was a little girl, her father told her the story of how he once saw the great Harry Houdini escape from a straight jacket. In the early 1900s, Houdini fascinated thousands of people by performing feats of life-threatening daring and agility. Houdini was a professional in the traditional sense: he acted alone, kept his trade secrets…

  6. Application of Quaternions for Mesh

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Samareh, Jamshid A.

    2002-01-01

    A new three dimensional mesh deformation algorithm, based on quaternion algebra, is introduced. A brief overview of quaternion algebra is provided, along with some preliminary results for two-dimensional structured and unstructured viscous mesh deformation.

  7. Physiological Evaluation of A1 (Extreme-Cold-Weather) and A2 (Buoyant, Intermediate-Cold-Weather) Jackets.

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1983-08-01

    the resting metabolic heat will be dissipated through the clothing with the remaining 25% lost through the respiratory tract and insensible sweating...AD-A258 410 PHYSIOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF Al (EXTREME-COLD-WEATHER) AND A2 (BUOYANT, INTERMEDIATE-COLD-WEATHER) JACKETS NAVY CLOTHING AND TEXTILE...Navy Clothing and Textile Research Facility 523-003-30-06 21 Strathmore Road 523-003-30-08 Natick, MA 01760 11. CONTROLLING OFFICE NAME AND ADDRESS

  8. Towards hybrid mesh generation for realistic design environments

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    McMorris, Harlan Tom

    Two different techniques that allow hybrid mesh generation to be easily used in the design environment are presented. The purpose of this research is to allow for hybrid meshes to be used during the design process where the geometry is being varied. The first technique, modular hybrid mesh generation, allows for the replacement of portions of a geometry with a new design shape. The mesh is maintained for the portions of that have not changed during the design process. A new mesh is generated for the new part of the geometry and this piece is added to the existing mesh. The new mesh must match the remaining portions of the geometry plus the element sizes must match exactly across the interfaces. The second technique, hybrid mesh movement, is used when the basic geometry remains the same with only small variations to portions of the geometry. These small variations include changing the cross-section of a wing, twisting a blade or changing the length of some portion of the geometry. The mesh for the original geometry is moved onto the new geometry one step at a time beginning with the curves of the surface, continuing with the surface mesh geometry and ending with the interior points of the mesh. The validity of the hybrid mesh is maintained by applying corrections to the motion of the points. Finally, the quality of the new hybrid mesh is improved to ensure that the new mesh maintains the quality of the original hybrid mesh. Applications of both design techniques are applied to typical example cases from the fields of turbomachinery, aerospace and offshore technology. The example test cases demonstrate the ability of the two techniques to reuse the majority of an existing hybrid mesh for typical design changes. Modular mesh generation is used to change the shape of piece of a seafloor pipeline geometry to a completely different configuration. The hybrid mesh movement technique is used to change the twist of a turbomachinery blade, the tip clearance of a rotor blade

  9. Minimizing finite-volume discretization errors on polyhedral meshes

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mouly, Quentin; Evrard, Fabien; van Wachem, Berend; Denner, Fabian

    2017-11-01

    Tetrahedral meshes are widely used in CFD to simulate flows in and around complex geometries, as automatic generation tools now allow tetrahedral meshes to represent arbitrary domains in a relatively accessible manner. Polyhedral meshes, however, are an increasingly popular alternative. While tetrahedron have at most four neighbours, the higher number of neighbours per polyhedral cell leads to a more accurate evaluation of gradients, essential for the numerical resolution of PDEs. The use of polyhedral meshes, nonetheless, introduces discretization errors for finite-volume methods: skewness and non-orthogonality, which occur with all sorts of unstructured meshes, as well as errors due to non-planar faces, specific to polygonal faces with more than three vertices. Indeed, polyhedral mesh generation algorithms cannot, in general, guarantee to produce meshes free of non-planar faces. The presented work focuses on the quantification and optimization of discretization errors on polyhedral meshes in the context of finite-volume methods. A quasi-Newton method is employed to optimize the relevant mesh quality measures. Various meshes are optimized and CFD results of cases with known solutions are presented to assess the improvements the optimization approach can provide.

  10. Improved ALE mesh velocities for complex flows

    DOE PAGES

    Bakosi, Jozsef; Waltz, Jacob I.; Morgan, Nathaniel Ray

    2017-05-31

    A key choice in the development of arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian solution algorithms is how to move the computational mesh. The most common approaches are smoothing and relaxation techniques, or to compute a mesh velocity field that produces smooth mesh displacements. We present a method in which the mesh velocity is specified by the irrotational component of the fluid velocity as computed from a Helmholtz decomposition, and excess compression of mesh cells is treated through a noniterative, local spring-force model. This approach allows distinct and separate control over rotational and translational modes. In conclusion, the utility of the new mesh motion algorithmmore » is demonstrated on a number of 3D test problems, including problems that involve both shocks and significant amounts of vorticity.« less

  11. Anterior pelvic organ prolapse repair using synthetic mesh.

    PubMed

    Patel, Bhavin N; Lucioni, Alvaro; Kobashi, Kathleen C

    2012-06-01

    Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) statement on mesh in July of 2011, there has been controversy regarding synthetic mesh repairs for vaginal prolapse. In this article, we review the biochemical basis for the use of synthetic mesh in prolapse repair as well as clinical results of anterior compartment prolapse repair with synthetic mesh. Finally, we discuss the FDA warning regarding mesh.

  12. Unstructured mesh adaptivity for urban flooding modelling

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hu, R.; Fang, F.; Salinas, P.; Pain, C. C.

    2018-05-01

    Over the past few decades, urban floods have been gaining more attention due to their increase in frequency. To provide reliable flooding predictions in urban areas, various numerical models have been developed to perform high-resolution flood simulations. However, the use of high-resolution meshes across the whole computational domain causes a high computational burden. In this paper, a 2D control-volume and finite-element flood model using adaptive unstructured mesh technology has been developed. This adaptive unstructured mesh technique enables meshes to be adapted optimally in time and space in response to the evolving flow features, thus providing sufficient mesh resolution where and when it is required. It has the advantage of capturing the details of local flows and wetting and drying front while reducing the computational cost. Complex topographic features are represented accurately during the flooding process. For example, the high-resolution meshes around the buildings and steep regions are placed when the flooding water reaches these regions. In this work a flooding event that happened in 2002 in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom has been simulated to demonstrate the capability of the adaptive unstructured mesh flooding model. The simulations have been performed using both fixed and adaptive unstructured meshes, and then results have been compared with those published 2D and 3D results. The presented method shows that the 2D adaptive mesh model provides accurate results while having a low computational cost.

  13. Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh Networks: A Survey.

    PubMed

    Darroudi, Seyed Mahdi; Gomez, Carles

    2017-06-22

    Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has gained significant momentum. However, the original design of BLE focused on star topology networking, which limits network coverage range and precludes end-to-end path diversity. In contrast, other competing technologies overcome such constraints by supporting the mesh network topology. For these reasons, academia, industry, and standards development organizations have been designing solutions to enable BLE mesh networks. Nevertheless, the literature lacks a consolidated view on this emerging area. This paper comprehensively surveys state of the art BLE mesh networking. We first provide a taxonomy of BLE mesh network solutions. We then review the solutions, describing the variety of approaches that leverage existing BLE functionality to enable BLE mesh networks. We identify crucial aspects of BLE mesh network solutions and discuss their advantages and drawbacks. Finally, we highlight currently open issues.

  14. Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh Networks: A Survey

    PubMed Central

    Darroudi, Seyed Mahdi; Gomez, Carles

    2017-01-01

    Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has gained significant momentum. However, the original design of BLE focused on star topology networking, which limits network coverage range and precludes end-to-end path diversity. In contrast, other competing technologies overcome such constraints by supporting the mesh network topology. For these reasons, academia, industry, and standards development organizations have been designing solutions to enable BLE mesh networks. Nevertheless, the literature lacks a consolidated view on this emerging area. This paper comprehensively surveys state of the art BLE mesh networking. We first provide a taxonomy of BLE mesh network solutions. We then review the solutions, describing the variety of approaches that leverage existing BLE functionality to enable BLE mesh networks. We identify crucial aspects of BLE mesh network solutions and discuss their advantages and drawbacks. Finally, we highlight currently open issues. PMID:28640183

  15. Mesh control information of windmill designed by Solidwork program

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mulyana, T.; Sebayang, D.; Rafsanjani, A. M. D.; Adani, J. H. D.; Muhyiddin, Y. S.

    2017-12-01

    This paper presents the mesh control information imposed on the windmill already designed. The accuracy of Simulation results is influenced by the quality of the created mesh. However, compared to the quality of the mesh is made, the simulation time running will be done software also increases. The smaller the size of the elements created when making the mesh, the better the mesh quality will be generated. When adjusting the mesh size, there is a slider that acts as the density regulator of the element. SolidWorks Simulation also has Mesh Control facility. Features that can adjust mesh density only in the desired part. The best results of mesh control obtained for both static and thermal simulation have ratio 1.5.

  16. Meta-analysis of Prolene Hernia System mesh versus Lichtenstein mesh in open inguinal hernia repair.

    PubMed

    Sanjay, Pandanaboyana; Watt, David G; Ogston, Simon A; Alijani, Afshin; Windsor, John A

    2012-10-01

    This study was designed to systematically analyse all published randomized clinical trials comparing the Prolene Hernia System (PHS) mesh and Lichtenstein mesh for open inguinal hernia repair. A literature search was performed using the Cochrane Colorectal Cancer Group Controlled Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials in the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, Embase and Science Citation Index Expanded. Randomized trials comparing the Lichtenstein Mesh repair (LMR) with the Prolene Hernia System were included. Statistical analysis was performed using Review Manager Version 5.1 software. The primary outcome measures were hernia recurrence and chronic pain after operation. Secondary outcome measures included surgical time, peri-operative complications, time to return to work, early and long-term postoperative complications. Six randomized clinical trials were identified as suitable, containing 1313 patients. There was no statistical difference between the two types of repair in operation time, time to return to work, incidence of chronic groin pain, hernia recurrence or long-term complications. The PHS group had a higher rate of peri-operative complications, compared to Lichtenstein mesh repair (risk ratio (RR) 0.71, 95% confidence interval 0.55-0.93, P=0.01). The use of PHS mesh was associated with an increased risk of peri-operative complications compared to LMR. Both mesh repair techniques have comparable short- and long-term outcomes. Copyright © 2012 Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (Scottish charity number SC005317) and Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Jali - Unstructured Mesh Infrastructure for Multi-Physics Applications

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Garimella, Rao V; Berndt, Markus; Coon, Ethan

    2017-04-13

    Jali is a parallel unstructured mesh infrastructure library designed for use by multi-physics simulations. It supports 2D and 3D arbitrary polyhedral meshes distributed over hundreds to thousands of nodes. Jali can read write Exodus II meshes along with fields and sets on the mesh and support for other formats is partially implemented or is (https://github.com/MeshToolkit/MSTK), an open source general purpose unstructured mesh infrastructure library from Los Alamos National Laboratory. While it has been made to work with other mesh frameworks such as MOAB and STKmesh in the past, support for maintaining the interface to these frameworks has been suspended formore » now. Jali supports distributed as well as on-node parallelism. Support of on-node parallelism is through direct use of the the mesh in multi-threaded constructs or through the use of "tiles" which are submeshes or sub-partitions of a partition destined for a compute node.« less

  18. Association Between the Amount of Vaginal Mesh Used With Mesh Erosions and Repeated Surgery After Repairing Pelvic Organ Prolapse and Stress Urinary Incontinence.

    PubMed

    Chughtai, Bilal; Barber, Matthew D; Mao, Jialin; Forde, James C; Normand, Sharon-Lise T; Sedrakyan, Art

    2017-03-01

    Mesh, a synthetic graft, has been used in pelvic organ prolapse (POP) repair and stress urinary incontinence (SUI) to augment and strengthen weakened tissue. Polypropylene mesh has come under scrutiny by the US Food and Drug Administration. To examine the rates of mesh complications and invasive reintervention after the placement of vaginal mesh for POP repair or SUI surgery. This investigation was an observational cohort study at inpatient and ambulatory surgery settings in New York State. Participants were women who underwent transvaginal repair for POP or SUI with mesh between January 1, 2008, and December 31, 2012, and were followed up through December 31, 2013. They were divided into the following 4 groups based on the amount of mesh exposure: transvaginal POP repair surgery with mesh and concurrent sling use (vaginal mesh plus sling group), transvaginal POP repair with mesh and no concurrent sling use (vaginal mesh group), transvaginal POP repair without mesh but concurrent sling use for SUI (POP sling group), and sling for SUI alone (SUI sling group). The primary outcome was the occurrence of mesh complications and repeated invasive intervention within 1 year after the initial mesh implantation. A time-to-event analysis was performed to examine the occurrence of mesh erosions and subsequent reintervention. Secondary analyses of an age association (<65 vs ≥65 years) were conducted. The study identified 41 604 women who underwent 1 of the 4 procedures. The mean (SD) age of women at their initial mesh implantation was 56.2 (13.0) years. The highest risk of erosions was found in the vaginal mesh plus sling group (2.72%; 95% CI, 2.31%-3.21%) and the lowest in the SUI sling group (1.57%; 95% CI, 1.41%-1.74%). The risk of repeated surgery with concomitant erosion diagnosis was also the highest in the vaginal mesh plus sling group (2.13%; 95% CI, 1.76%-2.56%) and the lowest in the SUI sling group (1.16%; 95% CI, 1.03%-1.31%). The combined use of POP mesh and SUI

  19. Monitoring and evaluation of wire mesh forming life

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Enemuoh, Emmanuel U.; Zhao, Ping; Kadlec, Alec

    2018-03-01

    Forming tables are used with stainless steel wire mesh conveyor belts to produce variety of products. The forming tables will typically run continuously for several days, with some hours of scheduled downtime for maintenance, cleaning and part replacement after several weeks of operation. The wire mesh conveyor belts show large variation in their remaining life due to associated variations in their nominal thicknesses. Currently the industry is dependent on seasoned operators to determine the replacement time for the wire mesh formers. The drawback of this approach is inconsistency in judgements made by different operators and lack of data knowledge that can be used to develop decision making system that will be more consistent with wire mesh life prediction and replacement time. In this study, diagnostic measurements about the health of wire mesh former is investigated and developed. The wire mesh quality characteristics considered are thermal measurement, tension property, gage thickness, and wire mesh wear. The results show that real time thermal sensor and wear measurements would provide suitable data for the estimation of wire mesh failure, therefore, can be used as a diagnostic parameter for developing structural health monitoring (SHM) system for stainless steel wire mesh formers.

  20. Biologic meshes are not superior to synthetic meshes in ventral hernia repair: an experimental study with long-term follow-up evaluation.

    PubMed

    Ditzel, M; Deerenberg, E B; Grotenhuis, N; Harlaar, J J; Monkhorst, K; Bastiaansen-Jenniskens, Y M; Jeekel, J; Lange, J F

    2013-10-01

    In laparoscopic incisional hernia repair, direct contact between the prosthesis and the abdominal viscera is inevitable, which may lead to an inflammatory reaction resulting in abdominal adhesion formation. This study compared five different synthetic and biologic meshes in terms of adhesion formation, shrinkage, incorporation, and histologic characteristics after a period of 30 and 90 days. In 85 rats, a mesh was positioned intraperitoneally in direct contact with the viscera. Five different meshes were implanted: Prolene (polypropylene), Parietex composite (collagen-coated polyester), Strattice (porcine dermis, non-cross-linked), Surgisis (porcine small intestine submucosa, non-cross-linked), and Permacol (porcine dermis, cross-linked). The meshes were tested in terms of adhesion formation, shrinkage, and incorporation after a period of 30 and 90 days. Additionally, collagen formation after 90 days was determined. Significantly less adhesion formation was observed with Parietex composite (5 %; interquartile range [IQR], 2-5 %) and Strattice (5 %; IQR, 4-10 %) in the long term. In contrast, organs were attached to Permacol with four of seven meshes (57 %), and adhesion coverage of Surgisis mesh was present in 66 % (IQR, 0-100 %) of the cases. After 90 days, the best incorporation was seen with the Parietex composite mesh (79 %; IQR, 61-83 %). After 90 days, major alterations in adhesion formation were seen compared with 30 days. Histologically, Strattice and Parietex composite showed a new mesothelial layer on the visceral side of the mesh. Microscopic degradation and new collagen formation were seen in the Surgisis group. Parietex composite mesh demonstrated the best long-term results compared with all the other meshes. The biologic non-cross-linked mesh, Strattice, showed little adhesion formation and moderate shrinkage but poor incorporation. Biologic meshes are promising, but varying results require a more detailed investigation and demonstrate

  1. 21 CFR 878.3300 - Surgical mesh.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-04-01

    ... GENERAL AND PLASTIC SURGERY DEVICES Prosthetic Devices § 878.3300 Surgical mesh. (a) Identification... acetabular and cement restrictor mesh used during orthopedic surgery. (b) Classification. Class II. ...

  2. 21 CFR 878.3300 - Surgical mesh.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-04-01

    ... GENERAL AND PLASTIC SURGERY DEVICES Prosthetic Devices § 878.3300 Surgical mesh. (a) Identification... acetabular and cement restrictor mesh used during orthopedic surgery. (b) Classification. Class II. ...

  3. 21 CFR 878.3300 - Surgical mesh.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-04-01

    ... GENERAL AND PLASTIC SURGERY DEVICES Prosthetic Devices § 878.3300 Surgical mesh. (a) Identification... acetabular and cement restrictor mesh used during orthopedic surgery. (b) Classification. Class II. ...

  4. 21 CFR 878.3300 - Surgical mesh.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-04-01

    ... GENERAL AND PLASTIC SURGERY DEVICES Prosthetic Devices § 878.3300 Surgical mesh. (a) Identification... acetabular and cement restrictor mesh used during orthopedic surgery. (b) Classification. Class II. ...

  5. 21 CFR 878.3300 - Surgical mesh.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-04-01

    ... GENERAL AND PLASTIC SURGERY DEVICES Prosthetic Devices § 878.3300 Surgical mesh. (a) Identification... acetabular and cement restrictor mesh used during orthopedic surgery. (b) Classification. Class II. ...

  6. Parallel Adaptive Mesh Refinement Library

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mac-Neice, Peter; Olson, Kevin

    2005-01-01

    Parallel Adaptive Mesh Refinement Library (PARAMESH) is a package of Fortran 90 subroutines designed to provide a computer programmer with an easy route to extension of (1) a previously written serial code that uses a logically Cartesian structured mesh into (2) a parallel code with adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). Alternatively, in its simplest use, and with minimal effort, PARAMESH can operate as a domain-decomposition tool for users who want to parallelize their serial codes but who do not wish to utilize adaptivity. The package builds a hierarchy of sub-grids to cover the computational domain of a given application program, with spatial resolution varying to satisfy the demands of the application. The sub-grid blocks form the nodes of a tree data structure (a quad-tree in two or an oct-tree in three dimensions). Each grid block has a logically Cartesian mesh. The package supports one-, two- and three-dimensional models.

  7. Parallel deterministic transport sweeps of structured and unstructured meshes with overloaded mesh decompositions

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Pautz, Shawn D.; Bailey, Teresa S.

    Here, the efficiency of discrete ordinates transport sweeps depends on the scheduling algorithm, the domain decomposition, the problem to be solved, and the computational platform. Sweep scheduling algorithms may be categorized by their approach to several issues. In this paper we examine the strategy of domain overloading for mesh partitioning as one of the components of such algorithms. In particular, we extend the domain overloading strategy, previously defined and analyzed for structured meshes, to the general case of unstructured meshes. We also present computational results for both the structured and unstructured domain overloading cases. We find that an appropriate amountmore » of domain overloading can greatly improve the efficiency of parallel sweeps for both structured and unstructured partitionings of the test problems examined on up to 10 5 processor cores.« less

  8. Parallel deterministic transport sweeps of structured and unstructured meshes with overloaded mesh decompositions

    DOE PAGES

    Pautz, Shawn D.; Bailey, Teresa S.

    2016-11-29

    Here, the efficiency of discrete ordinates transport sweeps depends on the scheduling algorithm, the domain decomposition, the problem to be solved, and the computational platform. Sweep scheduling algorithms may be categorized by their approach to several issues. In this paper we examine the strategy of domain overloading for mesh partitioning as one of the components of such algorithms. In particular, we extend the domain overloading strategy, previously defined and analyzed for structured meshes, to the general case of unstructured meshes. We also present computational results for both the structured and unstructured domain overloading cases. We find that an appropriate amountmore » of domain overloading can greatly improve the efficiency of parallel sweeps for both structured and unstructured partitionings of the test problems examined on up to 10 5 processor cores.« less

  9. Method of modifying a volume mesh using sheet extraction

    DOEpatents

    Borden, Michael J [Albuquerque, NM; Shepherd, Jason F [Albuquerque, NM

    2007-02-20

    A method and machine-readable medium provide a technique to modify a hexahedral finite element volume mesh using dual generation and sheet extraction. After generating a dual of a volume stack (mesh), a predetermined algorithm may be followed to modify the volume mesh of hexahedral elements. The predetermined algorithm may include the steps of determining a sheet of hexahedral mesh elements, generating nodes for merging, and merging the nodes to delete the sheet of hexahedral mesh elements and modify the volume mesh.

  10. Method of modifying a volume mesh using sheet insertion

    DOEpatents

    Borden, Michael J [Albuquerque, NM; Shepherd, Jason F [Albuquerque, NM

    2006-08-29

    A method and machine-readable medium provide a technique to modify a hexahedral finite element volume mesh using dual generation and sheet insertion. After generating a dual of a volume stack (mesh), a predetermined algorithm may be followed to modify (refine) the volume mesh of hexahedral elements. The predetermined algorithm may include the steps of locating a sheet of hexahedral mesh elements, determining a plurality of hexahedral elements within the sheet to refine, shrinking the plurality of elements, and inserting a new sheet of hexahedral elements adjacently to modify the volume mesh. Additionally, another predetermined algorithm using mesh cutting may be followed to modify a volume mesh.

  11. Dynamic mesh adaption for triangular and tetrahedral grids

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Biswas, Rupak; Strawn, Roger

    1993-01-01

    The following topics are discussed: requirements for dynamic mesh adaption; linked-list data structure; edge-based data structure; adaptive-grid data structure; three types of element subdivision; mesh refinement; mesh coarsening; additional constraints for coarsening; anisotropic error indicator for edges; unstructured-grid Euler solver; inviscid 3-D wing; and mesh quality for solution-adaptive grids. The discussion is presented in viewgraph form.

  12. Nanowire mesh solar fuels generator

    DOEpatents

    Yang, Peidong; Chan, Candace; Sun, Jianwei; Liu, Bin

    2016-05-24

    This disclosure provides systems, methods, and apparatus related to a nanowire mesh solar fuels generator. In one aspect, a nanowire mesh solar fuels generator includes (1) a photoanode configured to perform water oxidation and (2) a photocathode configured to perform water reduction. The photocathode is in electrical contact with the photoanode. The photoanode may include a high surface area network of photoanode nanowires. The photocathode may include a high surface area network of photocathode nanowires. In some embodiments, the nanowire mesh solar fuels generator may include an ion conductive polymer infiltrating the photoanode and the photocathode in the region where the photocathode is in electrical contact with the photoanode.

  13. Unstructured Polyhedral Mesh Thermal Radiation Diffusion

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Palmer, T.S.; Zika, M.R.; Madsen, N.K.

    2000-07-27

    Unstructured mesh particle transport and diffusion methods are gaining wider acceptance as mesh generation, scientific visualization and linear solvers improve. This paper describes an algorithm that is currently being used in the KULL code at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to solve the radiative transfer equations. The algorithm employs a point-centered diffusion discretization on arbitrary polyhedral meshes in 3D. We present the results of a few test problems to illustrate the capabilities of the radiation diffusion module.

  14. Synthetic vaginal mesh for pelvic organ prolapse.

    PubMed

    Iglesia, Cheryl B

    2011-10-01

    The purpose of this review is to summarize recently published comparative trials on synthetic vaginal mesh versus traditional native tissue repairs for pelvic organ prolapse. Although studies suggest benefit from the use of synthetic vaginal mesh for anterior compartment prolapse, data are limited on the use of mesh for posterior and apical prolapse when compared with native tissue repair. The benefits of a more durable repair must be weighed against risks such as the development of de-novo stress incontinence, visceral injury, dyspareunia, pelvic pain and mesh contraction, exposure and extrusion requiring reoperation. Furthermore, the success rates of native tissue repairs are higher than previously considered using updated validated composite outcomes that incorporate both subjective relief of bulge and objective cure defined as prolapse above the hymenal ring. Surgeons placing synthetic mesh for pelvic organ prolapse should counsel patients regarding the potential benefits, risks, and alternatives including native tissue repairs. Level 1 evidence suggests anterior synthetic mesh may be superior to anterior repair. Expert opinion suggests potential benefit of vaginal mesh for recurrences, hysteropexy, and advanced prolapse in patients with medical co-morbidities precluding invasive open and endoscopic sacrocolpopexies; however, comparative clinical trials with long-term data are needed. (C) 2011 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.

  15. Effects of defeathering and insulative jackets on production by laying hens at low temperatures.

    PubMed

    Gonyou, H W; Morrison, W D

    1983-07-01

    Exposure to a temperature of 5 degrees C compared with 20 degrees C resulted in a 20.5% increase in food consumption and an 18.8% decrease in efficiency of food utilisation with intermediate values resulting from exposure to 10 degrees C and 15 degrees C. Removal of feathers from the neck, back and (or) breast resulted in a 5 to 6% increase in food consumption. The effects of feather removal and temperature on food consumption were additive. Cloth jackets effectively insulated the back and breast areas when feathers had been removed but also resulted in increased food intake and lower efficiency.

  16. Diffraction Analysis of Antennas With Mesh Surfaces

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Rahmat-Samii, Yahya

    1987-01-01

    Strip-aperture model replaces wire-grid model. Far-field radiation pattern of antenna with mesh reflector calculated more accurately with new strip-aperture model than with wire-grid model of reflector surface. More adaptable than wire-grid model to variety of practical configurations and decidedly superior for reflectors in which mesh-cell width exceeds mesh thickness. Satisfies reciprocity theorem. Applied where mesh cells are no larger than tenth of wavelength. Small cell size permits use of simplifying approximation that reflector-surface current induced by electromagnetic field is present even in apertures. Approximation useful in calculating far field.

  17. Mesh-matrix analysis method for electromagnetic launchers

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Elliott, David G.

    1989-01-01

    The mesh-matrix method is a procedure for calculating the current distribution in the conductors of electromagnetic launchers with coil or flat-plate geometry. Once the current distribution is known the launcher performance can be calculated. The method divides the conductors into parallel current paths, or meshes, and finds the current in each mesh by matrix inversion. The author presents procedures for writing equations for the current and voltage relations for a few meshes to serve as a pattern for writing the computer code. An available subroutine package provides routines for field and flux coefficients and equation solution.

  18. A universal algorithm for an improved finite element mesh generation Mesh quality assessment in comparison to former automated mesh-generators and an analytic model.

    PubMed

    Kaminsky, Jan; Rodt, Thomas; Gharabaghi, Alireza; Forster, Jan; Brand, Gerd; Samii, Madjid

    2005-06-01

    The FE-modeling of complex anatomical structures is not solved satisfyingly so far. Voxel-based as opposed to contour-based algorithms allow an automated mesh generation based on the image data. Nonetheless their geometric precision is limited. We developed an automated mesh-generator that combines the advantages of voxel-based generation with improved representation of the geometry by displacement of nodes on the object-surface. Models of an artificial 3D-pipe-section and a skullbase were generated with different mesh-densities using the newly developed geometric, unsmoothed and smoothed voxel generators. Compared to the analytic calculation of the 3D-pipe-section model the normalized RMS error of the surface stress was 0.173-0.647 for the unsmoothed voxel models, 0.111-0.616 for the smoothed voxel models with small volume error and 0.126-0.273 for the geometric models. The highest element-energy error as a criterion for the mesh quality was 2.61x10(-2) N mm, 2.46x10(-2) N mm and 1.81x10(-2) N mm for unsmoothed, smoothed and geometric voxel models, respectively. The geometric model of the 3D-skullbase resulted in the lowest element-energy error and volume error. This algorithm also allowed the best representation of anatomical details. The presented geometric mesh-generator is universally applicable and allows an automated and accurate modeling by combining the advantages of the voxel-technique and of improved surface-modeling.

  19. Application of Quaternions for Mesh Deformation

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Samareh, Jamshid A.

    2002-01-01

    A new three-dimensional mesh deformation algorithm, based on quaternion algebra, is introduced. A brief overview of quaternion algebra is provided, along with some preliminary results for two-dimensional structured and unstructured viscous mesh deformation.

  20. Quadrilateral finite element mesh coarsening

    DOEpatents

    Staten, Matthew L; Dewey, Mark W; Benzley, Steven E

    2012-10-16

    Techniques for coarsening a quadrilateral mesh are described. These techniques include identifying a coarsening region within the quadrilateral mesh to be coarsened. Quadrilateral elements along a path through the coarsening region are removed. Node pairs along opposite sides of the path are identified. The node pairs along the path are then merged to collapse the path.

  1. Mesh quality control for multiply-refined tetrahedral grids

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Biswas, Rupak; Strawn, Roger

    1994-01-01

    A new algorithm for controlling the quality of multiply-refined tetrahedral meshes is presented in this paper. The basic dynamic mesh adaption procedure allows localized grid refinement and coarsening to efficiently capture aerodynamic flow features in computational fluid dynamics problems; however, repeated application of the procedure may significantly deteriorate the quality of the mesh. Results presented show the effectiveness of this mesh quality algorithm and its potential in the area of helicopter aerodynamics and acoustics.

  2. Dynamic Mesh Adaptation for Front Evolution Using Discontinuous Galerkin Based Weighted Condition Number Mesh Relaxation

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Greene, Patrick T.; Schofield, Samuel P.; Nourgaliev, Robert

    2016-06-21

    A new mesh smoothing method designed to cluster mesh cells near a dynamically evolving interface is presented. The method is based on weighted condition number mesh relaxation with the weight function being computed from a level set representation of the interface. The weight function is expressed as a Taylor series based discontinuous Galerkin projection, which makes the computation of the derivatives of the weight function needed during the condition number optimization process a trivial matter. For cases when a level set is not available, a fast method for generating a low-order level set from discrete cell-centered elds, such as amore » volume fraction or index function, is provided. Results show that the low-order level set works equally well for the weight function as the actual level set. Meshes generated for a number of interface geometries are presented, including cases with multiple level sets. Dynamic cases for moving interfaces are presented to demonstrate the method's potential usefulness to arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) methods.« less

  3. Moving Particles Through a Finite Element Mesh

    PubMed Central

    Peskin, Adele P.; Hardin, Gary R.

    1998-01-01

    We present a new numerical technique for modeling the flow around multiple objects moving in a fluid. The method tracks the dynamic interaction between each particle and the fluid. The movements of the fluid and the object are directly coupled. A background mesh is designed to fit the geometry of the overall domain. The mesh is designed independently of the presence of the particles except in terms of how fine it must be to track particles of a given size. Each particle is represented by a geometric figure that describes its boundary. This figure overlies the mesh. Nodes are added to the mesh where the particle boundaries intersect the background mesh, increasing the number of nodes contained in each element whose boundary is intersected. These additional nodes are then used to describe and track the particle in the numerical scheme. Appropriate element shape functions are defined to approximate the solution on the elements with extra nodes. The particles are moved through the mesh by moving only the overlying nodes defining the particles. The regular finite element grid remains unchanged. In this method, the mesh does not distort as the particles move. Instead, only the placement of particle-defining nodes changes as the particles move. Element shape functions are updated as the nodes move through the elements. This method is especially suited for models of moderate numbers of moderate-size particles, where the details of the fluid-particle coupling are important. Both the complications of creating finite element meshes around appreciable numbers of particles, and extensive remeshing upon movement of the particles are simplified in this method. PMID:28009377

  4. Highly Symmetric and Congruently Tiled Meshes for Shells and Domes

    PubMed Central

    Rasheed, Muhibur; Bajaj, Chandrajit

    2016-01-01

    We describe the generation of all possible shell and dome shapes that can be uniquely meshed (tiled) using a single type of mesh face (tile), and following a single meshing (tiling) rule that governs the mesh (tile) arrangement with maximal vertex, edge and face symmetries. Such tiling arrangements or congruently tiled meshed shapes, are frequently found in chemical forms (fullerenes or Bucky balls, crystals, quasi-crystals, virus nano shells or capsids), and synthetic shapes (cages, sports domes, modern architectural facades). Congruently tiled meshes are both aesthetic and complete, as they support maximal mesh symmetries with minimal complexity and possess simple generation rules. Here, we generate congruent tilings and meshed shape layouts that satisfy these optimality conditions. Further, the congruent meshes are uniquely mappable to an almost regular 3D polyhedron (or its dual polyhedron) and which exhibits face-transitive (and edge-transitive) congruency with at most two types of vertices (each type transitive to the other). The family of all such congruently meshed polyhedra create a new class of meshed shapes, beyond the well-studied regular, semi-regular and quasi-regular classes, and their duals (platonic, Catalan and Johnson). While our new mesh class is infinite, we prove that there exists a unique mesh parametrization, where each member of the class can be represented by two integer lattice variables, and moreover efficiently constructable. PMID:27563368

  5. Modelling atmospheric flows with adaptive moving meshes

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kühnlein, Christian; Smolarkiewicz, Piotr K.; Dörnbrack, Andreas

    2012-04-01

    An anelastic atmospheric flow solver has been developed that combines semi-implicit non-oscillatory forward-in-time numerics with a solution-adaptive mesh capability. A key feature of the solver is the unification of a mesh adaptation apparatus, based on moving mesh partial differential equations (PDEs), with the rigorous formulation of the governing anelastic PDEs in generalised time-dependent curvilinear coordinates. The solver development includes an enhancement of the flux-form multidimensional positive definite advection transport algorithm (MPDATA) - employed in the integration of the underlying anelastic PDEs - that ensures full compatibility with mass continuity under moving meshes. In addition, to satisfy the geometric conservation law (GCL) tensor identity under general moving meshes, a diagnostic approach is proposed based on the treatment of the GCL as an elliptic problem. The benefits of the solution-adaptive moving mesh technique for the simulation of multiscale atmospheric flows are demonstrated. The developed solver is verified for two idealised flow problems with distinct levels of complexity: passive scalar advection in a prescribed deformational flow, and the life cycle of a large-scale atmospheric baroclinic wave instability showing fine-scale phenomena of fronts and internal gravity waves.

  6. Discrete differential geometry: The nonplanar quadrilateral mesh

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Twining, Carole J.; Marsland, Stephen

    2012-06-01

    We consider the problem of constructing a discrete differential geometry defined on nonplanar quadrilateral meshes. Physical models on discrete nonflat spaces are of inherent interest, as well as being used in applications such as computation for electromagnetism, fluid mechanics, and image analysis. However, the majority of analysis has focused on triangulated meshes. We consider two approaches: discretizing the tensor calculus, and a discrete mesh version of differential forms. While these two approaches are equivalent in the continuum, we show that this is not true in the discrete case. Nevertheless, we show that it is possible to construct mesh versions of the Levi-Civita connection (and hence the tensorial covariant derivative and the associated covariant exterior derivative), the torsion, and the curvature. We show how discrete analogs of the usual vector integral theorems are constructed in such a way that the appropriate conservation laws hold exactly on the mesh, rather than only as approximations to the continuum limit. We demonstrate the success of our method by constructing a mesh version of classical electromagnetism and discuss how our formalism could be used to deal with other physical models, such as fluids.

  7. Hexahedral mesh generation via the dual arrangement of surfaces

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Mitchell, S.A.; Tautges, T.J.

    1997-12-31

    Given a general three-dimensional geometry with a prescribed quadrilateral surface mesh, the authors consider the problem of constructing a hexahedral mesh of the geometry whose boundary is exactly the prescribed surface mesh. Due to the specialized topology of hexahedra, this problem is more difficult than the analogous one for tetrahedra. Folklore has maintained that a surface mesh must have a constrained structure in order for there to exist a compatible hexahedral mesh. However, they have proof that a surface mesh need only satisfy mild parity conditions, depending on the topology of the three-dimensional geometry, for there to exist a compatiblemore » hexahedral mesh. The proof is based on the realization that a hexahedral mesh is dual to an arrangement of surfaces, and the quadrilateral surface mesh is dual to the arrangement of curves bounding these surfaces. The proof is constructive and they are currently developing an algorithm called Whisker Weaving (WW) that mirrors the proof steps. Given the bounding curves, WW builds the topological structure of an arrangement of surfaces having those curves as its boundary. WW progresses in an advancing front manner. Certain local rules are applied to avoid structures that lead to poor mesh quality. Also, after the arrangement is constructed, additional surfaces are inserted to separate features, so e.g., no two hexahedra share more than one quadrilateral face. The algorithm has generated meshes for certain non-trivial problems, but is currently unreliable. The authors are exploring strategies for consistently selecting which portion of the surface arrangement to advance based on the existence proof. This should lead us to a robust algorithm for arbitrary geometries and surface meshes.« less

  8. Condition assessment and determination of methods for evaluating corrosion damage in piles encapsulated in protective jackets on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.

    DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

    2010-04-01

    The primary purpose of this study was to assess the condition of piles that had been encapsulated in fiberglass and mortar jackets on four bridges that are part of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT). Since these four bridges contain a total of ap...

  9. Three-dimensional analysis of implanted magnetic-resonance-visible meshes.

    PubMed

    Sindhwani, Nikhil; Feola, Andrew; De Keyzer, Frederik; Claus, Filip; Callewaert, Geertje; Urbankova, Iva; Ourselin, Sebastien; D'hooge, Jan; Deprest, Jan

    2015-10-01

    Our primary objective was to develop relevant algorithms for quantification of mesh position and 3D shape in magnetic resonance (MR) images. In this proof-of-principle study, one patient with severe anterior vaginal wall prolapse was implanted with an MR-visible mesh. High-resolution MR images of the pelvis were acquired 6 weeks and 8 months postsurgery. 3D models were created using semiautomatic segmentation techniques. Conformational changes were recorded quantitatively using part-comparison analysis. An ellipticity measure is proposed to record longitudinal conformational changes in the mesh arms. The surface that is the effective reinforcement provided by the mesh is calculated using a novel methodology. The area of this surface is the effective support area (ESA). MR-visible mesh was clearly outlined in the images, which allowed us to longitudinally quantify mesh configuration between 6 weeks and 8 months after implantation. No significant changes were found in mesh position, effective support area, conformation of the mesh's main body, and arm length during the period of observation. Ellipticity profiles show longitudinal conformational changes in posterior arms. This paper proposes novel methodologies for a systematic 3D assessment of the position and morphology of MR-visible meshes. A novel semiautomatic tool was developed to calculate the effective area of support provided by the mesh, a potentially clinically important parameter.

  10. Predicting mesh density for adaptive modelling of the global atmosphere.

    PubMed

    Weller, Hilary

    2009-11-28

    The shallow water equations are solved using a mesh of polygons on the sphere, which adapts infrequently to the predicted future solution. Infrequent mesh adaptation reduces the cost of adaptation and load-balancing and will thus allow for more accurate mapping on adaptation. We simulate the growth of a barotropically unstable jet adapting the mesh every 12 h. Using an adaptation criterion based largely on the gradient of the vorticity leads to a mesh with around 20 per cent of the cells of a uniform mesh that gives equivalent results. This is a similar proportion to previous studies of the same test case with mesh adaptation every 1-20 min. The prediction of the mesh density involves solving the shallow water equations on a coarse mesh in advance of the locally refined mesh in order to estimate where features requiring higher resolution will grow, decay or move to. The adaptation criterion consists of two parts: that resolved on the coarse mesh, and that which is not resolved and so is passively advected on the coarse mesh. This combination leads to a balance between resolving features controlled by the large-scale dynamics and maintaining fine-scale features.

  11. Past, Present and Future of Surgical Meshes: A Review.

    PubMed

    Baylón, Karen; Rodríguez-Camarillo, Perla; Elías-Zúñiga, Alex; Díaz-Elizondo, Jose Antonio; Gilkerson, Robert; Lozano, Karen

    2017-08-22

    Surgical meshes, in particular those used to repair hernias, have been in use since 1891. Since then, research in the area has expanded, given the vast number of post-surgery complications such as infection, fibrosis, adhesions, mesh rejection, and hernia recurrence. Researchers have focused on the analysis and implementation of a wide range of materials: meshes with different fiber size and porosity, a variety of manufacturing methods, and certainly a variety of surgical and implantation procedures. Currently, surface modification methods and development of nanofiber based systems are actively being explored as areas of opportunity to retain material strength and increase biocompatibility of available meshes. This review summarizes the history of surgical meshes and presents an overview of commercial surgical meshes, their properties, manufacturing methods, and observed biological response, as well as the requirements for an ideal surgical mesh and potential manufacturing methods.

  12. Floating shock fitting via Lagrangian adaptive meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Vanrosendale, John

    1994-01-01

    In recent works we have formulated a new approach to compressible flow simulation, combining the advantages of shock-fitting and shock-capturing. Using a cell-centered Roe scheme discretization on unstructured meshes, we warp the mesh while marching to steady state, so that mesh edges align with shocks and other discontinuities. This new algorithm, the Shock-fitting Lagrangian Adaptive Method (SLAM) is, in effect, a reliable shock-capturing algorithm which yields shock-fitted accuracy at convergence. Shock-capturing algorithms like this, which warp the mesh to yield shock-fitted accuracy, are new and relatively untried. However, their potential is clear. In the context of sonic booms, accurate calculation of near-field sonic boom signatures is critical to the design of the High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT). SLAM should allow computation of accurate N-wave pressure signatures on comparatively coarse meshes, significantly enhancing our ability to design low-boom configurations for high-speed aircraft.

  13. Wireless mesh networks.

    PubMed

    Wang, Xinheng

    2008-01-01

    Wireless telemedicine using GSM and GPRS technologies can only provide low bandwidth connections, which makes it difficult to transmit images and video. Satellite or 3G wireless transmission provides greater bandwidth, but the running costs are high. Wireless networks (WLANs) appear promising, since they can supply high bandwidth at low cost. However, the WLAN technology has limitations, such as coverage. A new wireless networking technology named the wireless mesh network (WMN) overcomes some of the limitations of the WLAN. A WMN combines the characteristics of both a WLAN and ad hoc networks, thus forming an intelligent, large scale and broadband wireless network. These features are attractive for telemedicine and telecare because of the ability to provide data, voice and video communications over a large area. One successful wireless telemedicine project which uses wireless mesh technology is the Emergency Room Link (ER-LINK) in Tucson, Arizona, USA. There are three key characteristics of a WMN: self-organization, including self-management and self-healing; dynamic changes in network topology; and scalability. What we may now see is a shift from mobile communication and satellite systems for wireless telemedicine to the use of wireless networks based on mesh technology, since the latter are very attractive in terms of cost, reliability and speed.

  14. Merge measuring mesh for complex surface parts

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ye, Jianhua; Gao, Chenghui; Zeng, Shoujin; Xu, Mingsan

    2018-04-01

    Due to most parts self-occlude and limitation of scanner range, it is difficult to scan the entire part by one time. For modeling of part, multi measuring meshes need to be merged. In this paper, a new merge method is presented. At first, using the grid voxelization method to eliminate the most of non-overlap regions, and retrieval overlap triangles method by the topology of mesh is proposed due to its ability to improve the efficiency. Then, to remove the large deviation of overlap triangles, deleting by overlap distance is discussion. After that, this paper puts forward a new method of merger meshes by registration and combination mesh boundary point. Through experimental analysis, the suggested methods are effective.

  15. Past, Present and Future of Surgical Meshes: A Review

    PubMed Central

    Baylón, Karen; Rodríguez-Camarillo, Perla; Elías-Zúñiga, Alex; Díaz-Elizondo, Jose Antonio; Gilkerson, Robert; Lozano, Karen

    2017-01-01

    Surgical meshes, in particular those used to repair hernias, have been in use since 1891. Since then, research in the area has expanded, given the vast number of post-surgery complications such as infection, fibrosis, adhesions, mesh rejection, and hernia recurrence. Researchers have focused on the analysis and implementation of a wide range of materials: meshes with different fiber size and porosity, a variety of manufacturing methods, and certainly a variety of surgical and implantation procedures. Currently, surface modification methods and development of nanofiber based systems are actively being explored as areas of opportunity to retain material strength and increase biocompatibility of available meshes. This review summarizes the history of surgical meshes and presents an overview of commercial surgical meshes, their properties, manufacturing methods, and observed biological response, as well as the requirements for an ideal surgical mesh and potential manufacturing methods. PMID:28829367

  16. 21 CFR 870.3650 - Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-04-01

    ... 21 Food and Drugs 8 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag. 870.3650 Section 870...) MEDICAL DEVICES CARDIOVASCULAR DEVICES Cardiovascular Prosthetic Devices § 870.3650 Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag. (a) Identification. A pacemaker polymeric mesh bag is an implanted device used to hold a...

  17. 21 CFR 870.3650 - Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-04-01

    ... 21 Food and Drugs 8 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag. 870.3650 Section 870...) MEDICAL DEVICES CARDIOVASCULAR DEVICES Cardiovascular Prosthetic Devices § 870.3650 Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag. (a) Identification. A pacemaker polymeric mesh bag is an implanted device used to hold a...

  18. 21 CFR 870.3650 - Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-04-01

    ... 21 Food and Drugs 8 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag. 870.3650 Section 870...) MEDICAL DEVICES CARDIOVASCULAR DEVICES Cardiovascular Prosthetic Devices § 870.3650 Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag. (a) Identification. A pacemaker polymeric mesh bag is an implanted device used to hold a...

  19. 21 CFR 870.3650 - Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-04-01

    ... 21 Food and Drugs 8 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag. 870.3650 Section 870...) MEDICAL DEVICES CARDIOVASCULAR DEVICES Cardiovascular Prosthetic Devices § 870.3650 Pacemaker polymeric mesh bag. (a) Identification. A pacemaker polymeric mesh bag is an implanted device used to hold a...

  20. Hexahedral finite element mesh coarsening using pillowing technique

    DOEpatents

    Staten, Matthew L [Pittsburgh, PA; Woodbury, Adam C [Provo, UT; Benzley, Steven E [Provo, UT; Shepherd, Jason F [Edgewood, NM

    2012-06-05

    A techniques for coarsening a hexahedral mesh is described. The technique includes identifying a coarsening region within a hexahedral mesh to be coarsened. A boundary sheet of hexahedral elements is inserted into the hexahedral mesh around the coarsening region. A column of hexahedral elements is identified within the boundary sheet. The column of hexahedral elements is collapsed to create an extraction sheet of hexahedral elements contained within the coarsening region. Then, the extraction sheet of hexahedral elements is extracted to coarsen the hexahedral mesh.

  1. Evaluation on Compressive Characteristics of Medical Stents Applied by Mesh Structures

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hirayama, Kazuki; He, Jianmei

    2017-11-01

    There are concerns about strength reduction and fatigue fracture due to stress concentration in currently used medical stents. To address these problems, meshed stents applied by mesh structures were interested for achieving long life and high strength perfromance of medical stents. The purpose of this study is to design basic mesh shapes to obatin three dimensional (3D) meshed stent models for mechanical property evaluation. The influence of introduced design variables on compressive characteristics of meshed stent models are evaluated through finite element analysis using ANSYS Workbench code. From the analytical results, the compressive stiffness are changed periodically with compressive directions, average results need to be introduced as the mean value of compressive stiffness of meshed stents. Secondly, compressive flexibility of meshed stents can be improved by increasing the angle proportional to the arm length of the mesh basic shape. By increasing the number of basic mesh shapes arranged in stent’s circumferential direction, compressive rigidity of meshed stent tends to be increased. Finaly reducing the mesh line width is found effective to improve compressive flexibility of meshed stents.

  2. Reconfigurable lattice mesh designs for programmable photonic processors.

    PubMed

    Pérez, Daniel; Gasulla, Ivana; Capmany, José; Soref, Richard A

    2016-05-30

    We propose and analyse two novel mesh design geometries for the implementation of tunable optical cores in programmable photonic processors. These geometries are the hexagonal and the triangular lattice. They are compared here to a previously proposed square mesh topology in terms of a series of figures of merit that account for metrics that are relevant to on-chip integration of the mesh. We find that that the hexagonal mesh is the most suitable option of the three considered for the implementation of the reconfigurable optical core in the programmable processor.

  3. Primary fascial closure with mesh reinforcement is superior to bridged mesh repair for abdominal wall reconstruction.

    PubMed

    Booth, Justin H; Garvey, Patrick B; Baumann, Donald P; Selber, Jesse C; Nguyen, Alexander T; Clemens, Mark W; Liu, Jun; Butler, Charles E

    2013-12-01

    Many surgeons believe that primary fascial closure with mesh reinforcement should be the goal of abdominal wall reconstruction (AWR), yet others have reported acceptable outcomes when mesh is used to bridge the fascial edges. It has not been clearly shown how the outcomes for these techniques differ. We hypothesized that bridged repairs result in higher hernia recurrence rates than mesh-reinforced repairs that achieve fascial coaptation. We retrospectively reviewed prospectively collected data from consecutive patients with 1 year or more of follow-up, who underwent midline AWR between 2000 and 2011 at a single center. We compared surgical outcomes between patients with bridged and mesh-reinforced fascial repairs. The primary outcomes measure was hernia recurrence. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors predictive of or protective for complications. We included 222 patients (195 mesh-reinforced and 27 bridged repairs) with a mean follow-up of 31.1 ± 14.2 months. The bridged repairs were associated with a significantly higher risk of hernia recurrence (56% vs 8%; hazard ratio [HR] 9.5; p < 0.001) and a higher overall complication rate (74% vs 32%; odds ratio [OR] 3.9; p < 0.001). The interval to recurrence was more than 9 times shorter in the bridged group (HR 9.5; p < 0.001). Multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis identified bridged repair and defect width > 15 cm to be independent predictors of hernia recurrence (HR 7.3; p < 0.001 and HR 2.5; p = 0.028, respectively). Mesh-reinforced AWRs with primary fascial coaptation resulted in fewer hernia recurrences and fewer overall complications than bridged repairs. Surgeons should make every effort to achieve primary fascial coaptation to reduce complications. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  4. Tangle-Free Finite Element Mesh Motion for Ablation Problems

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Droba, Justin

    2016-01-01

    In numerical simulations involving boundaries that evolve in time, the primary challenge is updating the computational mesh to reflect the physical changes in the domain. In particular, the fundamental objective for any such \\mesh motion" scheme is to maintain mesh quality and suppress unphysical geometric anamolies and artifacts. External to a physical process of interest, mesh motion is an added component that determines the specifics of how to move the mesh given certain limited information from the main system. This paper develops a set of boundary conditions designed to eliminate tangling and internal collision within the context of PDE-based mesh motion (linear elasticity). These boundary conditions are developed for two- and three-dimensional meshes. The paper presents detailed algorithms for commonly occuring topological scenarios and explains how to apply them appropriately. Notably, the techniques discussed herein make use of none of the specifics of any particular formulation of mesh motion and thus are more broadly applicable. The two-dimensional algorithms are validated by an extensive verification procedure. Finally, many examples of diverse geometries in both two- and three-dimensions are shown to showcase the capabilities of the tangle-free boundary conditions.

  5. Selective laser vaporization of polypropylene sutures and mesh

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Burks, David; Rosenbury, Sarah B.; Kennelly, Michael J.; Fried, Nathaniel M.

    2012-02-01

    Complications from polypropylene mesh after surgery for female stress urinary incontinence (SUI) may require tedious surgical revision and removal of mesh materials with risk of damage to healthy adjacent tissue. This study explores selective laser vaporization of polypropylene suture/mesh materials commonly used in SUI. A compact, 7 Watt, 647-nm, red diode laser was operated with a radiant exposure of 81 J/cm2, pulse duration of 100 ms, and 1.0-mm-diameter laser spot. The 647-nm wavelength was selected because its absorption by water, hemoglobin, and other major tissue chromophores is low, while polypropylene absorption is high. Laser vaporization of ~200-μm-diameter polypropylene suture/mesh strands, in contact with fresh urinary tissue samples, ex vivo, was performed. Non-contact temperature mapping of the suture/mesh samples with a thermal camera was also conducted. Photoselective vaporization of polypropylene suture and mesh using a single laser pulse was achieved with peak temperatures of 180 and 232 °C, respectively. In control (safety) studies, direct laser irradiation of tissue alone resulted in only a 1 °C temperature increase. Selective laser vaporization of polypropylene suture/mesh materials is feasible without significant thermal damage to tissue. This technique may be useful for SUI procedures requiring surgical revision.

  6. LR: Compact connectivity representation for triangle meshes

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Gurung, T; Luffel, M; Lindstrom, P

    2011-01-28

    We propose LR (Laced Ring) - a simple data structure for representing the connectivity of manifold triangle meshes. LR provides the option to store on average either 1.08 references per triangle or 26.2 bits per triangle. Its construction, from an input mesh that supports constant-time adjacency queries, has linear space and time complexity, and involves ordering most vertices along a nearly-Hamiltonian cycle. LR is best suited for applications that process meshes with fixed connectivity, as any changes to the connectivity require the data structure to be rebuilt. We provide an implementation of the set of standard random-access, constant-time operators formore » traversing a mesh, and show that LR often saves both space and traversal time over competing representations.« less

  7. Defining patients' knowledge and perceptions of vaginal mesh surgery.

    PubMed

    Brown, Lindsay K; Fenner, Dee E; Berger, Mitchell B; Delancey, John O L; Morgan, Daniel M; Patel, Divya A; Schimpf, Megan O

    2013-01-01

    Given recent government investigations and media coverage of the controversy regarding mesh surgery, we sought to define patients' knowledge and perceptions of vaginal mesh surgery. An anonymous survey was distributed to a convenience sample of new patients at urogynecology and female urology clinics at a single medical center during April to June 2012. The survey assessed patients' demographics, information sources, and beliefs and concerns regarding mesh surgery. The Fisher's exact test was used to identify predictors of patients' beliefs regarding mesh. Logistic and linear regressions were used to identify predictors of aversion to surgery and higher concern regarding future surgery. One hundred sixty-four women completed the survey; 62.2% (102/164) indicated knowledge of mesh surgery for prolapse and/or incontinence and were included in subsequent analyses. The mean ± SD age was 58.0 ± 12.5 years, and 24.5% reported prior mesh surgery. The most common information source was television commercials (57.8%); only 23.5% of the women reported receiving information from a medical professional. Participants indicated the following regarding vaginal mesh: class-action lawsuit in progress (55/102 [54.0%]), causes pain (47/102 [47.1%]), possibility of rejection (35/102 [34.3%]), can cause bleeding and become exposed vaginally (30/102 [29.4%]), and should be removed owing to recall (28/102 [27.5%]). Of these women, 22.1% (19/86) indicated they would not consider mesh surgery. On multivariable logistic regression, level of concern, information from friends/family, and knowledge of class-action lawsuit predicted aversion to mesh surgery. Nearly two thirds of new patients had knowledge of vaginal mesh surgery. We identified considerable misinformation and aversion to future mesh surgery among these women.

  8. Floating shock fitting via Lagrangian adaptive meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Vanrosendale, John

    1995-01-01

    In recent work we have formulated a new approach to compressible flow simulation, combining the advantages of shock-fitting and shock-capturing. Using a cell-centered on Roe scheme discretization on unstructured meshes, we warp the mesh while marching to steady state, so that mesh edges align with shocks and other discontinuities. This new algorithm, the Shock-fitting Lagrangian Adaptive Method (SLAM), is, in effect, a reliable shock-capturing algorithm which yields shock-fitted accuracy at convergence.

  9. High-fidelity meshes from tissue samples for diffusion MRI simulations.

    PubMed

    Panagiotaki, Eleftheria; Hall, Matt G; Zhang, Hui; Siow, Bernard; Lythgoe, Mark F; Alexander, Daniel C

    2010-01-01

    This paper presents a method for constructing detailed geometric models of tissue microstructure for synthesizing realistic diffusion MRI data. We construct three-dimensional mesh models from confocal microscopy image stacks using the marching cubes algorithm. Random-walk simulations within the resulting meshes provide synthetic diffusion MRI measurements. Experiments optimise simulation parameters and complexity of the meshes to achieve accuracy and reproducibility while minimizing computation time. Finally we assess the quality of the synthesized data from the mesh models by comparison with scanner data as well as synthetic data from simple geometric models and simplified meshes that vary only in two dimensions. The results support the extra complexity of the three-dimensional mesh compared to simpler models although sensitivity to the mesh resolution is quite robust.

  10. Impact of the 2011 FDA transvaginal mesh safety update on AUGS members' use of synthetic mesh and biologic grafts in pelvic reconstructive surgery.

    PubMed

    Clemons, Jeffrey L; Weinstein, Milena; Guess, Marsha K; Alperin, Marianna; Moalli, Pamela; Gregory, William Thomas; Lukacz, Emily S; Sung, Vivian W; Chen, Bertha H; Bradley, Catherine S

    2013-01-01

    To describe the frequency of use and recent change in use of synthetic mesh and biologic grafts in pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and stress urinary incontinence surgery by American Urogynecology Society (AUGS) members. An electronic survey of AUGS members was conducted between December 2011 and January 2012. Frequency of graft use in POP (overall and by transvaginal and transabdominal approaches) and stress urinary incontinence surgery was queried relative to the timing of the 2011 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) safety update. Rates of materials' use before and after the statement were compared using Wilcoxon signed rank test. Fifty-three percent (507/962) of AUGS members responded and were included in analysis; 79% were urogynecologists. Before the FDA warning, in POP surgery, most (90%) used synthetic mesh and fewer (34%) used biologic grafts; 99% used synthetic mesh slings. After the FDA statement, respondents reported an overall decrease in the percent of POP cases in which they used synthetic mesh (P < 0.001) but no change in biologic graft use for POP (P = 0.37) or synthetic mesh sling use (P = 0.10). Specifically, transvaginal mesh use decreased: 40% reported decreased use and 12% stopped use. However, transvaginal mesh was still used by 61% of respondents in at least some cases. No change (62%) or increased use (12%) of mesh was reported for transabdominal POP procedures. Synthetic mesh use in transvaginal POP surgery decreased after the 2011 FDA safety update, but synthetic mesh use for transabdominal POP repair and sling procedures and overall biologic graft use in POP surgery did not decrease.

  11. [Implants for genital prolapse : Contra mesh surgery].

    PubMed

    Hampel, C

    2017-12-01

    Alloplastic transvaginal meshes have become very popular in the surgery of pelvic organ prolapse (POP) as did alloplastic suburethral slings in female stress incontinence surgery, but without adequate supporting data. The simplicity of the mesh procedure facilitates its propagation with acceptance of higher revision and complication rates. Since attending physicians do more and more prolapse surgeries without practicing or teaching alternative techniques, expertise in these alternatives, which might be very useful in cases of recurrence, persistence or complications, is permanently lost. It is doubtful that proper and detailed information about alternatives, risks, and benefits of transvaginal alloplastic meshes is provided to every single prolapse patient according to the recommendations of the German POP guidelines, since the number of implanted meshes exceeds the number of properly indicated mesh candidates by far. Although there is no dissent internationally about the available mesh data, thousands of lawsuits in the USA, insolvency of companies due to claims for compensation and unambiguous warnings from foreign urological societies leave German urogynecologists still unimpressed. The existing literature in pelvic organ prolapse exclusively focusses on POP stage and improvement of that stage with surgical therapy. Instead, typical prolapse symptoms should trigger therapy and improvement of these symptoms should be the utmost treatment goal. It is strongly recommended for liability reasons to obtain specific written informed consent.

  12. Ventral hernia repair with poly-4-hydroxybutyrate mesh.

    PubMed

    Plymale, Margaret A; Davenport, Daniel L; Dugan, Adam; Zachem, Amanda; Roth, John Scott

    2018-04-01

    Biomaterial research has made available a biologically derived fully resorbable poly-4-hydroxybutyrate (P4HB) mesh for use in ventral and incisional hernia repair (VIHR). This study evaluates outcomes of patients undergoing VIHR with P4HB mesh. An IRB-approved prospective pilot study was conducted to assess clinical and quality of life (QOL) outcomes for patients undergoing VIHR with P4HB mesh. Perioperative characteristics were defined. Clinical outcomes, employment status, QOL using 12-item short form survey (SF-12), and pain assessments were followed for 24 months postoperatively. 31 patients underwent VIHR with bioresorbable mesh via a Rives-Stoppa approach with retrorectus mesh placement. The median patient age was 52 years, median body mass index was 33 kg/m 2 , and just over half of the patients were female. Surgical site occurrences occurred in 19% of patients, most of which were seroma. Hernia recurrence rate was 0% (median follow-up = 414 days). Patients had significantly improved QOL at 24 months compared to baseline for SF-12 physical component summary and role emotional (p < 0.05). Ventral hernia repair with P4HB bioresorbable mesh results in favorable outcomes. Early hernia recurrence was not identified among the patient cohort. Quality of life improvements were noted at 24 months versus baseline for this cohort of patients with bioresorbable mesh. Use of P4HB mesh for ventral hernia repair was found to be feasible in this patient population. (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01863030).

  13. Texturing of continuous LOD meshes with the hierarchical texture atlas

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Birkholz, Hermann

    2006-02-01

    For the rendering of detailed virtual environments, trade-offs have to be made between image quality and rendering time. An immersive experience of virtual reality always demands high frame-rates with the best reachable image qual-ity. Continuous Level of Detail (cLoD) triangle-meshes provide an continuous spectrum of detail for a triangle mesh that can be used to create view-dependent approximations of the environment in real-time. This enables the rendering with a constant number of triangles and thus with constant frame-rates. Normally the construction of such cLoD mesh representations leads to the loss of all texture information of the original mesh. To overcome this problem, a parameter domain can be created, in order to map the surface properties (colour, texture, normal) to it. This parameter domain can be used to map the surface properties back to arbitrary approximations of the original mesh. The parameter domain is often a simplified version of the mesh to be parameterised. This limits the reachable simplification to the domain mesh which has to map the surface of the original mesh with the least possible stretch. In this paper, a hierarchical domain mesh is presented, that scales between very coarse domain meshes and good property-mapping.

  14. Airplane Mesh Development with Grid Density Studies

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Cliff, Susan E.; Baker, Timothy J.; Thomas, Scott D.; Lawrence, Scott L.; Rimlinger, Mark J.

    1999-01-01

    Automatic Grid Generation Wish List Geometry handling, including CAD clean up and mesh generation, remains a major bottleneck in the application of CFD methods. There is a pressing need for greater automation in several aspects of the geometry preparation in order to reduce set up time and eliminate user intervention as much as possible. Starting from the CAD representation of a configuration, there may be holes or overlapping surfaces which require an intensive effort to establish cleanly abutting surface patches, and collections of many patches may need to be combined for more efficient use of the geometrical representation. Obtaining an accurate and suitable body conforming grid with an adequate distribution of points throughout the flow-field, for the flow conditions of interest, is often the most time consuming task for complex CFD applications. There is a need for a clean unambiguous definition of the CAD geometry. Ideally this would be carried out automatically by smart CAD clean up software. One could also define a standard piece-wise smooth surface representation suitable for use by computational methods and then create software to translate between the various CAD descriptions and the standard representation. Surface meshing remains a time consuming, user intensive procedure. There is a need for automated surface meshing, requiring only minimal user intervention to define the overall density of mesh points. The surface mesher should produce well shaped elements (triangles or quadrilaterals) whose size is determined initially according to the surface curvature with a minimum size for flat pieces, and later refined by the user in other regions if necessary. Present techniques for volume meshing all require some degree of user intervention. There is a need for fully automated and reliable volume mesh generation. In addition, it should be possible to create both surface and volume meshes that meet guaranteed measures of mesh quality (e.g. minimum and maximum

  15. Adaptive Mesh Refinement for Microelectronic Device Design

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Cwik, Tom; Lou, John; Norton, Charles

    1999-01-01

    Finite element and finite volume methods are used in a variety of design simulations when it is necessary to compute fields throughout regions that contain varying materials or geometry. Convergence of the simulation can be assessed by uniformly increasing the mesh density until an observable quantity stabilizes. Depending on the electrical size of the problem, uniform refinement of the mesh may be computationally infeasible due to memory limitations. Similarly, depending on the geometric complexity of the object being modeled, uniform refinement can be inefficient since regions that do not need refinement add to the computational expense. In either case, convergence to the correct (measured) solution is not guaranteed. Adaptive mesh refinement methods attempt to selectively refine the region of the mesh that is estimated to contain proportionally higher solution errors. The refinement may be obtained by decreasing the element size (h-refinement), by increasing the order of the element (p-refinement) or by a combination of the two (h-p refinement). A successful adaptive strategy refines the mesh to produce an accurate solution measured against the correct fields without undue computational expense. This is accomplished by the use of a) reliable a posteriori error estimates, b) hierarchal elements, and c) automatic adaptive mesh generation. Adaptive methods are also useful when problems with multi-scale field variations are encountered. These occur in active electronic devices that have thin doped layers and also when mixed physics is used in the calculation. The mesh needs to be fine at and near the thin layer to capture rapid field or charge variations, but can coarsen away from these layers where field variations smoothen and charge densities are uniform. This poster will present an adaptive mesh refinement package that runs on parallel computers and is applied to specific microelectronic device simulations. Passive sensors that operate in the infrared portion of

  16. Tangle-Free Mesh Motion for Ablation Simulations

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Droba, Justin

    2016-01-01

    Problems involving mesh motion-which should not be mistakenly associated with moving mesh methods, a class of adaptive mesh redistribution techniques-are of critical importance in numerical simulations of the thermal response of melting and ablative materials. Ablation is the process by which material vaporizes or otherwise erodes due to strong heating. Accurate modeling of such materials is of the utmost importance in design of passive thermal protection systems ("heatshields") for spacecraft, the layer of the vehicle that ensures survival of crew and craft during re-entry. In an explicit mesh motion approach, a complete thermal solve is first performed. Afterwards, the thermal response is used to determine surface recession rates. These values are then used to generate boundary conditions for an a posteriori correction designed to update the location of the mesh nodes. Most often, linear elastic or biharmonic equations are used to model this material response, traditionally in a finite element framework so that complex geometries can be simulated. A simple scheme for moving the boundary nodes involves receding along the surface normals. However, for all but the simplest problem geometries, evolution in time following such a scheme will eventually bring the mesh to intersect and "tangle" with itself, inducing failure. This presentation demonstrates a comprehensive and sophisticated scheme that analyzes the local geometry of each node with help from user-provided clues to eliminate the tangle and enable simulations on a wide-class of difficult problem geometries. The method developed is demonstrated for linear elastic equations but is general enough that it may be adapted to other modeling equations. The presentation will explicate the inner workings of the tangle-free mesh motion algorithm for both two and three-dimensional meshes. It will show abstract examples of the method's success, including a verification problem that demonstrates its accuracy and

  17. A novel approach to mesh revision after sacrocolpopexy.

    PubMed

    Dawson, Melissa L; Rebecca, Rinko; Shah, Nima M; Whitmore, Kristene E

    2016-01-01

    Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is the herniation of pelvic organs to or beyond the vaginal walls. POP affects 50% of parous women; of those women, 11% will need surgery based on bothersome symptoms. Transvaginal mesh has been used for vaginal augmentation since the 1990s. Complications from mesh use are now more prominent, and include chronic pelvic pain, dyspareunia, vaginal mesh erosion, and urinary and defecatory dysfunction. Presently, there is no consensus regarding treatment of these complications. Reported herein are two cases of women with defecatory dysfunction and pain after sacrocolpopexy who underwent mesh revision procedures performed with both urogynecologic and colorectal surgery.

  18. Unstructured mesh methods for CFD

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Peraire, J.; Morgan, K.; Peiro, J.

    1990-01-01

    Mesh generation methods for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are outlined. Geometric modeling is discussed. An advancing front method is described. Flow past a two engine Falcon aeroplane is studied. An algorithm and associated data structure called the alternating digital tree, which efficiently solves the geometric searching problem is described. The computation of an initial approximation to the steady state solution of a given poblem is described. Mesh generation for transient flows is described.

  19. Biomechanical properties of synthetic surgical meshes for pelvic prolapse repair.

    PubMed

    Todros, S; Pavan, P G; Natali, A N

    2015-03-01

    Synthetic meshes are widely used for surgical repair of different kind of prolapses. In the light of the experience of abdominal wall repair, similar prostheses are currently used in the pelvic region, to restore physiological anatomy after organ prolapse into the vaginal wall, that represent a recurrent dysfunction. For this purpose, synthetic meshes are surgically positioned in contact with the anterior and/or posterior vaginal wall, to inferiorly support prolapsed organs. Nonetheless, while mesh implantation restores physiological anatomy, it is often associated with different complications in the vaginal region. These potentially dangerous effects induce the surgical community to reconsider the safety and efficacy of mesh transvaginal placement. For this purpose, the evaluation of state-of-the-art research may provide the basis for a comprehensive analysis of mesh compatibility and functionality. The aim of this work is to review synthetic surgical meshes for pelvic organs prolapse repair, taking into account the mechanics of mesh material and structure, and to relate them with pelvic and vaginal tissue biomechanics. Synthetic meshes are currently available in different chemical composition, fiber and textile conformations. Material and structural properties are key factors in determining mesh biochemical and mechanical compatibility in vivo. The most significant results on vaginal tissue and surgical meshes mechanical characterization are here reported and discussed. Moreover, computational models of the pelvic region, which could support the surgeon in the evaluation of mesh performances in physiological conditions, are recalled. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Vaginal placement of synthetic mesh for pelvic organ prolapse.

    PubMed

    2012-01-01

    Since 2004, use of synthetic mesh has increased in vaginal surgery for the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse. However, concerns exist about the safety and efficacy of transvaginally placed mesh. Based on the currently available limited data, although many patients undergoing mesh-augmented vaginal repairs heal well without problems, there seems to be a small but significant group of patients who experience permanent and life-altering sequelae, including pain and dyspareunia, from the use of vaginal mesh. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Urogynecologic Society provide background information on the use of vaginally placed mesh for the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse and offer recommendations for practice.

  1. Convergence study of global meshing on enamel-cement-bracket finite element model

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Samshuri, S. F.; Daud, R.; Rojan, M. A.; Basaruddin, K. S.; Abdullah, A. B.; Ariffin, A. K.

    2017-09-01

    This paper presents on meshing convergence analysis of finite element (FE) model to simulate enamel-cement-bracket fracture. Three different materials used in this study involving interface fracture are concerned. Complex behavior ofinterface fracture due to stress concentration is the reason to have a well-constructed meshing strategy. In FE analysis, meshing size is a critical factor that influenced the accuracy and computational time of analysis. The convergence study meshing scheme involving critical area (CA) and non-critical area (NCA) to ensure an optimum meshing sizes are acquired for this FE model. For NCA meshing, the area of interest are at the back of enamel, bracket ligature groove and bracket wing. For CA meshing, area of interest are enamel area close to cement layer, the cement layer and bracket base. The value of constant NCA meshing tested are meshing size 1 and 0.4. The value constant CA meshing tested are 0.4 and 0.1. Manipulative variables are randomly selected and must abide the rule of NCA must be higher than CA. This study employed first principle stresses due to brittle failure nature of the materials used. Best meshing size are selected according to convergence error analysis. Results show that, constant CA are more stable compare to constant NCA meshing. Then, 0.05 constant CA meshing are tested to test the accuracy of smaller meshing. However, unpromising result obtained as the errors are increasing. Thus, constant CA 0.1 with NCA mesh of 0.15 until 0.3 are the most stable meshing as the error in this region are lowest. Convergence test was conducted on three selected coarse, medium and fine meshes at the range of NCA mesh of 0.15 until 3 and CA mesh area stay constant at 0.1. The result shows that, at coarse mesh 0.3, the error are 0.0003% compare to 3% acceptable error. Hence, the global meshing are converge as the meshing size at CA 0.1 and NCA 0.15 for this model.

  2. NeuroTessMesh: A Tool for the Generation and Visualization of Neuron Meshes and Adaptive On-the-Fly Refinement.

    PubMed

    Garcia-Cantero, Juan J; Brito, Juan P; Mata, Susana; Bayona, Sofia; Pastor, Luis

    2017-01-01

    Gaining a better understanding of the human brain continues to be one of the greatest challenges for science, largely because of the overwhelming complexity of the brain and the difficulty of analyzing the features and behavior of dense neural networks. Regarding analysis, 3D visualization has proven to be a useful tool for the evaluation of complex systems. However, the large number of neurons in non-trivial circuits, together with their intricate geometry, makes the visualization of a neuronal scenario an extremely challenging computational problem. Previous work in this area dealt with the generation of 3D polygonal meshes that approximated the cells' overall anatomy but did not attempt to deal with the extremely high storage and computational cost required to manage a complex scene. This paper presents NeuroTessMesh, a tool specifically designed to cope with many of the problems associated with the visualization of neural circuits that are comprised of large numbers of cells. In addition, this method facilitates the recovery and visualization of the 3D geometry of cells included in databases, such as NeuroMorpho, and provides the tools needed to approximate missing information such as the soma's morphology. This method takes as its only input the available compact, yet incomplete, morphological tracings of the cells as acquired by neuroscientists. It uses a multiresolution approach that combines an initial, coarse mesh generation with subsequent on-the-fly adaptive mesh refinement stages using tessellation shaders. For the coarse mesh generation, a novel approach, based on the Finite Element Method, allows approximation of the 3D shape of the soma from its incomplete description. Subsequently, the adaptive refinement process performed in the graphic card generates meshes that provide good visual quality geometries at a reasonable computational cost, both in terms of memory and rendering time. All the described techniques have been integrated into NeuroTessMesh

  3. NeuroTessMesh: A Tool for the Generation and Visualization of Neuron Meshes and Adaptive On-the-Fly Refinement

    PubMed Central

    Garcia-Cantero, Juan J.; Brito, Juan P.; Mata, Susana; Bayona, Sofia; Pastor, Luis

    2017-01-01

    Gaining a better understanding of the human brain continues to be one of the greatest challenges for science, largely because of the overwhelming complexity of the brain and the difficulty of analyzing the features and behavior of dense neural networks. Regarding analysis, 3D visualization has proven to be a useful tool for the evaluation of complex systems. However, the large number of neurons in non-trivial circuits, together with their intricate geometry, makes the visualization of a neuronal scenario an extremely challenging computational problem. Previous work in this area dealt with the generation of 3D polygonal meshes that approximated the cells’ overall anatomy but did not attempt to deal with the extremely high storage and computational cost required to manage a complex scene. This paper presents NeuroTessMesh, a tool specifically designed to cope with many of the problems associated with the visualization of neural circuits that are comprised of large numbers of cells. In addition, this method facilitates the recovery and visualization of the 3D geometry of cells included in databases, such as NeuroMorpho, and provides the tools needed to approximate missing information such as the soma’s morphology. This method takes as its only input the available compact, yet incomplete, morphological tracings of the cells as acquired by neuroscientists. It uses a multiresolution approach that combines an initial, coarse mesh generation with subsequent on-the-fly adaptive mesh refinement stages using tessellation shaders. For the coarse mesh generation, a novel approach, based on the Finite Element Method, allows approximation of the 3D shape of the soma from its incomplete description. Subsequently, the adaptive refinement process performed in the graphic card generates meshes that provide good visual quality geometries at a reasonable computational cost, both in terms of memory and rendering time. All the described techniques have been integrated into NeuroTessMesh

  4. Patterning of polymer nanofiber meshes by electrospinning for biomedical applications

    PubMed Central

    Neves, Nuno M; Campos, Rui; Pedro, Adriano; Cunha, José; Macedo, Francisco; Reis, Rui L

    2007-01-01

    The end-product of the electrospinning process is typically a randomly aligned fiber mesh or membrane. This is a result of the electric field generated between the drop of polymer solution at the needle and the collector. The developed electric field causes the stretching of the fibers and their random deposition. By judicious selection of the collector architecture, it is thus possible to develop other morphologies on the nanofiber meshes. The aim of this work is to prepare fiber meshes using various patterned collectors with specific dimensions and designs and to evaluate how those patterns can affect the properties of the meshes relevant to biomedical applications. This study aims at verifying whether it is possible to control the architecture of the fiber meshes by tailoring the geometry of the collector. Three different metallic collector topographies are used to test this hypothesis. Electrospun nonwoven patterned meshes of polyethylene oxide (PEO) and poly(ε-capro-lactone) (PCL) were successfully prepared. Those fiber meshes were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Both mechanical properties of the meshes and cell contacting experiments were performed to test the effect of the produced patterns over the properties of the meshes relevant for biomedical applications. The present study will evaluate cell adhesion sensitivity to the patterns generated and the effect of those patterns on the tensile properties of the fiber meshes. PMID:18019842

  5. Anisotropic mesh adaptation for marine ice-sheet modelling

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gillet-Chaulet, Fabien; Tavard, Laure; Merino, Nacho; Peyaud, Vincent; Brondex, Julien; Durand, Gael; Gagliardini, Olivier

    2017-04-01

    Improving forecasts of ice-sheets contribution to sea-level rise requires, amongst others, to correctly model the dynamics of the grounding line (GL), i.e. the line where the ice detaches from its underlying bed and goes afloat on the ocean. Many numerical studies, including the intercomparison exercises MISMIP and MISMIP3D, have shown that grid refinement in the GL vicinity is a key component to obtain reliable results. Improving model accuracy while maintaining the computational cost affordable has then been an important target for the development of marine icesheet models. Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is a method where the accuracy of the solution is controlled by spatially adapting the mesh size. It has become popular in models using the finite element method as they naturally deal with unstructured meshes, but block-structured AMR has also been successfully applied to model GL dynamics. The main difficulty with AMR is to find efficient and reliable estimators of the numerical error to control the mesh size. Here, we use the estimator proposed by Frey and Alauzet (2015). Based on the interpolation error, it has been found effective in practice to control the numerical error, and has some flexibility, such as its ability to combine metrics for different variables, that makes it attractive. Routines to compute the anisotropic metric defining the mesh size have been implemented in the finite element ice flow model Elmer/Ice (Gagliardini et al., 2013). The mesh adaptation is performed using the freely available library MMG (Dapogny et al., 2014) called from Elmer/Ice. Using a setup based on the inter-comparison exercise MISMIP+ (Asay-Davis et al., 2016), we study the accuracy of the solution when the mesh is adapted using various variables (ice thickness, velocity, basal drag, …). We show that combining these variables allows to reduce the number of mesh nodes by more than one order of magnitude, for the same numerical accuracy, when compared to uniform mesh

  6. Is vaginal mesh a stimulus of autoimmune disease?

    PubMed

    Chughtai, Bilal; Sedrakyan, Art; Mao, Jialin; Eilber, Karyn S; Anger, Jennifer T; Clemens, J Quentin

    2017-05-01

    Polypropylene mesh has been used as a means of reinforcing weak tissues in women with pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence. We sought to investigate a potential link between the development of systemic/autoimmune disorders and synthetic polypropylene mesh repairs. New York State Department of Health Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System data were utilized to conduct this retrospective cohort study. Adult women undergoing surgery for pelvic organ prolapse with vaginally implanted mesh from January 2008 through December 2009 in inpatient and ambulatory surgery settings in New York State were identified. Two separate control cohorts were created to compare outcomes, including a screening colonoscopy cohort and a vaginal hysterectomy cohort for benign gynecologic conditions (without pelvic organ prolapse repair or sling). Patients in the mesh cohort were individually matched to the control cohorts based on demographics, comorbidities, and procedure date. The development of systemic/autoimmune disease was determined before and after matching for 1-year, 2-year, 3-year, and entire follow-up (up to 6 years until December 2014) and differences between groups were evaluated. A total of 2102 patients underwent mesh-based pelvic organ prolapse surgery from January 2008 through December 2009. In the control cohorts, 37,298 patients underwent colonoscopy and 7338 underwent vaginal hysterectomy. When patients were matched based on demographics, comorbidities, and procedure time, mesh-based surgery was not associated with an increased risk of developing autoimmune disease at any of the evaluated time periods. Mesh-based vaginal surgery was not associated with the development of systemic/autoimmune diseases. These data refute claims against mesh as a cause of systemic disease. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. 7th International Meshing Roundtable '98

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Eldred, T.J.

    1998-10-01

    The goal of the 7th International Meshing Roundtable is to bring together researchers and developers from industry, academia, and government labs in a stimulating, open environment for the exchange of technical information related to the meshing process. In the past, the Roundtable has enjoyed significant participation from each of these groups from a wide variety of countries.

  8. Grid adaptation using chimera composite overlapping meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kao, Kai-Hsiung; Liou, Meng-Sing; Chow, Chuen-Yen

    1994-01-01

    The objective of this paper is to perform grid adaptation using composite overlapping meshes in regions of large gradient to accurately capture the salient features during computation. The chimera grid scheme, a multiple overset mesh technique, is used in combination with a Navier-Stokes solver. The numerical solution is first converged to a steady state based on an initial coarse mesh. Solution-adaptive enhancement is then performed by using a secondary fine grid system which oversets on top of the base grid in the high-gradient region, but without requiring the mesh boundaries to join in any special way. Communications through boundary interfaces between those separated grids are carried out using trilinear interpolation. Application to the Euler equations for shock reflections and to shock wave/boundary layer interaction problem are tested. With the present method, the salient features are well-resolved.

  9. The 3-D unstructured mesh generation using local transformations

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Barth, Timothy J.

    1993-01-01

    The topics are presented in viewgraph form and include the following: 3D combinatorial edge swapping; 3D incremental triangulation via local transformations; a new approach to multigrid for unstructured meshes; surface mesh generation using local transforms; volume triangulations; viscous mesh generation; and future directions.

  10. Advances in Parallelization for Large Scale Oct-Tree Mesh Generation

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    O'Connell, Matthew; Karman, Steve L.

    2015-01-01

    Despite great advancements in the parallelization of numerical simulation codes over the last 20 years, it is still common to perform grid generation in serial. Generating large scale grids in serial often requires using special "grid generation" compute machines that can have more than ten times the memory of average machines. While some parallel mesh generation techniques have been proposed, generating very large meshes for LES or aeroacoustic simulations is still a challenging problem. An automated method for the parallel generation of very large scale off-body hierarchical meshes is presented here. This work enables large scale parallel generation of off-body meshes by using a novel combination of parallel grid generation techniques and a hybrid "top down" and "bottom up" oct-tree method. Meshes are generated using hardware commonly found in parallel compute clusters. The capability to generate very large meshes is demonstrated by the generation of off-body meshes surrounding complex aerospace geometries. Results are shown including a one billion cell mesh generated around a Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle geometry, which was generated on 64 processors in under 45 minutes.

  11. Vaginal Approaches Using Synthetic Mesh to Treat Pelvic Organ Prolapse.

    PubMed

    Moon, Jei Won; Chae, Hee Dong

    2016-02-01

    Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is a very common condition in elderly women. In women with POP, a sacrocolpopexy or a vaginal hysterectomy with anterior and posterior colporrhaphy has long been considered as the gold standard of treatment. However, in recent decades, the tendency to use a vaginal approach with mesh for POP surgery has been increasing. A vaginal approach using mesh has many advantages, such as its being less invasive than an abdominal approach and easier to do than a laparoscopic approach and its having a lower recurrence rate than a traditional approach. However, the advantages of a vaginal approach with mesh for POP surgery must be weighed against the disadvantages. Specific complications that have been reported when using mesh in POP procedures are mesh erosion, dyspareunia, hematomas, urinary incontinence and so on, and evidence supporting the use of transvaginal surgery with mesh is still lacking. Hence, surgeons should understand the details of the surgical pelvic anatomy, the various surgical techniques for POP surgery, including using mesh, and the possible side effects of using mesh.

  12. Water Penetration through a Superhydrophobic Mesh During a Drop Impact.

    PubMed

    Ryu, Seunggeol; Sen, Prosenjit; Nam, Youngsuk; Lee, Choongyeop

    2017-01-06

    When a water drop impacts a mesh having submillimeter pores, a part of the drop penetrates through the mesh if the impact velocity is sufficiently large. Here we show that different surface wettability, i.e., hydrophobicity and superhydrophobicity, leads to different water penetration dynamics on a mesh during drop impact. We show, despite the water repellence of a superhydrophobic surface, that water can penetrate a superhydrophobic mesh more easily (i.e., at a lower impact velocity) over a hydrophobic mesh via a penetration mechanism unique to a superhydrophobic mesh. On a superhydrophobic mesh, the water penetration can occur during the drop recoil stage, which appears at a lower impact velocity than the critical impact velocity for water penetration right upon impact. We propose that this unique water penetration on a superhydrophobic mesh can be attributed to the combination of the hydrodynamic focusing and the momentum transfer from the water drop when it is about to bounce off the surface, at which point the water drop retrieves most of its kinetic energy due to the negligible friction on superhydrophobic surfaces.

  13. Water Penetration through a Superhydrophobic Mesh During a Drop Impact

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ryu, Seunggeol; Sen, Prosenjit; Nam, Youngsuk; Lee, Choongyeop

    2017-01-01

    When a water drop impacts a mesh having submillimeter pores, a part of the drop penetrates through the mesh if the impact velocity is sufficiently large. Here we show that different surface wettability, i.e., hydrophobicity and superhydrophobicity, leads to different water penetration dynamics on a mesh during drop impact. We show, despite the water repellence of a superhydrophobic surface, that water can penetrate a superhydrophobic mesh more easily (i.e., at a lower impact velocity) over a hydrophobic mesh via a penetration mechanism unique to a superhydrophobic mesh. On a superhydrophobic mesh, the water penetration can occur during the drop recoil stage, which appears at a lower impact velocity than the critical impact velocity for water penetration right upon impact. We propose that this unique water penetration on a superhydrophobic mesh can be attributed to the combination of the hydrodynamic focusing and the momentum transfer from the water drop when it is about to bounce off the surface, at which point the water drop retrieves most of its kinetic energy due to the negligible friction on superhydrophobic surfaces.

  14. Engagement of Metal Debris into Gear Mesh

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    handschuh, Robert F.; Krantz, Timothy L.

    2010-01-01

    A series of bench-top experiments was conducted to determine the effects of metallic debris being dragged through meshing gear teeth. A test rig that is typically used to conduct contact fatigue experiments was used for these tests. Several sizes of drill material, shim stock and pieces of gear teeth were introduced and then driven through the meshing region. The level of torque required to drive the "chip" through the gear mesh was measured. From the data gathered, chip size sufficient to jam the mechanism can be determined.

  15. Method and apparatus for connecting finite element meshes and performing simulations therewith

    DOEpatents

    Dohrmann, Clark R.; Key, Samuel W.; Heinstein, Martin W.

    2003-05-06

    The present invention provides a method of connecting dissimilar finite element meshes. A first mesh, designated the master mesh, and a second mesh, designated the slave mesh, each have interface surfaces proximal the other. Each interface surface has a corresponding interface mesh comprising a plurality of interface nodes. Each slave interface node is assigned new coordinates locating the interface node on the interface surface of the master mesh. The slave interface surface is further redefined to be the projection of the slave interface mesh onto the master interface surface.

  16. A Survey of Solver-Related Geometry and Meshing Issues

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Masters, James; Daniel, Derick; Gudenkauf, Jared; Hine, David; Sideroff, Chris

    2016-01-01

    There is a concern in the computational fluid dynamics community that mesh generation is a significant bottleneck in the CFD workflow. This is one of several papers that will help set the stage for a moderated panel discussion addressing this issue. Although certain general "rules of thumb" and a priori mesh metrics can be used to ensure that some base level of mesh quality is achieved, inadequate consideration is often given to the type of solver or particular flow regime on which the mesh will be utilized. This paper explores how an analyst may want to think differently about a mesh based on considerations such as if a flow is compressible vs. incompressible or hypersonic vs. subsonic or if the solver is node-centered vs. cell-centered. This paper is a high-level investigation intended to provide general insight into how considering the nature of the solver or flow when performing mesh generation has the potential to increase the accuracy and/or robustness of the solution and drive the mesh generation process to a state where it is no longer a hindrance to the analysis process.

  17. Pelvic Organ Prolapse---Vaginal and Laparoscopic Mesh: The Evidence.

    PubMed

    Richter, Lee A; Sokol, Andrew I

    2016-03-01

    This report summarizes the current literature on abdominal, laparoscopic, and transvaginal mesh for the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse. This article reviews objective and subjective cure rates as well as complications associated with synthetic mesh use for pelvic organ prolapse repair. The focus is on the latest literature that provides evidence for when synthetic mesh use is most appropriate. The use of mesh for the repair of urinary incontinence is not reviewed in this article. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Cosmology on a Mesh

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gill, Stuart P. D.; Knebe, Alexander; Gibson, Brad K.; Flynn, Chris; Ibata, Rodrigo A.; Lewis, Geraint F.

    2003-04-01

    An adaptive multi grid approach to simulating the formation of structure from collisionless dark matter is described. MLAPM (Multi-Level Adaptive Particle Mesh) is one of the most efficient serial codes available on the cosmological "market" today. As part of Swinburne University's role in the development of the Square Kilometer Array, we are implementing hydrodynamics, feedback, and radiative transfer within the MLAPM adaptive mesh, in order to simulate baryonic processes relevant to the interstellar and intergalactic media at high redshift. We will outline our progress to date in applying the existing MLAPM to a study of the decay of satellite galaxies within massive host potentials.

  19. Connectivity-based, all-hexahedral mesh generation method and apparatus

    DOEpatents

    Tautges, Timothy James; Mitchell, Scott A.; Blacker, Ted D.; Murdoch, Peter

    1998-01-01

    The present invention is a computer-based method and apparatus for constructing all-hexahedral finite element meshes for finite element analysis. The present invention begins with a three-dimensional geometry and an all-quadrilateral surface mesh, then constructs hexahedral element connectivity from the outer boundary inward, and then resolves invalid connectivity. The result of the present invention is a complete representation of hex mesh connectivity only; actual mesh node locations are determined later. The basic method of the present invention comprises the step of forming hexahedral elements by making crossings of entities referred to as "whisker chords." This step, combined with a seaming operation in space, is shown to be sufficient for meshing simple block problems. Entities that appear when meshing more complex geometries, namely blind chords, merged sheets, and self-intersecting chords, are described. A method for detecting invalid connectivity in space, based on repeated edges, is also described, along with its application to various cases of invalid connectivity introduced and resolved by the method.

  20. Changes in pelvic organ prolapse mesh mechanical properties following implantation in rats.

    PubMed

    Ulrich, Daniela; Edwards, Sharon L; Alexander, David L J; Rosamilia, Anna; Werkmeister, Jerome A; Gargett, Caroline E; Letouzey, Vincent

    2016-02-01

    Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is a multifactorial disease that manifests as the herniation of the pelvic organs into the vagina. Surgical methods for prolapse repair involve the use of a synthetic polypropylene mesh. The use of this mesh has led to significantly higher anatomical success rates compared with native tissue repairs, and therefore, despite recent warnings by the Food and Drug Administration regarding the use of vaginal mesh, the number of POP mesh surgeries has increased over the last few years. However, mesh implantation is associated with higher postsurgery complications, including pain and erosion, with higher consecutive rates of reoperation when placed vaginally. Little is known on how the mechanical properties of the implanted mesh itself change in vivo. It is assumed that the mechanical properties of these meshes remain unchanged, with any differences in mechanical properties of the formed mesh-tissue complex attributed to the attached tissue alone. It is likely that any changes in mesh mechanical properties that do occur in vivo will have an impact on the biomechanical properties of the formed mesh-tissue complex. The objective of the study was to assess changes in the multiaxial mechanical properties of synthetic clinical prolapse meshes implanted abdominally for up to 90 days, using a rat model. Another objective of the study was to assess the biomechanical properties of the formed mesh-tissue complex following implantation. Three nondegradable polypropylene clinical synthetic mesh types for prolapse repair (Gynemesh PS, Polyform Lite, and Restorelle) and a partially degradable polypropylene/polyglecaprone mesh (UltraPro) were mechanically assessed before and after implantation (n = 5/ mesh type) in Sprague Dawley rats for 30 (Gynemesh PS, Polyform Lite, and Restorelle) and 90 (UltraPro and Polyform Lite) days. Stiffness and permanent extension following cyclic loading, and breaking load, of the preimplanted mesh types, explanted mesh

  1. Engagement of Metal Debris into a Gear Mesh

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Handschuh, Robert F.; Krantz, Timothy L.

    2009-01-01

    A series of bench top experiments was conducted to determine the effects of metallic debris being dragged through meshing gear teeth. A test rig that is typically used to conduct contact fatigue experiments was used for these tests. Several sizes of drill material, shim stock, and pieces of gear teeth were introduced and then driven through the meshing region. The level of torque required to drive the "chip" through the gear mesh was measured. From the data gathered, chip size sufficient to jam the mechanism can be determined. INTRODUCTION In some space mechanisms the loading can be so high that there is some possibility that a gear chip might be liberated while in operation of the mechanism [1-5]. Also, due to the closely packed nature of some space mechanisms and the fact that a space grease is used for lubrication, chips that are released can then be introduced to other gear meshes within this mechanism. In this instance, it is desirable to know the consequences of a gear chip entering in between meshing gear teeth. To help provide some understanding, a series of bench-top experiments was conducted to engage chips of simulated and gear material fragments into a meshing gear pair. One purpose of the experiments was to determine the relationship of chip size to the torque required to rotate the gear set through the mesh cycle. The second purpose was to determine the condition of the gear chip material after engagement by the meshing gears, primarily to determine if the chip would break into pieces and to observe the motion of the chip as the engagement was completed. This document also presents preliminary testing done with metal debris other than chips from gears, namely steel shim stock and drill bits of various sizes and diameters.

  2. Adaptive and dynamic meshing methods for numerical simulations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Acikgoz, Nazmiye

    For the numerical simulation of many problems of engineering interest, it is desirable to have an automated mesh adaption tool capable of producing high quality meshes with an affordably low number of mesh points. This is important especially for problems, which are characterized by anisotropic features of the solution and require mesh clustering in the direction of high gradients. Another significant issue in meshing emerges in the area of unsteady simulations with moving boundaries or interfaces, where the motion of the boundary has to be accommodated by deforming the computational grid. Similarly, there exist problems where current mesh needs to be adapted to get more accurate solutions because either the high gradient regions are initially predicted inaccurately or they change location throughout the simulation. To solve these problems, we propose three novel procedures. For this purpose, in the first part of this work, we present an optimization procedure for three-dimensional anisotropic tetrahedral grids based on metric-driven h-adaptation. The desired anisotropy in the grid is dictated by a metric that defines the size, shape, and orientation of the grid elements throughout the computational domain. Through the use of topological and geometrical operators, the mesh is iteratively adapted until the final mesh minimizes a given objective function. In this work, the objective function measures the distance between the metric of each simplex and a target metric, which can be either user-defined (a-priori) or the result of a-posteriori error analysis. During the adaptation process, one tries to decrease the metric-based objective function until the final mesh is compliant with the target within a given tolerance. However, in regions such as corners and complex face intersections, the compliance condition was found to be very difficult or sometimes impossible to satisfy. In order to address this issue, we propose an optimization process based on an ad

  3. Stretchable Mesh for Cavity Noise Reduction

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Khorrami, Mehdi R. (Inventor)

    2017-01-01

    A stretchable mesh material extends across the opening of a cavity of the landing gear of an aircraft when the landing gear is in the deployed position. The mesh material alters the flow of air across the opening of the landing gear cavity and significantly reduces the amount of noise produced by the wheel well at low-to-mid frequencies.

  4. Resistive-force theory for mesh-like superhydrophobic surfaces

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Schnitzer, Ory; Yariv, Ehud

    2018-03-01

    A common realization of superhydrophobic surfaces makes use of a mesh-like geometry, where pockets of air are trapped in a periodic array of holes in a no-slip solid substrate. We consider the small-solid-fraction limit where the ribs of the mesh are narrow. In this limit, we obtain a simple leading-order approximation for the slip-length tensor of an arbitrary mesh geometry. This approximation scales as the solid-fraction logarithm, as anticipated by Ybert et al. [Phys. Fluids 19, 123601 (2007), 10.1063/1.2815730]; in the special case of a square mesh it agrees with the analytical results obtained by Davis and Lauga [Phys. Fluids 21, 113101 (2009), 10.1063/1.3250947].

  5. Grid adaption using Chimera composite overlapping meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kao, Kai-Hsiung; Liou, Meng-Sing; Chow, Chuen-Yen

    1993-01-01

    The objective of this paper is to perform grid adaptation using composite over-lapping meshes in regions of large gradient to capture the salient features accurately during computation. The Chimera grid scheme, a multiple overset mesh technique, is used in combination with a Navier-Stokes solver. The numerical solution is first converged to a steady state based on an initial coarse mesh. Solution-adaptive enhancement is then performed by using a secondary fine grid system which oversets on top of the base grid in the high-gradient region, but without requiring the mesh boundaries to join in any special way. Communications through boundary interfaces between those separated grids are carried out using tri-linear interpolation. Applications to the Euler equations for shock reflections and to a shock wave/boundary layer interaction problem are tested. With the present method, the salient features are well resolved.

  6. A mesh gradient technique for numerical optimization

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Willis, E. A., Jr.

    1973-01-01

    A class of successive-improvement optimization methods in which directions of descent are defined in the state space along each trial trajectory are considered. The given problem is first decomposed into two discrete levels by imposing mesh points. Level 1 consists of running optimal subarcs between each successive pair of mesh points. For normal systems, these optimal two-point boundary value problems can be solved by following a routine prescription if the mesh spacing is sufficiently close. A spacing criterion is given. Under appropriate conditions, the criterion value depends only on the coordinates of the mesh points, and its gradient with respect to those coordinates may be defined by interpreting the adjoint variables as partial derivatives of the criterion value function. In level 2, the gradient data is used to generate improvement steps or search directions in the state space which satisfy the boundary values and constraints of the given problem.

  7. Grid adaptation using Chimera composite overlapping meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kao, Kai-Hsiung; Liou, Meng-Sing; Chow, Chuen-Yen

    1993-01-01

    The objective of this paper is to perform grid adaptation using composite over-lapping meshes in regions of large gradient to capture the salient features accurately during computation. The Chimera grid scheme, a multiple overset mesh technique, is used in combination with a Navier-Stokes solver. The numerical solution is first converged to a steady state based on an initial coarse mesh. Solution-adaptive enhancement is then performed by using a secondary fine grid system which oversets on top of the base grid in the high-gradient region, but without requiring the mesh boundaries to join in any special way. Communications through boundary interfaces between those separated grids are carried out using tri-linear interpolation. Applications to the Euler equations for shock reflections and to a shock wave/boundary layer interaction problem are tested. With the present method, the salient features are well resolved.

  8. Scalable hierarchical PDE sampler for generating spatially correlated random fields using nonmatching meshes: Scalable hierarchical PDE sampler using nonmatching meshes

    DOE PAGES

    Osborn, Sarah; Zulian, Patrick; Benson, Thomas; ...

    2018-01-30

    This work describes a domain embedding technique between two nonmatching meshes used for generating realizations of spatially correlated random fields with applications to large-scale sampling-based uncertainty quantification. The goal is to apply the multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method for the quantification of output uncertainties of PDEs with random input coefficients on general and unstructured computational domains. We propose a highly scalable, hierarchical sampling method to generate realizations of a Gaussian random field on a given unstructured mesh by solving a reaction–diffusion PDE with a stochastic right-hand side. The stochastic PDE is discretized using the mixed finite element method on anmore » embedded domain with a structured mesh, and then, the solution is projected onto the unstructured mesh. This work describes implementation details on how to efficiently transfer data from the structured and unstructured meshes at coarse levels, assuming that this can be done efficiently on the finest level. We investigate the efficiency and parallel scalability of the technique for the scalable generation of Gaussian random fields in three dimensions. An application of the MLMC method is presented for quantifying uncertainties of subsurface flow problems. Here, we demonstrate the scalability of the sampling method with nonmatching mesh embedding, coupled with a parallel forward model problem solver, for large-scale 3D MLMC simulations with up to 1.9·109 unknowns.« less

  9. Scalable hierarchical PDE sampler for generating spatially correlated random fields using nonmatching meshes: Scalable hierarchical PDE sampler using nonmatching meshes

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Osborn, Sarah; Zulian, Patrick; Benson, Thomas

    This work describes a domain embedding technique between two nonmatching meshes used for generating realizations of spatially correlated random fields with applications to large-scale sampling-based uncertainty quantification. The goal is to apply the multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) method for the quantification of output uncertainties of PDEs with random input coefficients on general and unstructured computational domains. We propose a highly scalable, hierarchical sampling method to generate realizations of a Gaussian random field on a given unstructured mesh by solving a reaction–diffusion PDE with a stochastic right-hand side. The stochastic PDE is discretized using the mixed finite element method on anmore » embedded domain with a structured mesh, and then, the solution is projected onto the unstructured mesh. This work describes implementation details on how to efficiently transfer data from the structured and unstructured meshes at coarse levels, assuming that this can be done efficiently on the finest level. We investigate the efficiency and parallel scalability of the technique for the scalable generation of Gaussian random fields in three dimensions. An application of the MLMC method is presented for quantifying uncertainties of subsurface flow problems. Here, we demonstrate the scalability of the sampling method with nonmatching mesh embedding, coupled with a parallel forward model problem solver, for large-scale 3D MLMC simulations with up to 1.9·109 unknowns.« less

  10. Enriching Triangle Mesh Animations with Physically Based Simulation.

    PubMed

    Li, Yijing; Xu, Hongyi; Barbic, Jernej

    2017-10-01

    We present a system to combine arbitrary triangle mesh animations with physically based Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation, enabling control over the combination both in space and time. The input is a triangle mesh animation obtained using any method, such as keyframed animation, character rigging, 3D scanning, or geometric shape modeling. The input may be non-physical, crude or even incomplete. The user provides weights, specified using a minimal user interface, for how much physically based simulation should be allowed to modify the animation in any region of the model, and in time. Our system then computes a physically-based animation that is constrained to the input animation to the amount prescribed by these weights. This permits smoothly turning physics on and off over space and time, making it possible for the output to strictly follow the input, to evolve purely based on physically based simulation, and anything in between. Achieving such results requires a careful combination of several system components. We propose and analyze these components, including proper automatic creation of simulation meshes (even for non-manifold and self-colliding undeformed triangle meshes), converting triangle mesh animations into animations of the simulation mesh, and resolving collisions and self-collisions while following the input.

  11. Macrophage polarization in response to ECM coated polypropylene mesh

    PubMed Central

    Wolf, MT; Dearth, CL; Ranallo, CA; LoPresti, S; Carey, LE; Daly, KA; Brown, BN; Badylak, SF

    2015-01-01

    The host response to implanted biomaterials is a highly regulated process that influences device functionality and clinical outcome. Non-degradable biomaterials, such as knitted polypropylene mesh, frequently elicit a chronic foreign body reaction with resultant fibrosis. Previous studies have shown that an extracellular matrix (ECM) hydrogel coating of polypropylene mesh reduces the intensity of the foreign body reaction, though the mode of action is unknown. Macrophage participation plays a key role in the development of the foreign body reaction to biomaterials, and therefore the present study investigated macrophage polarization following mesh implantation. Spatiotemporal analysis of macrophage polarization was conducted in response to uncoated polypropylene mesh and mesh coated with hydrated and dry forms of ECM hydrogels derived from either dermis or urinary bladder. Pro-inflammatory M1 macrophages (CD86+/CD68+), alternatively activated M2 macrophages (CD206+/CD68+), and foreign body giant cells were quantified between 3-35 days. Uncoated polypropylene mesh elicited a dominant M1 response at the mesh fiber surface, which was decreased by each ECM coating type beginning at 7 days. The diminished M1 response was accompanied by a reduction in the number of foreign body giant cells at 14 and 35 days, though there was a minimal effect upon the number of M2 macrophages at any time. These results show that ECM coatings attenuate the M1 macrophage response and increase the M2/M1 ratio to polypropylene mesh in vivo. PMID:24856104

  12. Finite element meshing approached as a global minimization process

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    WITKOWSKI,WALTER R.; JUNG,JOSEPH; DOHRMANN,CLARK R.

    2000-03-01

    The ability to generate a suitable finite element mesh in an automatic fashion is becoming the key to being able to automate the entire engineering analysis process. However, placing an all-hexahedron mesh in a general three-dimensional body continues to be an elusive goal. The approach investigated in this research is fundamentally different from any other that is known of by the authors. A physical analogy viewpoint is used to formulate the actual meshing problem which constructs a global mathematical description of the problem. The analogy used was that of minimizing the electrical potential of a system charged particles within amore » charged domain. The particles in the presented analogy represent duals to mesh elements (i.e., quads or hexes). Particle movement is governed by a mathematical functional which accounts for inter-particles repulsive, attractive and alignment forces. This functional is minimized to find the optimal location and orientation of each particle. After the particles are connected a mesh can be easily resolved. The mathematical description for this problem is as easy to formulate in three-dimensions as it is in two- or one-dimensions. The meshing algorithm was developed within CoMeT. It can solve the two-dimensional meshing problem for convex and concave geometries in a purely automated fashion. Investigation of the robustness of the technique has shown a success rate of approximately 99% for the two-dimensional geometries tested. Run times to mesh a 100 element complex geometry were typically in the 10 minute range. Efficiency of the technique is still an issue that needs to be addressed. Performance is an issue that is critical for most engineers generating meshes. It was not for this project. The primary focus of this work was to investigate and evaluate a meshing algorithm/philosophy with efficiency issues being secondary. The algorithm was also extended to mesh three-dimensional geometries. Unfortunately, only simple geometries

  13. Mesh Displacement After Bilateral Inguinal Hernia Repair With No Fixation

    PubMed Central

    Rocha, Gabriela Moreira; Campos, Antonio Carlos Ligocki; Paulin, João Augusto Nocera; Coelho, Julio Cesar Uili

    2017-01-01

    Background and Objectives: About 20% of patients with inguinal hernia present bilateral hernias in the diagnosis. In these cases, laparoscopic procedure is considered gold standard approach. Mesh fixation is considered important step toward avoiding recurrence. However, because of cost and risk of pain, real need for mesh fixation has been debated. For bilateral inguinal hernias, there are few specific data about non fixation and mesh displacement. We assessed mesh movement in patients who had undergone laparoscopic bilateral inguinal hernia repair without mesh fixation and compared the results with those obtained in patients with unilateral hernia. Methods: From January 2012 through May 2014, 20 consecutive patients with bilateral inguinal hernia underwent TEP repair with no mesh fixation. Results were compared with 50 consecutive patients with unilateral inguinal hernia surgically repaired with similar technique. Mesh was marked with 3 clips. Mesh movements were measured by comparing initial radiography performed at the end of surgery, with a second radiographic scan performed 30 days later. Results: Mean movements of all 3 clips in bilateral nonfixation (NF) group were 0.15–0.4 cm compared with 0.1–0.3 cm in unilateral NF group. Overall displacement of bilateral and unilateral NF groups did not show significant difference. Mean overall displacement was 1.9 cm versus 1.8 cm in the bilateral and unilateral NF groups, respectively (P = .78). Conclusions: TEP with no mesh fixation is safe in bilateral inguinal repairs. Early mesh displacement is minimal. This technique can be safely used in most patients with inguinal hernia. PMID:28904521

  14. Graft and mesh use in vaginal surgery.

    PubMed

    Rizvi, Raheela Mohsin; Chughtai, Novera Ghayoor

    2017-12-01

    Pelvic organ prolapse and urinary incontinence are among the most common chronic disorders in women. These are common problems whose pathogenesis remains unclear. As life expectancy increases, significantly greater number of women now present with pelvic organ prolapse and urinary incontinence requiring surgical intervention. Currently, the lifetime risk of undergoing prolapse or continence surgery is one in 11, and up to 30% of patients will require repeat reconstructive surgery and repeat surgery for incontinence in 10%. In an attempt to improve surgical outcomes and to preserve vaginal capacity and coital function, a number of synthetic and biological prostheses have been developed. This review aims to look at the role of graft and mesh in vaginal surgery. We conducted a search for English-language articles published during 1997 to 2016, using MEDLINE, PubMed and United States' National Library of Medicine databases. We reviewed around 50 papers but referenced only 30 for this article. The literature review provided us a new insight regarding safety of mesh. Polypropylene mesh is safe for vaginal surgery if used by experienced surgeons. The safety of mesh becomes compromised in the hands of commercial surgical kit providers. All the new mesh tailored kits should undergo evidence-based trials and then can be safely used worldwide.

  15. Textile properties of synthetic prolapse mesh in response to uniaxial loading.

    PubMed

    Barone, William R; Moalli, Pamela A; Abramowitch, Steven D

    2016-09-01

    Although synthetic mesh is associated with superior anatomic outcomes for the repair of pelvic organ prolapse, the benefits of mesh have been questioned because of the relatively high complication rates. To date, the mechanisms that result in such complications are poorly understood, yet the textile characteristics of mesh products are believed to play an important role. Interestingly, the pore diameter of synthetic mesh has been shown to impact the host response after hernia repair greatly, and such findings have served as design criteria for prolapse meshes, with larger pores viewed as more favorable. Although pore size and porosity are well-characterized before implantation, the changes in these textile properties after implantation are unclear; the application of mechanical forces has the potential to greatly alter pore geometries in vivo. Understanding the impact of mechanical loading on the textile properties of mesh is essential for the development of more effective devices for prolapse repair. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of tensile loading and pore orientation on mesh porosity and pore dimensions. In this study, the porosity and pore diameter of 4 currently available prolapse meshes were examined in response to uniaxial tensile loads of 0.1, 5, and 10 N while mimicking clinical loading conditions. The textile properties were compared with those observed for the unloaded mesh. Meshes included Gynemesh PS (Ethicon, Somerville, NJ), UltraPro (Artisyn; Ethicon), Restorelle (Coloplast, Minneapolis, MN), and Alyte Y-mesh (Bard, Covington, GA). In addition to the various pore geometries, 3 orientations of Restorelle (0-, 5-, 45-degree offset) and 2 orientations of UltraPro (0-, 90-degree offset) were examined. In response to uniaxial loading, both porosity and pore diameter dramatically decreased for most mesh products. The application of 5 N led to reductions in porosity for nearly all groups, with values decreasing by as much as 87

  16. Does Attorney Advertising Influence Patient Perceptions of Pelvic Mesh?

    PubMed

    Tippett, Elizabeth; King, Jesse; Lucent, Vincent; Ephraim, Sonya; Murphy, Miles; Taff, Eileen

    2018-01-01

    To measure the relative influence of attorney advertising on patient perceptions of pelvic mesh compared with a history of surgery and a first urology visit. A 52-item survey was administered to 170 female patients in 2 urology offices between 2014 and 2016. Multiple survey items were combined to form scales for benefit and risk perceptions of pelvic mesh, perceptions of the advertising, attitudes toward pelvic mesh, and knowledge of pelvic mesh and underlying medical conditions. Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear regression models. Exposure to attorney advertising was quite high; 88% reported seeing a mesh-related attorney advertisement in the last 6 months. Over half of patients reported seeing attorney advertisements more than once per week. A history of prior mesh implant surgery was the strongest predictor of benefit and risk perceptions of pelvic mesh. Exposure to attorney advertising was associated with higher risk perceptions but did not significantly affect perceptions of benefits. Past urologist visits increased perceptions of benefits but had no effect on risk perceptions. Attorney advertising appears to have some influence on risk perceptions, but personal experience and discussions with a urogynecologist or urologist also influence patient perceptions. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Mesh Nanoelectronics: Seamless Integration of Electronics with Tissues.

    PubMed

    Dai, Xiaochuan; Hong, Guosong; Gao, Teng; Lieber, Charles M

    2018-02-20

    Nanobioelectronics represents a rapidly developing field with broad-ranging opportunities in fundamental biological sciences, biotechnology, and medicine. Despite this potential, seamless integration of electronics has been difficult due to fundamental mismatches, including size and mechanical properties, between the elements of the electronic and living biological systems. In this Account, we discuss the concept, development, key demonstrations, and future opportunities of mesh nanoelectronics as a general paradigm for seamless integration of electronics within synthetic tissues and live animals. We first describe the design and realization of hybrid synthetic tissues that are innervated in three dimensions (3D) with mesh nanoelectronics where the mesh serves as both as a tissue scaffold and as a platform of addressable electronic devices for monitoring and manipulating tissue behavior. Specific examples of tissue/nanoelectronic mesh hybrids highlighted include 3D neural tissue, cardiac patches, and vascular constructs, where the nanoelectronic devices have been used to carry out real-time 3D recording of electrophysiological and chemical signals in the tissues. This novel platform was also exploited for time-dependent 3D spatiotemporal mapping of cardiac tissue action potentials during cell culture and tissue maturation as well as in response to injection of pharmacological agents. The extension to simultaneous real-time monitoring and active control of tissue behavior is further discussed for multifunctional mesh nanoelectronics incorporating both recording and stimulation devices, providing the unique capability of bidirectional interfaces to cardiac tissue. In the case of live animals, new challenges must be addressed, including minimally invasive implantation, absence of deleterious chronic tissue response, and long-term capability for monitoring and modulating tissue activity. We discuss each of these topics in the context of implantation of mesh

  18. Overset meshing coupled with hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin finite elements

    DOE PAGES

    Kauffman, Justin A.; Sheldon, Jason P.; Miller, Scott T.

    2017-03-01

    We introduce the use of hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) finite element methods on overlapping (overset) meshes. Overset mesh methods are advantageous for solving problems on complex geometrical domains. We also combine geometric flexibility of overset methods with the advantages of HDG methods: arbitrarily high-order accuracy, reduced size of the global discrete problem, and the ability to solve elliptic, parabolic, and/or hyperbolic problems with a unified form of discretization. This approach to developing the ‘overset HDG’ method is to couple the global solution from one mesh to the local solution on the overset mesh. We present numerical examples for steady convection–diffusionmore » and static elasticity problems. The examples demonstrate optimal order convergence in all primal fields for an arbitrary amount of overlap of the underlying meshes.« less

  19. Polyhedral meshing in numerical analysis of conjugate heat transfer

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sosnowski, Marcin; Krzywanski, Jaroslaw; Grabowska, Karolina; Gnatowska, Renata

    2018-06-01

    Computational methods have been widely applied in conjugate heat transfer analysis. The very first and crucial step in such research is the meshing process which consists in dividing the analysed geometry into numerous small control volumes (cells). In Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) applications it is desirable to use the hexahedral cells as the resulting mesh is characterized by low numerical diffusion. Unfortunately generating such mesh can be a very time-consuming task and in case of complicated geometry - it may not be possible to generate cells of good quality. Therefore tetrahedral cells have been implemented into commercial pre-processors. Their advantage is the ease of its generation even in case of very complex geometry. On the other hand tetrahedrons cannot be stretched excessively without decreasing the mesh quality factor, so significantly larger number of cells has to be used in comparison to hexahedral mesh in order to achieve a reasonable accuracy. Moreover the numerical diffusion of tetrahedral elements is significantly higher. Therefore the polyhedral cells are proposed within the paper in order to combine the advantages of hexahedrons (low numerical diffusion resulting in accurate solution) and tetrahedrons (rapid semi-automatic generation) as well as to overcome the disadvantages of both the above mentioned mesh types. The major benefit of polyhedral mesh is that each individual cell has many neighbours, so gradients can be well approximated. Polyhedrons are also less sensitive to stretching than tetrahedrons which results in better mesh quality leading to improved numerical stability of the model. In addition, numerical diffusion is reduced due to mass exchange over numerous faces. This leads to a more accurate solution achieved with a lower cell count. Therefore detailed comparison of numerical modelling results concerning conjugate heat transfer using tetrahedral and polyhedral meshes is presented in the paper.

  20. Octree based automatic meshing from CSG models

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Perucchio, Renato

    1987-01-01

    Finite element meshes derived automatically from solid models through recursive spatial subdivision schemes (octrees) can be made to inherit the hierarchical structure and the spatial addressability intrinsic to the underlying grid. These two properties, together with the geometric regularity that can also be built into the mesh, make octree based meshes ideally suited for efficient analysis and self-adaptive remeshing and reanalysis. The element decomposition of the octal cells that intersect the boundary of the domain is emphasized. The problem, central to octree based meshing, is solved by combining template mapping and element extraction into a procedure that utilizes both constructive solid geometry and boundary respresentation techniques. Boundary cells that are not intersected by the edge of the domain boundary are easily mapped to predefined element topology. Cells containing edges (and vertices) are first transformed into a planar polyhedron and then triangulated via element extractors. The modeling environments required for the derivation of planar polyhedra and for element extraction are analyzed.

  1. An electrostatic Particle-In-Cell code on multi-block structured meshes

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Meierbachtol, Collin S.; Svyatskiy, Daniil; Delzanno, Gian Luca; Vernon, Louis J.; Moulton, J. David

    2017-12-01

    We present an electrostatic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code on multi-block, locally structured, curvilinear meshes called Curvilinear PIC (CPIC). Multi-block meshes are essential to capture complex geometries accurately and with good mesh quality, something that would not be possible with single-block structured meshes that are often used in PIC and for which CPIC was initially developed. Despite the structured nature of the individual blocks, multi-block meshes resemble unstructured meshes in a global sense and introduce several new challenges, such as the presence of discontinuities in the mesh properties and coordinate orientation changes across adjacent blocks, and polyjunction points where an arbitrary number of blocks meet. In CPIC, these challenges have been met by an approach that features: (1) a curvilinear formulation of the PIC method: each mesh block is mapped from the physical space, where the mesh is curvilinear and arbitrarily distorted, to the logical space, where the mesh is uniform and Cartesian on the unit cube; (2) a mimetic discretization of Poisson's equation suitable for multi-block meshes; and (3) a hybrid (logical-space position/physical-space velocity), asynchronous particle mover that mitigates the performance degradation created by the necessity to track particles as they move across blocks. The numerical accuracy of CPIC was verified using two standard plasma-material interaction tests, which demonstrate good agreement with the corresponding analytic solutions. Compared to PIC codes on unstructured meshes, which have also been used for their flexibility in handling complex geometries but whose performance suffers from issues associated with data locality and indirect data access patterns, PIC codes on multi-block structured meshes may offer the best compromise for capturing complex geometries while also maintaining solution accuracy and computational efficiency.

  2. An electrostatic Particle-In-Cell code on multi-block structured meshes

    DOE PAGES

    Meierbachtol, Collin S.; Svyatskiy, Daniil; Delzanno, Gian Luca; ...

    2017-09-14

    We present an electrostatic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code on multi-block, locally structured, curvilinear meshes called Curvilinear PIC (CPIC). Multi-block meshes are essential to capture complex geometries accurately and with good mesh quality, something that would not be possible with single-block structured meshes that are often used in PIC and for which CPIC was initially developed. In spite of the structured nature of the individual blocks, multi-block meshes resemble unstructured meshes in a global sense and introduce several new challenges, such as the presence of discontinuities in the mesh properties and coordinate orientation changes across adjacent blocks, and polyjunction points where anmore » arbitrary number of blocks meet. In CPIC, these challenges have been met by an approach that features: (1) a curvilinear formulation of the PIC method: each mesh block is mapped from the physical space, where the mesh is curvilinear and arbitrarily distorted, to the logical space, where the mesh is uniform and Cartesian on the unit cube; (2) a mimetic discretization of Poisson's equation suitable for multi-block meshes; and (3) a hybrid (logical-space position/physical-space velocity), asynchronous particle mover that mitigates the performance degradation created by the necessity to track particles as they move across blocks. The numerical accuracy of CPIC was verified using two standard plasma–material interaction tests, which demonstrate good agreement with the corresponding analytic solutions. And compared to PIC codes on unstructured meshes, which have also been used for their flexibility in handling complex geometries but whose performance suffers from issues associated with data locality and indirect data access patterns, PIC codes on multi-block structured meshes may offer the best compromise for capturing complex geometries while also maintaining solution accuracy and computational efficiency.« less

  3. An electrostatic Particle-In-Cell code on multi-block structured meshes

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Meierbachtol, Collin S.; Svyatskiy, Daniil; Delzanno, Gian Luca

    We present an electrostatic Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code on multi-block, locally structured, curvilinear meshes called Curvilinear PIC (CPIC). Multi-block meshes are essential to capture complex geometries accurately and with good mesh quality, something that would not be possible with single-block structured meshes that are often used in PIC and for which CPIC was initially developed. In spite of the structured nature of the individual blocks, multi-block meshes resemble unstructured meshes in a global sense and introduce several new challenges, such as the presence of discontinuities in the mesh properties and coordinate orientation changes across adjacent blocks, and polyjunction points where anmore » arbitrary number of blocks meet. In CPIC, these challenges have been met by an approach that features: (1) a curvilinear formulation of the PIC method: each mesh block is mapped from the physical space, where the mesh is curvilinear and arbitrarily distorted, to the logical space, where the mesh is uniform and Cartesian on the unit cube; (2) a mimetic discretization of Poisson's equation suitable for multi-block meshes; and (3) a hybrid (logical-space position/physical-space velocity), asynchronous particle mover that mitigates the performance degradation created by the necessity to track particles as they move across blocks. The numerical accuracy of CPIC was verified using two standard plasma–material interaction tests, which demonstrate good agreement with the corresponding analytic solutions. And compared to PIC codes on unstructured meshes, which have also been used for their flexibility in handling complex geometries but whose performance suffers from issues associated with data locality and indirect data access patterns, PIC codes on multi-block structured meshes may offer the best compromise for capturing complex geometries while also maintaining solution accuracy and computational efficiency.« less

  4. Connectivity-based, all-hexahedral mesh generation method and apparatus

    DOEpatents

    Tautges, T.J.; Mitchell, S.A.; Blacker, T.D.; Murdoch, P.

    1998-06-16

    The present invention is a computer-based method and apparatus for constructing all-hexahedral finite element meshes for finite element analysis. The present invention begins with a three-dimensional geometry and an all-quadrilateral surface mesh, then constructs hexahedral element connectivity from the outer boundary inward, and then resolves invalid connectivity. The result of the present invention is a complete representation of hex mesh connectivity only; actual mesh node locations are determined later. The basic method of the present invention comprises the step of forming hexahedral elements by making crossings of entities referred to as ``whisker chords.`` This step, combined with a seaming operation in space, is shown to be sufficient for meshing simple block problems. Entities that appear when meshing more complex geometries, namely blind chords, merged sheets, and self-intersecting chords, are described. A method for detecting invalid connectivity in space, based on repeated edges, is also described, along with its application to various cases of invalid connectivity introduced and resolved by the method. 79 figs.

  5. An adaptive mesh-moving and refinement procedure for one-dimensional conservation laws

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Biswas, Rupak; Flaherty, Joseph E.; Arney, David C.

    1993-01-01

    We examine the performance of an adaptive mesh-moving and /or local mesh refinement procedure for the finite difference solution of one-dimensional hyperbolic systems of conservation laws. Adaptive motion of a base mesh is designed to isolate spatially distinct phenomena, and recursive local refinement of the time step and cells of the stationary or moving base mesh is performed in regions where a refinement indicator exceeds a prescribed tolerance. These adaptive procedures are incorporated into a computer code that includes a MacCormack finite difference scheme wih Davis' artificial viscosity model and a discretization error estimate based on Richardson's extrapolation. Experiments are conducted on three problems in order to qualify the advantages of adaptive techniques relative to uniform mesh computations and the relative benefits of mesh moving and refinement. Key results indicate that local mesh refinement, with and without mesh moving, can provide reliable solutions at much lower computational cost than possible on uniform meshes; that mesh motion can be used to improve the results of uniform mesh solutions for a modest computational effort; that the cost of managing the tree data structure associated with refinement is small; and that a combination of mesh motion and refinement reliably produces solutions for the least cost per unit accuracy.

  6. Introducing a distributed unstructured mesh into gyrokinetic particle-in-cell code, XGC

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yoon, Eisung; Shephard, Mark; Seol, E. Seegyoung; Kalyanaraman, Kaushik

    2017-10-01

    XGC has shown good scalability for large leadership supercomputers. The current production version uses a copy of the entire unstructured finite element mesh on every MPI rank. Although an obvious scalability issue if the mesh sizes are to be dramatically increased, the current approach is also not optimal with respect to data locality of particles and mesh information. To address these issues we have initiated the development of a distributed mesh PIC method. This approach directly addresses the base scalability issue with respect to mesh size and, through the use of a mesh entity centric view of the particle mesh relationship, provides opportunities to address data locality needs of many core and GPU supported heterogeneous systems. The parallel mesh PIC capabilities are being built on the Parallel Unstructured Mesh Infrastructure (PUMI). The presentation will first overview the form of mesh distribution used and indicate the structures and functions used to support the mesh, the particles and their interaction. Attention will then focus on the node-level optimizations being carried out to ensure performant operation of all PIC operations on the distributed mesh. Partnership for Edge Physics Simulation (EPSI) Grant No. DE-SC0008449 and Center for Extended Magnetohydrodynamic Modeling (CEMM) Grant No. DE-SC0006618.

  7. Long-term follow-up of treatment for synthetic mesh complications.

    PubMed

    Hansen, Brooke L; Dunn, Guinn Ellen; Norton, Peggy; Hsu, Yvonne; Nygaard, Ingrid

    2014-01-01

    The objectives of this study are (1) to describe the presenting symptoms, findings, and treatment and (2) to describe the self-reported improvement and function at least 6 months after presentation in women presenting to 1 urogynecology division for complications associated with synthetic vaginal mesh. Women evaluated between 2006 and 2011 were identified by diagnostic codes. We abstracted information from the medical record and attempted to contact all women to complete a follow-up telephone survey questionnaire consisting of several validated instruments. A total of 111 women were evaluated for complications associated with synthetic vaginal mesh. The mean interval from index surgery was 2.4 years. Of these, 84% were referred from outside hospitals. Index surgeries included vaginal mesh kits/vaginally placed mesh (47%), midurethral mesh slings (37%), abdominally placed vaginal mesh (11%), and vaginal mesh kit with concomitantly placed mesh sling (5%). The most common complications were extrusion (65%), contraction (17%), and chronic pelvic pain (16%). A total of 98 women underwent some type of treatment (85 surgical) by urogynecologists, pelvic pain specialists, or physical therapists. Eighty-four (76%) provided follow-up information at mean interval since presentation of 2.3 years. At follow-up, the mean (SD) Pelvic Floor Distress Inventory score was 98 (67), the mean (SD) EQ-5D index score was 0.69 (0.23), and 22% reported vaginal discharge, 15% vaginal bleeding or spotting, and 45% sexual abstinence due to problems related to mesh. A total of 71% reported being overall better, whereas 29% were the same or worse. Two years after tertiary care level multidisciplinary treatment of vaginal mesh complications, many women still report symptoms that negatively impact their quality of life.

  8. Laser-structured Janus wire mesh for efficient oil-water separation.

    PubMed

    Liu, Yu-Qing; Han, Dong-Dong; Jiao, Zhi-Zhen; Liu, Yan; Jiang, Hao-Bo; Wu, Xuan-Hang; Ding, Hong; Zhang, Yong-Lai; Sun, Hong-Bo

    2017-11-23

    We report here the fabrication of a Janus wire mesh by a combined process of laser structuring and fluorosilane/graphene oxide (GO) modification of the two sides of the mesh, respectively, toward its applications in efficient oil/water separation. Femtosecond laser processing has been employed to make different laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on each side of the mesh. Surface modification with fluorosilane on one side and GO on the other side endows the two sides of the Janus mesh with distinct wettability. Thus, one side is superhydrophobic and superoleophilic in air, and the other side is superhydrophilic in air and superoleophobic under water. As a proof of concept, we demonstrated the separation of light/heavy oil and water mixtures using this Janus mesh. To realize an efficient separation, the intrusion pressure that is dominated by the wire mesh framework and the wettability should be taken into account. Our strategy may open up a new way to design and fabricate Janus structures with distinct wettability; and the resultant Janus mesh may find broad applications in the separation of oil contaminants from water.

  9. Lattice Cleaving: A Multimaterial Tetrahedral Meshing Algorithm with Guarantees

    PubMed Central

    Bronson, Jonathan; Levine, Joshua A.; Whitaker, Ross

    2014-01-01

    We introduce a new algorithm for generating tetrahedral meshes that conform to physical boundaries in volumetric domains consisting of multiple materials. The proposed method allows for an arbitrary number of materials, produces high-quality tetrahedral meshes with upper and lower bounds on dihedral angles, and guarantees geometric fidelity. Moreover, the method is combinatoric so its implementation enables rapid mesh construction. These meshes are structured in a way that also allows grading, to reduce element counts in regions of homogeneity. Additionally, we provide proofs showing that both element quality and geometric fidelity are bounded using this approach. PMID:24356365

  10. Tetrahedral and polyhedral mesh evaluation for cerebral hemodynamic simulation--a comparison.

    PubMed

    Spiegel, Martin; Redel, Thomas; Zhang, Y; Struffert, Tobias; Hornegger, Joachim; Grossman, Robert G; Doerfler, Arnd; Karmonik, Christof

    2009-01-01

    Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) based on patient-specific medical imaging data has found widespread use for visualizing and quantifying hemodynamics in cerebrovascular disease such as cerebral aneurysms or stenotic vessels. This paper focuses on optimizing mesh parameters for CFD simulation of cerebral aneurysms. Valid blood flow simulations strongly depend on the mesh quality. Meshes with a coarse spatial resolution may lead to an inaccurate flow pattern. Meshes with a large number of elements will result in unnecessarily high computation time which is undesirable should CFD be used for planning in the interventional setting. Most CFD simulations reported for these vascular pathologies have used tetrahedral meshes. We illustrate the use of polyhedral volume elements in comparison to tetrahedral meshing on two different geometries, a sidewall aneurysm of the internal carotid artery and a basilar bifurcation aneurysm. The spatial mesh resolution ranges between 5,119 and 228,118 volume elements. The evaluation of the different meshes was based on the wall shear stress previously identified as a one possible parameter for assessing aneurysm growth. Polyhedral meshes showed better accuracy, lower memory demand, shorter computational speed and faster convergence behavior (on average 369 iterations less).

  11. The influence of curvature configuration on the characteristic of alcohol gel insertion jacket of polymer optical fiber liquid level sensor

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Arumnika, N.; Kuswanto, H.

    2018-04-01

    This study aimed to determine the effect of curvature configuration to sensitivities and linearities of Polymer Optical Fiber (POF) water level sensor. POF type SH-4001-1.3 has been used in this study. The jacket of POF of 20 cm was removed. Transparent piped inserted by alcohol gel has been used to replace the jacket. This is head of a sensor. The head of a sensor is curved with variations of the specified path length, peel length, the width of curvature, the height of curvature and waveform. Configuration A (20 cm, 34 cm, 6 cm, 2 cm, 1 wave), configuration B (20 cm, 34 cm, 8 cm, 2 cm, 1 wave), configuration C (20 cm, 34 cm, 9 cm, 2 cm, ½ wave), configuration D (20 cm, 34 cm, 10 cm, 2 cm, ½ wave). The head of a sensor inserted into the water tank. The light source inserted to one end POF is a He-Ne laser light with a power of 5 mW and a wavelength of 632.8 nm. Power output at the other end received by the Optical Power Meter (OPM). The curvature configuration the head sensor of POF affects the output. Configuration A has good sensitivity, however good linearity given by configuration.

  12. Comparison and combination of several MeSH indexing approaches

    PubMed Central

    Yepes, Antonio Jose Jimeno; Mork, James G.; Demner-Fushman, Dina; Aronson, Alan R.

    2013-01-01

    MeSH indexing of MEDLINE is becoming a more difficult task for the group of highly qualified indexing staff at the US National Library of Medicine, due to the large yearly growth of MEDLINE and the increasing size of MeSH. Since 2002, this task has been assisted by the Medical Text Indexer or MTI program. We extend previous machine learning analysis by adding a more diverse set of MeSH headings targeting examples where MTI has been shown to perform poorly. Machine learning algorithms exceed MTI’s performance on MeSH headings that are used very frequently and headings for which the indexing frequency is very low. We find that when we combine the MTI suggestions and the prediction of the learning algorithms, the performance improves compared to any single method for most of the evaluated MeSH headings. PMID:24551371

  13. Comparison and combination of several MeSH indexing approaches.

    PubMed

    Yepes, Antonio Jose Jimeno; Mork, James G; Demner-Fushman, Dina; Aronson, Alan R

    2013-01-01

    MeSH indexing of MEDLINE is becoming a more difficult task for the group of highly qualified indexing staff at the US National Library of Medicine, due to the large yearly growth of MEDLINE and the increasing size of MeSH. Since 2002, this task has been assisted by the Medical Text Indexer or MTI program. We extend previous machine learning analysis by adding a more diverse set of MeSH headings targeting examples where MTI has been shown to perform poorly. Machine learning algorithms exceed MTI's performance on MeSH headings that are used very frequently and headings for which the indexing frequency is very low. We find that when we combine the MTI suggestions and the prediction of the learning algorithms, the performance improves compared to any single method for most of the evaluated MeSH headings.

  14. A Linear-Elasticity Solver for Higher-Order Space-Time Mesh Deformation

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Diosady, Laslo T.; Murman, Scott M.

    2018-01-01

    A linear-elasticity approach is presented for the generation of meshes appropriate for a higher-order space-time discontinuous finite-element method. The equations of linear-elasticity are discretized using a higher-order, spatially-continuous, finite-element method. Given an initial finite-element mesh, and a specified boundary displacement, we solve for the mesh displacements to obtain a higher-order curvilinear mesh. Alternatively, for moving-domain problems we use the linear-elasticity approach to solve for a temporally discontinuous mesh velocity on each time-slab and recover a continuous mesh deformation by integrating the velocity. The applicability of this methodology is presented for several benchmark test cases.

  15. Robust diamond meshes with unique wettability properties.

    PubMed

    Yang, Yizhou; Li, Hongdong; Cheng, Shaoheng; Zou, Guangtian; Wang, Chuanxi; Lin, Quan

    2014-03-18

    Robust diamond meshes with excellent superhydrophobic and superoleophilic properties have been fabricated. Superhydrophobicity is observed for water with varying pH from 1 to 14 with good recyclability. Reversible superhydrophobicity and hydrophilicity can be easily controlled. The diamond meshes show highly efficient water-oil separation and water pH droplet transference.

  16. Cross Layered Multi-Meshed Tree Scheme for Cognitive Networks

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2011-06-01

    Meshed Tree Routing protocol wireless ad hoc networks ,” Second IEEE International Workshop on Enabling Technologies and Standards for Wireless Mesh ...and Sensor Networks , 2004 43. Chen G.; Stojmenovic I., “Clustering and routing in mobile wireless networks ,” Technical Report TR-99-05, SITE, June...Cross-layer optimization, intra-cluster routing , packet forwarding, inter-cluster routing , mesh network communications,

  17. Retrofascial mesh repair of ventral incisional hernias.

    PubMed

    Le, Hamilton; Bender, Jeffrey S

    2005-03-01

    Recurrence rates after ventral incisional hernia repair are reported to be as high as 33% and are associated with considerable morbidity and lost time. The purpose of this study was to determine if retrofascial mesh placement reduces the incidence of recurrence as well as the severity of wound infections. A prospective database covering the period from January 1995 to June 2003 was maintained. All patients underwent a standardized technique by a single surgeon. Polypropylene mesh was placed between the fascia and the peritoneum with the fascia closed over the mesh. There were 150 patients (126 women, 24 men) with a mean age of 55 years. Their average weight was 88 kg, with an average body mass index of 32. Sixty-three (42%) of the hernias were recurrences of a previous repair. The average size of the hernia was 8 x 14 cm. There was 1 postoperative mortality. There was a 9% postoperative infection rate with 2 patients (1%) requiring mesh removal. Long-term follow-up evaluation has revealed 3 recurrences (2%) and 3 readmissions for bowel obstruction with 1 patient requiring surgical release. There were no fistulas noted. Incisional hernia repair with mesh placed in the retrofascial position decreases both the risk for recurrence and the severity of wound infection without significant problems from bowel obstruction or enteric fistula.

  18. Approaches to the automatic generation and control of finite element meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Shephard, Mark S.

    1987-01-01

    The algorithmic approaches being taken to the development of finite element mesh generators capable of automatically discretizing general domains without the need for user intervention are discussed. It is demonstrated that because of the modeling demands placed on a automatic mesh generator, all the approaches taken to date produce unstructured meshes. Consideration is also given to both a priori and a posteriori mesh control devices for automatic mesh generators as well as their integration with geometric modeling and adaptive analysis procedures.

  19. Grating droplets with a mesh

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Soto, Dan; Le Helloco, Antoine; Clanet, Cristophe; Quere, David; Varanasi, Kripa

    2016-11-01

    A drop thrown against a mesh can pass through its holes if impacting with enough inertia. As a result, although part of the droplet may remain on one side of the sieve, the rest will end up grated through the other side. This inexpensive method to break up millimetric droplets into micrometric ones may be of particular interest in a wide variety of applications: enhancing evaporation of droplets launched from the top of an evaporative cooling tower or preventing drift of pesticides sprayed above crops by increasing their initial size and atomizing them at the very last moment with a mesh. In order to understand how much liquid will be grated we propose in this presentation to start first by studying a simpler situation: a drop impacting a plate pierced with a single off centered hole. The study of the role of natural parameters such as the radius drop and speed or the hole position, size and thickness allows us to discuss then the more general situation of a plate pierced with multiple holes: the mesh.

  20. Resterilized mesh in repair of abdominal wall defects in rats.

    PubMed

    Sucullu, Ilker; Akin, Mehmet Levhi; Yitgin, Selahattin; Filiz, Ali Ilker; Kurt, Yavuz

    2008-01-01

    A variety of negative opinions about repeated usage of relatively expensive resterilized synthetic meshes have been considered. It had been stated that resterilized polypropylene meshes inhibits fibroblastic activity, decreases proliferative activity, and increases apoptosis in human fibroblast culture, in vitro. The purpose of this study is the in vivo evaluation of the resterilized mesh repairs of abdominal hernia defects in rat models of incisional hernia by comparing primer repair and original mesh repairs. The rats (n = 22) were separated into three groups. While the abdominal defect was repaired by primary suture in the control group (CG), the defects were repaired by original mesh (OG) or resterilized mesh (RG) in mesh-repaired groups. After 21 days, the rats were evaluated for tissue tensile strengths, tissue hydroxyproline levels, tissue inflammation, fibrosis, and apoptosis. Although the tensile strengths in OG and RG were significantly higher than those of CG (p < .05 and p < .05), there was no significant difference between two groups. The tissue hydroxyproline levels in OG and RG were also higher than those of CG. The difference was not significant between the two groups. The inflammation and fibrosis indexes in OG and RG were significantly higher than those of CG (p < .0001 for both), but there was no difference between groups. While the apoptosis index in OG and RG was also higher than that of CG (p < .0001 for both), there was no significant difference between OG and RG. The usage of resterilized mesh in abdominal wall repair did not reduce the tissue tensile strength, did not affect the tissue hydroxyproline levels, did not decrease the fibrosis, and did not increase the tissue inflammation and apoptosis. In conclusion, usage of resterilized meshes in abdominal wall defects was as safe as sterilized meshes.

  1. Quantification of Changes in Mulberry Silk Fabrics due to Different Laundering: Using WAXS Technique

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Parameswara, P.; Nivedita, S.; Somashekar, R.

    2011-07-01

    Loom finished mulberry silk fabrics (Taffeta) were machine laundered and hand laundered several times. X-ray diffractograms of pure and laundered fabrics were used to calculate microstructural parameters like average crystallite size (D) and lattice strain (Vegr) employing Williamson-Hall plot. Microstructural parameters were compared with measured mechanical properties like breaking load, tenacity, and elongation of warp yarns unraveled from fabrics. Surface morphology and texture of silk fabrics changed upon washing is evident from SEM images.

  2. Optimization-based mesh correction with volume and convexity constraints

    DOE PAGES

    D'Elia, Marta; Ridzal, Denis; Peterson, Kara J.; ...

    2016-02-24

    In this study, we consider the problem of finding a mesh such that 1) it is the closest, with respect to a suitable metric, to a given source mesh having the same connectivity, and 2) the volumes of its cells match a set of prescribed positive values that are not necessarily equal to the cell volumes in the source mesh. This volume correction problem arises in important simulation contexts, such as satisfying a discrete geometric conservation law and solving transport equations by incremental remapping or similar semi-Lagrangian transport schemes. In this paper we formulate volume correction as a constrained optimizationmore » problem in which the distance to the source mesh defines an optimization objective, while the prescribed cell volumes, mesh validity and/or cell convexity specify the constraints. We solve this problem numerically using a sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method whose performance scales with the mesh size. To achieve scalable performance we develop a specialized multigrid-based preconditioner for optimality systems that arise in the application of the SQP method to the volume correction problem. Numerical examples illustrate the importance of volume correction, and showcase the accuracy, robustness and scalability of our approach.« less

  3. A Simplified Mesh Deformation Method Using Commercial Structural Analysis Software

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Hsu, Su-Yuen; Chang, Chau-Lyan; Samareh, Jamshid

    2004-01-01

    Mesh deformation in response to redefined or moving aerodynamic surface geometries is a frequently encountered task in many applications. Most existing methods are either mathematically too complex or computationally too expensive for usage in practical design and optimization. We propose a simplified mesh deformation method based on linear elastic finite element analyses that can be easily implemented by using commercially available structural analysis software. Using a prescribed displacement at the mesh boundaries, a simple structural analysis is constructed based on a spatially varying Young s modulus to move the entire mesh in accordance with the surface geometry redefinitions. A variety of surface movements, such as translation, rotation, or incremental surface reshaping that often takes place in an optimization procedure, may be handled by the present method. We describe the numerical formulation and implementation using the NASTRAN software in this paper. The use of commercial software bypasses tedious reimplementation and takes advantage of the computational efficiency offered by the vendor. A two-dimensional airfoil mesh and a three-dimensional aircraft mesh were used as test cases to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Euler and Navier-Stokes calculations were performed for the deformed two-dimensional meshes.

  4. An adaptive moving mesh method for two-dimensional ideal magnetohydrodynamics

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Han, Jianqiang; Tang, Huazhong

    2007-01-01

    This paper presents an adaptive moving mesh algorithm for two-dimensional (2D) ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) that utilizes a staggered constrained transport technique to keep the magnetic field divergence-free. The algorithm consists of two independent parts: MHD evolution and mesh-redistribution. The first part is a high-resolution, divergence-free, shock-capturing scheme on a fixed quadrangular mesh, while the second part is an iterative procedure. In each iteration, mesh points are first redistributed, and then a conservative-interpolation formula is used to calculate the remapped cell-averages of the mass, momentum, and total energy on the resulting new mesh; the magnetic potential is remapped to the new mesh in a non-conservative way and is reconstructed to give a divergence-free magnetic field on the new mesh. Several numerical examples are given to demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve high numerical accuracy, track and resolve strong shock waves in ideal MHD problems, and preserve divergence-free property of the magnetic field. Numerical examples include the smooth Alfvén wave problem, 2D and 2.5D shock tube problems, two rotor problems, the stringent blast problem, and the cloud-shock interaction problem.

  5. Parallel Tetrahedral Mesh Adaptation with Dynamic Load Balancing

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Oliker, Leonid; Biswas, Rupak; Gabow, Harold N.

    1999-01-01

    The ability to dynamically adapt an unstructured grid is a powerful tool for efficiently solving computational problems with evolving physical features. In this paper, we report on our experience parallelizing an edge-based adaptation scheme, called 3D_TAG. using message passing. Results show excellent speedup when a realistic helicopter rotor mesh is randomly refined. However. performance deteriorates when the mesh is refined using a solution-based error indicator since mesh adaptation for practical problems occurs in a localized region., creating a severe load imbalance. To address this problem, we have developed PLUM, a global dynamic load balancing framework for adaptive numerical computations. Even though PLUM primarily balances processor workloads for the solution phase, it reduces the load imbalance problem within mesh adaptation by repartitioning the mesh after targeting edges for refinement but before the actual subdivision. This dramatically improves the performance of parallel 3D_TAG since refinement occurs in a more load balanced fashion. We also present optimal and heuristic algorithms that, when applied to the default mapping of a parallel repartitioner, significantly reduce the data redistribution overhead. Finally, portability is examined by comparing performance on three state-of-the-art parallel machines.

  6. LBMD : a layer-based mesh data structure tailored for generic API infrastructures.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Ebeida, Mohamed S.; Knupp, Patrick Michael

    2010-11-01

    A new mesh data structure is introduced for the purpose of mesh processing in Application Programming Interface (API) infrastructures. This data structure utilizes a reduced mesh representation to increase its ability to handle significantly larger meshes compared to full mesh representation. In spite of the reduced representation, each mesh entity (vertex, edge, face, and region) is represented using a unique handle, with no extra storage cost, which is a crucial requirement in most API libraries. The concept of mesh layers makes the data structure more flexible for mesh generation and mesh modification operations. This flexibility can have a favorable impactmore » in solver based queries of finite volume and multigrid methods. The capabilities of LBMD make it even more attractive for parallel implementations using Message Passing Interface (MPI) or Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The data structure is associated with a new classification method to relate mesh entities to their corresponding geometrical entities. The classification technique stores the related information at the node level without introducing any ambiguities. Several examples are presented to illustrate the strength of this new data structure.« less

  7. PARAMESH: A Parallel Adaptive Mesh Refinement Community Toolkit

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    MacNeice, Peter; Olson, Kevin M.; Mobarry, Clark; deFainchtein, Rosalinda; Packer, Charles

    1999-01-01

    In this paper, we describe a community toolkit which is designed to provide parallel support with adaptive mesh capability for a large and important class of computational models, those using structured, logically cartesian meshes. The package of Fortran 90 subroutines, called PARAMESH, is designed to provide an application developer with an easy route to extend an existing serial code which uses a logically cartesian structured mesh into a parallel code with adaptive mesh refinement. Alternatively, in its simplest use, and with minimal effort, it can operate as a domain decomposition tool for users who want to parallelize their serial codes, but who do not wish to use adaptivity. The package can provide them with an incremental evolutionary path for their code, converting it first to uniformly refined parallel code, and then later if they so desire, adding adaptivity.

  8. Engagement of Metal Debris into a Gear Mesh

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Handschuh, Robert F.; Krantz, Timothy L.

    2010-01-01

    A series of bench top experiments was conducted to determine the effects of metallic debris being dragged through meshing gear teeth. A test rig that is typically used to conduct contact fatigue experiments was used for these tests. Several sizes of drill material, shim stock, and pieces of gear teeth were introduced and then driven through the meshing region. The level of torque required to drive the "chip" through the gear mesh was measured. From the data gathered, chip size sufficient to jam the mechanism can be determined.

  9. Tangle-Free Finite Element Mesh Motion for Ablation Problems

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Droba, Justin

    2016-01-01

    Mesh motion is the process by which a computational domain is updated in time to reflect physical changes in the material the domain represents. Such a technique is needed in the study of the thermal response of ablative materials, which erode when strong heating is applied to the boundary. Traditionally, the thermal solver is coupled with a linear elastic or biharmonic system whose sole purpose is to update mesh node locations in response to altering boundary heating. Simple mesh motion algorithms rely on boundary surface normals. In such schemes, evolution in time will eventually cause the mesh to intersect and "tangle" with itself, causing failure. Furthermore, such schemes are greatly limited in the problems geometries on which they will be successful. This paper presents a comprehensive and sophisticated scheme that tailors the directions of motion based on context. By choosing directions for each node smartly, the inevitable tangle can be completely avoided and mesh motion on complex geometries can be modeled accurately.

  10. Robust and efficient overset grid assembly for partitioned unstructured meshes

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Roget, Beatrice; Sitaraman, Jayanarayanan

    2014-03-01

    This paper presents a method to perform efficient and automated Overset Grid Assembly (OGA) on a system of overlapping unstructured meshes in a parallel computing environment where all meshes are partitioned into multiple mesh-blocks and processed on multiple cores. The main task of the overset grid assembler is to identify, in parallel, among all points in the overlapping mesh system, at which points the flow solution should be computed (field points), interpolated (receptor points), or ignored (hole points). Point containment search or donor search, an algorithm to efficiently determine the cell that contains a given point, is the core procedure necessary for accomplishing this task. Donor search is particularly challenging for partitioned unstructured meshes because of the complex irregular boundaries that are often created during partitioning.

  11. Plated nickel wire mesh makes superior catalyst bed

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Sill, M.

    1965-01-01

    Porous nickel mesh screen catalyst bed produces gas evolution in hydrogen peroxide thrust chambers used for attitude control of space vehicles. The nickel wire mesh disks in the catalyst bed are plated in rugose form with a silver-gold coating.

  12. Challenging the Myth: Transvaginal Mesh is Not Associated with Carcinogenesis.

    PubMed

    Chughtai, Bilal; Sedrakyan, Art; Mao, Jialin; Thomas, Dominique; Eilber, Karyn S; Clemens, J Quentin; Anger, Jennifer T

    2017-10-01

    We sought to determine if there was a potential link between synthetic polypropylene mesh implantation for transvaginal pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence, and carcinogenesis using statewide administrative data. Women who underwent transvaginal surgery for pelvic organ prolapse or stress urinary incontinence with mesh between January 2008 and December 2009 in New York State were identified using ICD-9-CM procedure codes and CPT-4 codes. Patients in the mesh cohort were individually matched to 2 control cohorts based on comorbidities and procedure date. Carcinogenesis was determined before and after matching at 1, 2 and 3 years, and during the entire followup time. A total of 2,229 patients who underwent mesh based pelvic organ prolapse surgery and 10,401 who underwent sling surgery for stress urinary incontinence between January 2008 and December 2009 were included in the study. Mean followup was 6 years (range 5 to 7). Exact matching between the mesh and control cohorts resulted in 1,870 pairs for pelvic organ prolapse mesh and cholecystectomy (1:2), 1,278 pairs for pelvic organ prolapse mesh and hysterectomy (1:1), 7,986 pairs for sling and cholecystectomy (1:1) and 3,810 pairs for sling and hysterectomy (1:1). Transvaginal mesh implantation was not associated with an increased risk of a cancer diagnosis (pelvic/local cancers or any cancer) at 1 year and during the entire followup of up to 7 years. Transvaginal surgery with implantation of mesh was not associated with the development of malignancy at a mean followup of 6 years. Copyright © 2017 American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  13. Incisional hernia prevention using a cyanoacrilate-fixed retrofascial mesh.

    PubMed

    Hoyuela, Carlos; Juvany, Montserrat; Trias, Miquel; Ardid, Jordi; Martrat, Antoni

    2018-01-01

    The rate of incisional hernia in high-risk patients (obesity, cancer, etc.) is high, even in laparoscopic surgery. The aim of this study is to evaluate the safety of the use of cyanoacrylate fixed prophylactic meshes in the assistance incision in overweight or obese patients undergoing laparoscopic colorectal surgery. A prospective, non-randomized cohort study of patients undergoing elective laparoscopic resection for colorectal cancer between January 2013 and March 2016 was performed. Those with a body mass index greater than 25kg / m 2 were evaluated to implant a prophylactic meshes fixed with cyanoacrylate (Histoacryl®) as reinforcement of the assistance incision. 52 patients were analyzed (mean body mass index: 28.4±2kg / m 2 ). Prophylactic meshes was implanted in 15 patients. The time to put the mesh in place was always less than 5minutes. There was no significant difference in wound infection rate (12% vs. 10%). No mesh had to be explanted. Although the mean follow-up was shorter (14.1±4 vs. 22.3±9 months), there were no incisional hernia in the mesh group. On the other hand, in the non-mesh group, 1 acute evisceration (2.7%) and 4 incisional hernia of the assistance incision were observed (10.8%). There were no significant differences between groups regarding trocar incisional hernia (6.6 vs. 5.4%). The implantation of a reinforcement prophylactic mesh in overweight or obese patients undergoing laparoscopic colorectal surgery is safe and seems to reduce the short-term rate of incisional hernia. Fixation with cyanoacrylate is a rapid method that facilitates the procedure without additional complications. Copyright © 2017 AEC. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

  14. Effect of confining pressure due to external jacket of steel plate or shape memory alloy wire on bond behavior between concrete and steel reinforcing bars.

    PubMed

    Choi, Eunsoo; Kim, Dongkyun; Park, Kyoungsoo

    2014-12-01

    For external jackets of reinforced concrete columns, shape memory alloy (SMA) wires are easy to install, and they provide active and passive confining pressure; steel plates, on the other hand, only provide passive confining pressure, and their installation on concrete is not convenient because of the requirement of a special device. To investigate how SMA wires distinctly impact bond behavior compared with steel plates, this study conducted push-out bond tests of steel reinforcing bars embedded in concrete confined by SMA wires or steel plates. For this purpose, concrete cylinders were prepared with dimensions of 100 mm x 200 mm, and D-22 reinforcing bars were embedded at the center of the concrete cylinders. External jackets of 1.0 mm and 1.5 mm thickness steel plates were used to wrap the concrete cylinders. Additionally, NiTiNb SMA wire with a diameter of 1.0 mm was wound around the concrete cylinders. Slip of the reinforcing bars due to pushing force was measured by using a displacement transducer, while the circumferential deformation of specimens was obtained by using an extensometer. The circumferential deformation was used to calculate the circumferential strains of the specimens. This study assessed the radial confining pressure due to the external jackets on the reinforcing bars at bond strength from bond stress-slip curves and bond stress-circumferential strain curves. Then, the effects of the radial confining pressure on the bond behavior of concrete are investigated, and an equation is suggested to estimate bond strength using the radial confining pressure. Finally, this study focused on how active confining pressure due to recovery stress of the SMA wires influences bond behavior.

  15. Does expanded polytetrafluoroethylene mesh really shrink after laparoscopic ventral hernia repair?

    PubMed

    Carter, P R; LeBlanc, K A; Hausmann, M G; Whitaker, J M; Rhynes, V K; Kleinpeter, K P; Allain, B W

    2012-06-01

    The shrinkage of mesh has been cited as a possible explanation for hernia recurrence. Expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) is unique in that it can be visualized on computed tomography (CT). Some animal studies have shown a greater than 40% rate of contraction of ePTFE; however, very few human studies have been performed. A total of 815 laparoscopic incisional/ventral hernia (LIVH) repairs were performed by a single surgical group. DualMesh Plus (ePTFE) (WL Gore & Associates, Newark, DE) was placed in the majority of these patients using both transfascial sutures and tack fixation. Fifty-eight patients had postoperative CTs of the abdomen and pelvis with ePTFE and known transverse diameter of the implanted mesh. The prosthesis was measured on the CT using the AquariusNet software program (TeraRecon, San Mateo, CA), which outlines the mesh and calculates the total length. Data were collected regarding the original mesh size, known linear dimension of mesh, seroma formation, and time interval since mesh implantation in months. The mean shrinkage rate was 6.7%. The duration of implantation ranged from 6 weeks to 78 months, with a median of 15 months. Seroma was seen in 8.6% (5) of patients. No relationship was identified between the percentage of shrinkage and the original mesh size (P = 0.78), duration of time implanted (P = 0.57), or seroma formation (P = 0.074). In 27.5% (16) of patients, no shrinkage of mesh was identified. Of the patients who did experience mesh shrinkage, the range of shrinkage was 2.6-25%. Our results are markedly different from animal studies and show that ePTFE has minimal shrinkage after LIVH repair. The use of transfascial sutures in addition to tack fixation may have an implication on the mesh contraction rates.

  16. An Interpreted Language and System for the Visualization of Unstructured Meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Moran, Patrick J.; Gerald-Yamasaki, Michael (Technical Monitor)

    1998-01-01

    We present an interpreted language and system supporting the visualization of unstructured meshes and the manipulation of shapes defined in terms of mesh subsets. The language features primitives inspired by geometric modeling, mathematical morphology and algebraic topology. The adaptation of the topology ideas to an interpreted environment, along with support for programming constructs such, as user function definition, provide a flexible system for analyzing a mesh and for calculating with shapes defined in terms of the mesh. We present results demonstrating some of the capabilities of the language, based on an implementation called the Shape Calculator, for tetrahedral meshes in R^3.

  17. Stochastic Surface Mesh Reconstruction

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ozendi, M.; Akca, D.; Topan, H.

    2018-05-01

    A generic and practical methodology is presented for 3D surface mesh reconstruction from the terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) derived point clouds. It has two main steps. The first step deals with developing an anisotropic point error model, which is capable of computing the theoretical precisions of 3D coordinates of each individual point in the point cloud. The magnitude and direction of the errors are represented in the form of error ellipsoids. The following second step is focused on the stochastic surface mesh reconstruction. It exploits the previously determined error ellipsoids by computing a point-wise quality measure, which takes into account the semi-diagonal axis length of the error ellipsoid. The points only with the least errors are used in the surface triangulation. The remaining ones are automatically discarded.

  18. Unstructured and adaptive mesh generation for high Reynolds number viscous flows

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mavriplis, Dimitri J.

    1991-01-01

    A method for generating and adaptively refining a highly stretched unstructured mesh suitable for the computation of high-Reynolds-number viscous flows about arbitrary two-dimensional geometries was developed. The method is based on the Delaunay triangulation of a predetermined set of points and employs a local mapping in order to achieve the high stretching rates required in the boundary-layer and wake regions. The initial mesh-point distribution is determined in a geometry-adaptive manner which clusters points in regions of high curvature and sharp corners. Adaptive mesh refinement is achieved by adding new points in regions of large flow gradients, and locally retriangulating; thus, obviating the need for global mesh regeneration. Initial and adapted meshes about complex multi-element airfoil geometries are shown and compressible flow solutions are computed on these meshes.

  19. Grouper: a compact, streamable triangle mesh data structure.

    PubMed

    Luffel, Mark; Gurung, Topraj; Lindstrom, Peter; Rossignac, Jarek

    2014-01-01

    We present Grouper: an all-in-one compact file format, random-access data structure, and streamable representation for large triangle meshes. Similarly to the recently published SQuad representation, Grouper represents the geometry and connectivity of a mesh by grouping vertices and triangles into fixed-size records, most of which store two adjacent triangles and a shared vertex. Unlike SQuad, however, Grouper interleaves geometry with connectivity and uses a new connectivity representation to ensure that vertices and triangles can be stored in a coherent order that enables memory-efficient sequential stream processing. We present a linear-time construction algorithm that allows streaming out Grouper meshes using a small memory footprint while preserving the initial ordering of vertices. As a part of this construction, we show how the problem of assigning vertices and triangles to groups reduces to a well-known NP-hard optimization problem, and present a simple yet effective heuristic solution that performs well in practice. Our array-based Grouper representation also doubles as a triangle mesh data structure that allows direct access to vertices and triangles. Storing only about two integer references per triangle--i.e., less than the three vertex references stored with each triangle in a conventional indexed mesh format--Grouper answers both incidence and adjacency queries in amortized constant time. Our compact representation enables data-parallel processing on multicore computers, instant partitioning and fast transmission for distributed processing, as well as efficient out-of-core access. We demonstrate the versatility and performance benefits of Grouper using a suite of example meshes and processing kernels.

  20. Male infertility after mesh hernia repair: A prospective study.

    PubMed

    Hallén, Magnus; Sandblom, Gabriel; Nordin, Pär; Gunnarsson, Ulf; Kvist, Ulrik; Westerdahl, Johan

    2011-02-01

    Several animal studies have raised concern about the risk for obstructive azoospermia owing to vasal fibrosis caused by the use of alloplastic mesh prosthesis in inguinal hernia repair. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of male infertility after bilateral mesh repair. In a prospective study, a questionnaire inquiring about involuntary childlessness, investigation for infertility and number of children was sent by mail to a group of 376 men aged 18-55 years, who had undergone bilateral mesh repair, identified in the Swedish Hernia Register (SHR). Questionnaires were also sent to 2 control groups, 1 consisting of 186 men from the SHR who had undergone bilateral repair without mesh, and 1 consisting of 383 men identified in the general population. The control group from the SHR was matched 2:1 for age and years elapsed since operation. The control group from the general population was matched 1:1 for age and marital status. The overall response rate was 525 of 945 (56%). Method of approach (anterior or posterior), type of mesh, and testicular status at the time of the repair had no significant impact on the answers to the questions. Nor did subgroup analysis of the men ≤40 years old reveal any significant differences. The results of this prospective study in men do not support the hypothesis that bilateral inguinal hernia repair with alloplastic mesh prosthesis causes male infertility at a significantly greater rate than those operated without mesh. Copyright © 2011 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Quadrilateral/hexahedral finite element mesh coarsening

    DOEpatents

    Staten, Matthew L; Dewey, Mark W; Scott, Michael A; Benzley, Steven E

    2012-10-16

    A technique for coarsening a finite element mesh ("FEM") is described. This technique includes identifying a coarsening region within the FEM to be coarsened. Perimeter chords running along perimeter boundaries of the coarsening region are identified. The perimeter chords are redirected to create an adaptive chord separating the coarsening region from a remainder of the FEM. The adaptive chord runs through mesh elements residing along the perimeter boundaries of the coarsening region. The adaptive chord is then extracted to coarsen the FEM.

  2. RICH: OPEN-SOURCE HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATION ON A MOVING VORONOI MESH

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Yalinewich, Almog; Steinberg, Elad; Sari, Re’em

    2015-02-01

    We present here RICH, a state-of-the-art two-dimensional hydrodynamic code based on Godunov’s method, on an unstructured moving mesh (the acronym stands for Racah Institute Computational Hydrodynamics). This code is largely based on the code AREPO. It differs from AREPO in the interpolation and time-advancement schemeS as well as a novel parallelization scheme based on Voronoi tessellation. Using our code, we study the pros and cons of a moving mesh (in comparison to a static mesh). We also compare its accuracy to other codes. Specifically, we show that our implementation of external sources and time-advancement scheme is more accurate and robustmore » than is AREPO when the mesh is allowed to move. We performed a parameter study of the cell rounding mechanism (Lloyd iterations) and its effects. We find that in most cases a moving mesh gives better results than a static mesh, but it is not universally true. In the case where matter moves in one way and a sound wave is traveling in the other way (such that relative to the grid the wave is not moving) a static mesh gives better results than a moving mesh. We perform an analytic analysis for finite difference schemes that reveals that a Lagrangian simulation is better than a Eulerian simulation in the case of a highly supersonic flow. Moreover, we show that Voronoi-based moving mesh schemes suffer from an error, which is resolution independent, due to inconsistencies between the flux calculation and the change in the area of a cell. Our code is publicly available as open source and designed in an object-oriented, user-friendly way that facilitates incorporation of new algorithms and physical processes.« less

  3. Histologic and biomechanical evaluation of a novel macroporous polytetrafluoroethylene knit mesh compared to lightweight and heavyweight polypropylene mesh in a porcine model of ventral incisional hernia repair

    PubMed Central

    Melman, L.; Jenkins, E. D.; Hamilton, N. A.; Bender, L. C.; Brodt, M. D.; Deeken, C. R.; Greco, S. C.; Frisella, M. M.

    2013-01-01

    Purpose To evaluate the biocompatibility of heavyweight polypropylene (HWPP), lightweight polypropylene (LWPP), and monofilament knit polytetrafluoroethylene (mkPTFE) mesh by comparing biomechanics and histologic response at 1, 3, and 5 months in a porcine model of incisional hernia repair. Methods Bilateral full-thickness abdominal wall defects measuring 4 cm in length were created in 27 Yucatan minipigs. Twenty-one days after hernia creation, animals underwent bilateral preperitoneal ventral hernia repair with 8 × 10 cm pieces of mesh. Repairs were randomized to Bard®Mesh (HWPP, Bard/Davol, http://www.davol.com), ULTRAPRO® (LWPP, Ethicon, http://www.ethicon.com), and GORE®INFINIT Mesh (mkPTFE, Gore & Associates, http://www.gore.com). Nine animals were sacrificed at each timepoint (1, 3, and 5 months). At harvest, a 3 × 4 cm sample of mesh and incorporated tissue was taken from the center of the implant site and subjected to uniaxial tensile testing at a rate of 0.42 mm/s. The maximum force (N) and tensile strength (N/cm) were measured with a tensiometer, and stiffness (N/mm) was calculated from the slope of the force-versus-displacement curve. Adjacent sections of tissue were stained with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and analyzed for inflammation, fibrosis, and tissue ingrowth. Data are reported as mean ± SEM. Statistical significance (P < 0.05) was determined using a two-way ANOVA and Bonferroni post-test. Results No significant difference in maximum force was detected between meshes at any of the time points (P > 0.05 for all comparisons). However, for each mesh type, the maximum strength at 5 months was significantly lower than that at 1 month (P < 0.05). No significant difference in stiffness was detected between the mesh types or between timepoints (P > 0.05 for all comparisons). No significant differences with regard to inflammation, fibrosis, or tissue ingrowth were detected between mesh types at any time point (P > 0.09 for all comparisons). However

  4. Histologic and biomechanical evaluation of a novel macroporous polytetrafluoroethylene knit mesh compared to lightweight and heavyweight polypropylene mesh in a porcine model of ventral incisional hernia repair.

    PubMed

    Melman, L; Jenkins, E D; Hamilton, N A; Bender, L C; Brodt, M D; Deeken, C R; Greco, S C; Frisella, M M; Matthews, B D

    2011-08-01

    To evaluate the biocompatibility of heavyweight polypropylene (HWPP), lightweight polypropylene (LWPP), and monofilament knit polytetrafluoroethylene (mkPTFE) mesh by comparing biomechanics and histologic response at 1, 3, and 5 months in a porcine model of incisional hernia repair. Bilateral full-thickness abdominal wall defects measuring 4 cm in length were created in 27 Yucatan minipigs. Twenty-one days after hernia creation, animals underwent bilateral preperitoneal ventral hernia repair with 8 × 10 cm pieces of mesh. Repairs were randomized to Bard(®)Mesh (HWPP, Bard/Davol, http://www.davol.com), ULTRAPRO(®) (LWPP, Ethicon, http://www.ethicon.com), and GORE(®)INFINIT Mesh (mkPTFE, Gore & Associates, http://www.gore.com). Nine animals were sacrificed at each timepoint (1, 3, and 5 months). At harvest, a 3 × 4 cm sample of mesh and incorporated tissue was taken from the center of the implant site and subjected to uniaxial tensile testing at a rate of 0.42 mm/s. The maximum force (N) and tensile strength (N/cm) were measured with a tensiometer, and stiffness (N/mm) was calculated from the slope of the force-versus-displacement curve. Adjacent sections of tissue were stained with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and analyzed for inflammation, fibrosis, and tissue ingrowth. Data are reported as mean ± SEM. Statistical significance (P < 0.05) was determined using a two-way ANOVA and Bonferroni post-test. No significant difference in maximum force was detected between meshes at any of the time points (P > 0.05 for all comparisons). However, for each mesh type, the maximum strength at 5 months was significantly lower than that at 1 month (P < 0.05). No significant difference in stiffness was detected between the mesh types or between timepoints (P > 0.05 for all comparisons). No significant differences with regard to inflammation, fibrosis, or tissue ingrowth were detected between mesh types at any time point (P > 0.09 for all comparisons). However, over time

  5. Kinetic solvers with adaptive mesh in phase space.

    PubMed

    Arslanbekov, Robert R; Kolobov, Vladimir I; Frolova, Anna A

    2013-12-01

    An adaptive mesh in phase space (AMPS) methodology has been developed for solving multidimensional kinetic equations by the discrete velocity method. A Cartesian mesh for both configuration (r) and velocity (v) spaces is produced using a "tree of trees" (ToT) data structure. The r mesh is automatically generated around embedded boundaries, and is dynamically adapted to local solution properties. The v mesh is created on-the-fly in each r cell. Mappings between neighboring v-space trees is implemented for the advection operator in r space. We have developed algorithms for solving the full Boltzmann and linear Boltzmann equations with AMPS. Several recent innovations were used to calculate the discrete Boltzmann collision integral with dynamically adaptive v mesh: the importance sampling, multipoint projection, and variance reduction methods. We have developed an efficient algorithm for calculating the linear Boltzmann collision integral for elastic and inelastic collisions of hot light particles in a Lorentz gas. Our AMPS technique has been demonstrated for simulations of hypersonic rarefied gas flows, ion and electron kinetics in weakly ionized plasma, radiation and light-particle transport through thin films, and electron streaming in semiconductors. We have shown that AMPS allows minimizing the number of cells in phase space to reduce the computational cost and memory usage for solving challenging kinetic problems.

  6. Mesh Network Architecture for Enabling Inter-Spacecraft Communication

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Becker, Christopher; Merrill, Garrick

    2017-01-01

    To enable communication between spacecraft operating in a formation or small constellation, a mesh network architecture was developed and tested using a time division multiple access (TDMA) communication scheme. The network is designed to allow for the exchange of telemetry and other data between spacecraft to enable collaboration between small spacecraft. The system uses a peer-to-peer topology with no central router, so that it does not have a single point of failure. The mesh network is dynamically configurable to allow for addition and subtraction of new spacecraft into the communication network. Flight testing was performed using an unmanned aerial system (UAS) formation acting as a spacecraft analogue and providing a stressing environment to prove mesh network performance. The mesh network was primarily devised to provide low latency, high frequency communication but is flexible and can also be configured to provide higher bandwidth for applications desiring high data throughput. The network includes a relay functionality that extends the maximum range between spacecraft in the network by relaying data from node to node. The mesh network control is implemented completely in software making it hardware agnostic, thereby allowing it to function with a wide variety of existing radios and computing platforms..

  7. No increased risk of carcinogenesis with mesh-based hernia repairs.

    PubMed

    Chughtai, Bilal; Sedrakyan, Art; Thomas, Dominique; Mao, Jialin; Eilber, Karyn S; Clemens, J Quentin; Anger, Jennifer T

    2017-12-06

    The use of synthetic mesh has been placed under considerable scrutiny. We sought to evaluate whether there is a link between placement of synthetic polypropylene mesh for hernia repair and a subsequent cancer diagnosis. Adult men undergoing mesh-based hernia repair from January 2008-December 2009 in New York State were identified and followed through December 2014. Control cohorts of men undergoing cholecystectomy and total knee replacement were control cohorts. 1894 patients undergoing hernia repair, 912 patients in the cholecystectomy control cohort, and 1099 in the TKA control cohort with a cancer diagnosis. In the matched analyses of mesh-based hernia repair and cholecystectomy patients 6.5% vs. 7.1% developed cancer. In the matched analysis of hernia patients and TKA patients, 9.3% vs. 9.1% developed cancer. No association between mesh-based hernia surgery and increased risk of cancer was found. Mesh-based hernia repair was not associated with an increased risk of subsequent development of cancer in men. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Quality Tetrahedral Mesh Smoothing via Boundary-Optimized Delaunay Triangulation

    PubMed Central

    Gao, Zhanheng; Yu, Zeyun; Holst, Michael

    2012-01-01

    Despite its great success in improving the quality of a tetrahedral mesh, the original optimal Delaunay triangulation (ODT) is designed to move only inner vertices and thus cannot handle input meshes containing “bad” triangles on boundaries. In the current work, we present an integrated approach called boundary-optimized Delaunay triangulation (B-ODT) to smooth (improve) a tetrahedral mesh. In our method, both inner and boundary vertices are repositioned by analytically minimizing the error between a paraboloid function and its piecewise linear interpolation over the neighborhood of each vertex. In addition to the guaranteed volume-preserving property, the proposed algorithm can be readily adapted to preserve sharp features in the original mesh. A number of experiments are included to demonstrate the performance of our method. PMID:23144522

  9. The MeSH translation maintenance system: structure, interface design, and implementation.

    PubMed

    Nelson, Stuart J; Schopen, Michael; Savage, Allan G; Schulman, Jacque-Lynne; Arluk, Natalie

    2004-01-01

    The National Library of Medicine (NLM) produces annual editions of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Translations of MeSH are often done to make the vocabulary useful for non-English users. However, MeSH translators have encountered difficulties with entry vocabulary as they maintain and update their translation. Tracking MeSH changes and updating their translations in a reasonable time frame is cumbersome. NLM has developed and implemented a concept-centered vocabulary maintenance system for MeSH. This system has been extended to create an interlingual database of translations, the MeSH Translation Maintenance System (MTMS). This database allows continual updating of the translations, as well as facilitating tracking of the changes within MeSH from one year to another. The MTMS interface uses a Web-based design with multiple colors and fonts to indicate concepts needing translation or review. Concepts for which there is no exact English equivalent can be added. The system software encourages compliance with the Unicode standard in order to ensure that character sets with native alphabets and full orthography are used consistently.

  10. The P-Mesh: A Commodity-based Scalable Network Architecture for Clusters

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Nitzberg, Bill; Kuszmaul, Chris; Stockdale, Ian; Becker, Jeff; Jiang, John; Wong, Parkson; Tweten, David (Technical Monitor)

    1998-01-01

    We designed a new network architecture, the P-Mesh which combines the scalability and fault resilience of a torus with the performance of a switch. We compare the scalability, performance, and cost of the hub, switch, torus, tree, and P-Mesh architectures. The latter three are capable of scaling to thousands of nodes, however, the torus has severe performance limitations with that many processors. The tree and P-Mesh have similar latency, bandwidth, and bisection bandwidth, but the P-Mesh outperforms the switch architecture (a lower bound for tree performance) on 16-node NAB Parallel Benchmark tests by up to 23%, and costs 40% less. Further, the P-Mesh has better fault resilience characteristics. The P-Mesh architecture trades increased management overhead for lower cost, and is a good bridging technology while the price of tree uplinks is expensive.

  11. Superhydrophobic hierarchical structure carbon mesh films for oil/water separation application

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lu, Zhaoxia; Huang, Xing; Wang, Lisheng

    2017-08-01

    In this study, we showed that a superoleophobic mesh with the self-cleaning ability could be readily prepared by a facile spray-coating method on stainless steel mesh. Poly(methyl methacrylate) was employed to provide a stable strength between carbon nanotubes and steel mesh surface. The effect of opening size of these steel meshes on surface wetting has been investigated. The dynamics of liquid droplets was investigated as well. The as-prepared meshes exhibited both superhydrophobicity and superoleophilicity and could effectively separate water from the oil and water mixture. The present study contributes to the development of oil and water separation materials for marine industrial application.

  12. Parallel Performance Optimizations on Unstructured Mesh-based Simulations

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Sarje, Abhinav; Song, Sukhyun; Jacobsen, Douglas

    2015-01-01

    © The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This paper addresses two key parallelization challenges the unstructured mesh-based ocean modeling code, MPAS-Ocean, which uses a mesh based on Voronoi tessellations: (1) load imbalance across processes, and (2) unstructured data access patterns, that inhibit intra- and inter-node performance. Our work analyzes the load imbalance due to naive partitioning of the mesh, and develops methods to generate mesh partitioning with better load balance and reduced communication. Furthermore, we present methods that minimize both inter- and intranode data movement and maximize data reuse. Our techniques include predictive ordering of data elements for higher cachemore » efficiency, as well as communication reduction approaches. We present detailed performance data when running on thousands of cores using the Cray XC30 supercomputer and show that our optimization strategies can exceed the original performance by over 2×. Additionally, many of these solutions can be broadly applied to a wide variety of unstructured grid-based computations.« less

  13. Parallel performance optimizations on unstructured mesh-based simulations

    DOE PAGES

    Sarje, Abhinav; Song, Sukhyun; Jacobsen, Douglas; ...

    2015-06-01

    This paper addresses two key parallelization challenges the unstructured mesh-based ocean modeling code, MPAS-Ocean, which uses a mesh based on Voronoi tessellations: (1) load imbalance across processes, and (2) unstructured data access patterns, that inhibit intra- and inter-node performance. Our work analyzes the load imbalance due to naive partitioning of the mesh, and develops methods to generate mesh partitioning with better load balance and reduced communication. Furthermore, we present methods that minimize both inter- and intranode data movement and maximize data reuse. Our techniques include predictive ordering of data elements for higher cache efficiency, as well as communication reduction approaches.more » We present detailed performance data when running on thousands of cores using the Cray XC30 supercomputer and show that our optimization strategies can exceed the original performance by over 2×. Additionally, many of these solutions can be broadly applied to a wide variety of unstructured grid-based computations.« less

  14. Polypropylene-based composite mesh versus standard polypropylene mesh in the reconstruction of complicated large abdominal wall hernias: a prospective randomized study.

    PubMed

    Kassem, M I; El-Haddad, H M

    2016-10-01

    To compare polypropylene mesh positioned onlay supported by omentum and/or peritoneum versus inlay implantation of polypropylene-based composite mesh in patients with complicated wide-defect ventral hernias. This was a prospective randomized study carried out on 60 patients presenting with complicated large ventral hernia in the period from January 2012 to January 2016 in the department of Gastrointestinal Surgery unit and Surgical Emergency of the Main Alexandria University Hospital, Egypt. Large hernia had an abdominal wall defect that could not be closed. Patients were divided into two groups of 30 patients according to the type of mesh used to deal with the large abdominal wall defect. The study included 38 women (63.3 %) and 22 men (37.7 %); their mean age was 46.5 years (range, 25-70). Complicated incisional hernia was the commonest presentation (56.7 %).The operative and mesh fixation times were longer in the polypropylene group. Seven wound infections and two recurrences were encountered in the propylene group. Mean follow-up was 28.7 months (2-48 months). Composite mesh provided, in one session, satisfactory results in patients with complicated large ventral hernia. The procedure is safe and effective in lowering operative time with a trend of low wound complication and recurrence rates.

  15. An improved time-varying mesh stiffness model for helical gear pairs considering axial mesh force component

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Qibin; Zhao, Bo; Fu, Yang; Kong, Xianguang; Ma, Hui

    2018-06-01

    An improved time-varying mesh stiffness (TVMS) model of a helical gear pair is proposed, in which the total mesh stiffness contains not only the common transverse tooth bending stiffness, transverse tooth shear stiffness, transverse tooth radial compressive stiffness, transverse gear foundation stiffness and Hertzian contact stiffness, but also the axial tooth bending stiffness, axial tooth torsional stiffness and axial gear foundation stiffness proposed in this paper. In addition, a rapid TVMS calculation method is proposed. Considering each stiffness component, the TVMS can be calculated by the integration along the tooth width direction. Then, three cases are applied to validate the developed model. The results demonstrate that the proposed analytical method is accurate, effective and efficient for helical gear pairs and the axial mesh stiffness should be taken into consideration in the TVMS of a helical gear pair. Finally, influences of the helix angle on TVMS are studied. The results show that the improved TVMS model is effective for any helix angle and the traditional TVMS model is only effective under a small helix angle.

  16. Heterogeneous Wireless Mesh Network Technology Evaluation for Space Proximity and Surface Applications

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    DeCristofaro, Michael A.; Lansdowne, Chatwin A.; Schlesinger, Adam M.

    2014-01-01

    NASA has identified standardized wireless mesh networking as a key technology for future human and robotic space exploration. Wireless mesh networks enable rapid deployment, provide coverage in undeveloped regions. Mesh networks are also self-healing, resilient, and extensible, qualities not found in traditional infrastructure-based networks. Mesh networks can offer lower size, weight, and power (SWaP) than overlapped infrastructure-perapplication. To better understand the maturity, characteristics and capability of the technology, we developed an 802.11 mesh network consisting of a combination of heterogeneous commercial off-the-shelf devices and opensource firmware and software packages. Various streaming applications were operated over the mesh network, including voice and video, and performance measurements were made under different operating scenarios. During the testing several issues with the currently implemented mesh network technology were identified and outlined for future work.

  17. An optimization-based framework for anisotropic simplex mesh adaptation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yano, Masayuki; Darmofal, David L.

    2012-09-01

    We present a general framework for anisotropic h-adaptation of simplex meshes. Given a discretization and any element-wise, localizable error estimate, our adaptive method iterates toward a mesh that minimizes error for a given degrees of freedom. Utilizing mesh-metric duality, we consider a continuous optimization problem of the Riemannian metric tensor field that provides an anisotropic description of element sizes. First, our method performs a series of local solves to survey the behavior of the local error function. This information is then synthesized using an affine-invariant tensor manipulation framework to reconstruct an approximate gradient of the error function with respect to the metric tensor field. Finally, we perform gradient descent in the metric space to drive the mesh toward optimality. The method is first demonstrated to produce optimal anisotropic meshes minimizing the L2 projection error for a pair of canonical problems containing a singularity and a singular perturbation. The effectiveness of the framework is then demonstrated in the context of output-based adaptation for the advection-diffusion equation using a high-order discontinuous Galerkin discretization and the dual-weighted residual (DWR) error estimate. The method presented provides a unified framework for optimizing both the element size and anisotropy distribution using an a posteriori error estimate and enables efficient adaptation of anisotropic simplex meshes for high-order discretizations.

  18. Design Investigation on Applicable Mesh Structures for Medical Stent Applications

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Asano, Shoji; He, Jianmei

    2017-11-01

    In recent years, utilization of medical stents is one of effective treatments for stenosis and occlusion occurring in a living body’s lumen indispensable for maintenance of human life such as superficial femoral artery (SFA) occlusion. However, there are concerns about the occurrence of fatigue fractures caused by stress concentrations, neointimal hyperplasia and the like due to the shape structure and the manufacturing method in the conventional stents, and a stent having high strength and high flexibility is required. Therefore, in this research, applicable mesh structures for medical stents based on the design concepts of high strength, high flexibility are interested to solve various problem of conventional stent. According to the shape and dimensions of SFA occlusion therapy stent and indwelling delivery catheter, shape design of the meshed stent are performed using 3-dimensional CAD software Solid Works first. Then analytical examination on storage characteristics and compression characteristics of such mesh structure applied stent models were carried out through finite element analysis software ANSYS Workbench. Meshed stent models with higher strength and higher flexibility with integral molding are investigated analytically. It was found that the storage characteristics and compression characteristics of meshed stent modles are highly dependent on the basic mesh shapes with same surface void ratio. Trade-off relationship between flexibility and storage characteristics is found exited, it is required to provide appropriate curvatures during basic mesh shape design.

  19. Tissue response to collagen containing polypropylene meshes in an ovine vaginal repair model.

    PubMed

    Darzi, Saeedeh; Urbankova, Iva; Su, Kai; White, Jacinta; Lo, Camden; Alexander, David; Werkmeister, Jerome A; Gargett, Caroline E; Deprest, Jan

    2016-07-15

    Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP) is the herniation of pelvic organs into the vagina. Despite broad acceptance of mesh use in POP surgical repair, the complication rate is unacceptable. We hypothesized that collagen-containing polypropylene (PP) mesh types could modulate mesh-tissue integration and reduce long-term inflammation, thereby reducing mesh-associated complications. This study compared the long-term tissue response to an unmodified PP mesh and two collagen containing meshes in an ovine model which has similar pelvic anatomy and vaginal size to human. Three commercially available macroporous PP meshes, uncoated PP mesh (Avaulta Solo) (PP), the same textile PP mesh layered with a sheet of cross-linked porcine acellular matrix (Avaulta Plus) (PP-ACM) and a different yet also macroporous PP (Sofradim) mesh coated with solubilized atelocollagen (Ugytex) (PP-sCOL) were implanted in the ovine vagina and tissue explanted after 60 and 180days. The macrophage phenotype and response to implanted meshes, and vascularity were quantified by immunostaining and morphometry. We quantified changes in extracellular matrix composition biochemically and collagen organisation and percentage area around the interface of the mesh implants by Sirius Red birefringence and morphometry. PP-ACM induced a more sustained inflammatory response, indicated by similar CD45(+) leukocytes but reduced CD163(+) M2 macrophages at 60days (P<0.05). PP-sCOL increased Von Willebrand Factor (vWF)-immunoreactive vessel profiles after 60days. At the micro-molecular level, collagen birefringence quantification revealed significantly fewer mature collagen fibrils (red, thick fibrils) at the mesh-tissue interface than control tissue for all mesh types (P<0.001) but still significantly greater than the proportion of immature (green thin fibrils) at 60days (P<0.05). The proportion of mature collagen fibrils increased with time around the mesh filaments, particularly those containing collagen. The total collagen

  20. Wire-Mesh-Based Sorber for Removing Contaminants from Air

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Perry, Jay; Roychoudhury, Subir; Walsh, Dennis

    2006-01-01

    A paper discusses an experimental regenerable sorber for removing CO2 and trace components principally, volatile organic compounds, halocarbons, and NH3 from spacecraft cabin air. This regenerable sorber is a prototype of what is intended to be a lightweight alternative to activated-carbon and zeolite-pellet sorbent beds now in use. The regenerable sorber consists mainly of an assembly of commercially available meshes that have been coated with a specially-formulated washcoat containing zeolites. The zeolites act as the sorbents while the meshes support the zeolite-containing washcoat in a configuration that affords highly effective surface area for exposing the sorbents to flowing air. The meshes also define flow paths characterized by short channel lengths to prevent excessive buildup of flow boundary layers. Flow boundary layer resistance is undesired because it can impede mass and heat transfer. The total weight and volume comparison versus the atmosphere revitalization equipment used onboard the International Space Station for CO2 and trace-component removal will depend upon the design details of the final embodiment. However, the integrated mesh-based CO2 and trace-contaminant removal system is expected to provide overall weight and volume savings by eliminating most of the trace-contaminant control equipment presently used in parallel processing schemes traditionally used for spacecraft. The mesh-based sorbent media enables integrating the two processes within a compact package. For the purpose of regeneration, the sorber can be heated by passing electric currents through the metallic meshes combined with exposure to space vacuum. The minimal thermal mass of the meshes offers the potential for reduced regeneration-power requirements and cycle time required for regeneration compared to regenerable sorption processes now in use.

  1. Implementation of tetrahedral-mesh geometry in Monte Carlo radiation transport code PHITS

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Furuta, Takuya; Sato, Tatsuhiko; Han, Min Cheol; Yeom, Yeon Soo; Kim, Chan Hyeong; Brown, Justin L.; Bolch, Wesley E.

    2017-06-01

    A new function to treat tetrahedral-mesh geometry was implemented in the particle and heavy ion transport code systems. To accelerate the computational speed in the transport process, an original algorithm was introduced to initially prepare decomposition maps for the container box of the tetrahedral-mesh geometry. The computational performance was tested by conducting radiation transport simulations of 100 MeV protons and 1 MeV photons in a water phantom represented by tetrahedral mesh. The simulation was repeated with varying number of meshes and the required computational times were then compared with those of the conventional voxel representation. Our results show that the computational costs for each boundary crossing of the region mesh are essentially equivalent for both representations. This study suggests that the tetrahedral-mesh representation offers not only a flexible description of the transport geometry but also improvement of computational efficiency for the radiation transport. Due to the adaptability of tetrahedrons in both size and shape, dosimetrically equivalent objects can be represented by tetrahedrons with a much fewer number of meshes as compared its voxelized representation. Our study additionally included dosimetric calculations using a computational human phantom. A significant acceleration of the computational speed, about 4 times, was confirmed by the adoption of a tetrahedral mesh over the traditional voxel mesh geometry.

  2. Implementation of tetrahedral-mesh geometry in Monte Carlo radiation transport code PHITS.

    PubMed

    Furuta, Takuya; Sato, Tatsuhiko; Han, Min Cheol; Yeom, Yeon Soo; Kim, Chan Hyeong; Brown, Justin L; Bolch, Wesley E

    2017-06-21

    A new function to treat tetrahedral-mesh geometry was implemented in the particle and heavy ion transport code systems. To accelerate the computational speed in the transport process, an original algorithm was introduced to initially prepare decomposition maps for the container box of the tetrahedral-mesh geometry. The computational performance was tested by conducting radiation transport simulations of 100 MeV protons and 1 MeV photons in a water phantom represented by tetrahedral mesh. The simulation was repeated with varying number of meshes and the required computational times were then compared with those of the conventional voxel representation. Our results show that the computational costs for each boundary crossing of the region mesh are essentially equivalent for both representations. This study suggests that the tetrahedral-mesh representation offers not only a flexible description of the transport geometry but also improvement of computational efficiency for the radiation transport. Due to the adaptability of tetrahedrons in both size and shape, dosimetrically equivalent objects can be represented by tetrahedrons with a much fewer number of meshes as compared its voxelized representation. Our study additionally included dosimetric calculations using a computational human phantom. A significant acceleration of the computational speed, about 4 times, was confirmed by the adoption of a tetrahedral mesh over the traditional voxel mesh geometry.

  3. Biomechanical analyses of mesh fixation in TAPP and TEP hernia repair.

    PubMed

    Schwab, R; Schumacher, O; Junge, K; Binnebösel, M; Klinge, U; Becker, H P; Schumpelick, V

    2008-03-01

    Reliable laparoscopic fixation of meshes prior to their fibrous incorporation is intended to minimize recurrences following transabdominal preperitoneal hernia repair (TAPP) and totally extraperitoneal repair (TEP) repair of inguinal hernias. However, suture-, tack- and staple-based fixation systems are associated with postoperative chronic inguinal pain. Initial fixation with fibrin sealant offers an atraumatic alternative, but there is little data demonstrating directly whether fibrin-based mesh adhesion provides adequate biomechanical stability for repair of inguinal hernia by TAPP and TEP. Using a newly developed, standardized simulation model for abdominal wall hernias, sublay repairs were performed with six different types of commercially available hernia mesh. The biomechanical stability achieved, and the protection afforded by the mesh-hernia overlap, were compared for three different techniques: nonfixation, point-by-point suture fixation, and fibrin sealant fixation. Mesh dislocation from the repaired hernia defect was consistently seen with nonfixation. This was reliably prevented with all six mesh types when fixed using either sutures or fibrin sealant. The highest stress resistance across the whole abdominal wall was found following superficial fixation with fibrin sealant across the mesh types. There was a highly statistically significant improvement in fixation stability with fibrin sealant versus fixation using eight single sutures (p = 0.008), as assessed by the range of achievable peak pressure stress up to 200 mmHg. To ensure long-term freedom from recurrence, intraoperative mesh-hernia overlap must be retained. This can be achieved with fibrin sealant up to the incorporation of the mesh - without trauma and with biomechanical stability.

  4. Autoclaved Sand-Lime Products with a Polypropylene Mesh

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kostrzewa, Paulina; Stępień, Anna

    2017-10-01

    The paper presents the results of the research on modifications of silicate bricks with a polypropylene mesh and their influence on physical, mechanical and microstructural properties of such bricks. The main goal of the paper was to determine effects of the polypropylene mesh on sand-lime product parameters. The analysis has focused on compressive strength, water absorption, bulk density and structural features of the material. The obtained product is characterized by improved basic performance characteristics compared to traditional silicate products. Using the polypropylene mesh increased compressive strength by 25% while decreasing the product density. The modified products retain their form and do not disintegrate after losing their bearing capacity.

  5. Early Wound Morbidity after Open Ventral Hernia Repair with Biosynthetic or Polypropylene Mesh.

    PubMed

    Sahoo, Sambit; Haskins, Ivy N; Huang, Li-Ching; Krpata, David M; Derwin, Kathleen A; Poulose, Benjamin K; Rosen, Michael J

    2017-10-01

    Recently introduced slow-resorbing biosynthetic and non-resorbing macroporous polypropylene meshes are being used in hernias with clean-contaminated and contaminated wounds. However, information about the use of biosynthetic meshes and their outcomes compared with polypropylene meshes in clean-contaminated and contaminated cases is lacking. Here we evaluate the use of biosynthetic mesh and polypropylene mesh in elective open ventral hernia repair (OVHR) and investigate differences in early wound morbidity after OVHR within clean-contaminated and contaminated cases. All elective, OVHR with biosynthetic mesh or uncoated polypropylene mesh from January 2013 through October 2016 were identified within the Americas Hernia Society Quality Collaborative. Association of mesh type with 30-day wound events in clean-contaminated or contaminated wounds was investigated using a 1:3 propensity-matched analysis. Biosynthetic meshes were used in 8.5% (175 of 2,051) of elective OVHR, with the majority (57.1%) used in low-risk or comorbid clean cases. Propensity-matched analysis in clean-contaminated and contaminated cases showed no significant difference between biosynthetic mesh and polypropylene mesh groups for 30-day surgical site occurrences (20.7% vs 16.7%; p = 0.49) or unplanned readmission (13.8% vs 9.8%; p = 0.4). However, surgical site infections (22.4% vs 10.9%; p = 0.03), surgical site occurrences requiring procedural intervention (24.1% vs 13.2%; p = 0.049), and reoperation rates (13.8% vs 4.0%; p = 0.009) were significantly higher in the biosynthetic group. Biosynthetic mesh appears to have higher rates of 30-day wound morbidity compared with polypropylene mesh in elective OVHR with clean-contaminated or contaminated wounds. Additional post-market analysis is needed to provide evidence defining best mesh choices, location, and surgical technique for repairing contaminated ventral hernias. Copyright © 2017 American College of Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc

  6. Mesh may fit in as a termite barrier

    Treesearch

    Bradford M. Kard

    1999-01-01

    Stainless steel mesh tests are currently being conducted in an effort to investigate alternatives or supplements to termiticides for control of subterranean termites. Some people are extra sensitive to insecticides or would prefer to use non-insecticidal means to control termites, and stainless steel mesh may provide one such alternative.

  7. Evidence-based outcomes for mesh-based surgery for pelvic organ prolapse.

    PubMed

    Mettu, Jayadev R; Colaco, Marc; Badlani, Gopal H

    2014-07-01

    In light of all the recent controversy regarding the use of synthetic mesh for pelvic organ prolapse, we did a retrospective review of the evidence-based outcomes and complications for its use. A total of 18 of the most recent studies in the last 5 years were selected. Studies selected were prospective randomized or quasi-randomized controlled trials that included surgical operations for pelvic organ prolapse for this review. Additionally, Cochrane review and meta-analysis of outcomes and complication were also analyzed. In terms of outcomes, the definition of successful surgery is currently being debated. Synthetic mesh provides superior anatomical and subjective cure rates compared with native tissue repair. Success rates varied greatly depending on the nature of prolapse and surgical approach. Furthermore, recurrence rates for mesh-based surgery are significantly lower than that for native tissue repair. The main unique complication of mesh is exposure and was reported in a mean of 11.4% of patients, with 6.8% of patients requiring surgical partial excision of mesh. Mesh significantly improves anatomical outcomes with sacrocolpopexy and vaginal repair. Mesh does create the unique complication which can be reduced with training and proper patient selection. Further development of better materials is vital rather than reverting to tissue-based repair. Ultimately, the decision to use mesh should be based upon a patient's personal goals and preferences after an informed conversation with her physician.

  8. Laparoscopy-like operative vaginoscopy: a new approach to manage mesh erosions.

    PubMed

    Billone, Valentina; Amorim-Costa, Célia; Campos, Sara; Rabischong, Benoĭt; Bourdel, Nicolas; Canis, Michel; Botchorishvili, Revaz

    2015-01-01

    Mesh erosion through the vagina is the most common complication of synthetic mesh used for pelvic organ prolapse repair. However, conventional transvaginal mesh excision has many technical limitations. We aimed at creating and describing a new surgical technique for transvaginal removal of exposed mesh that would enable better exposition and access, thus facilitating optimal treatment. A step-by-step video showing the technique. A university tertiary care hospital. Five patients previously submitted to pelvic organ prolapse repair using synthetic mesh, presenting mesh erosion through the vagina. Mesh excision using a laparoscopy-like operative vaginoscopy in which standard laparoscopic instruments are used through a single-incision laparoscopic surgery port device placed in the vagina. In all cases, a very good exposure of the mesh was achieved, a minimal tissue traction was required, and the procedures were performed in a very ergonomic way. All the patients were discharged on the same day of the surgery and had a painless postoperative course. So far, there have been no cases of relapse. This seems to be a simple, cheap, and valuable minimally invasive technique with many advantages in comparison with the conventional approach. More cases and time are necessary to access its long-term efficacy. It may possibly be used for the management of other conditions. Copyright © 2015 AAGL. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. H∞ memory feedback control with input limitation minimization for offshore jacket platform stabilization

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yang, Jia Sheng

    2018-06-01

    In this paper, we investigate a H∞ memory controller with input limitation minimization (HMCIM) for offshore jacket platforms stabilization. The main objective of this study is to reduce the control consumption as well as protect the actuator when satisfying the requirement of the system performance. First, we introduce a dynamic model of offshore platform with low order main modes based on mode reduction method in numerical analysis. Then, based on H∞ control theory and matrix inequality techniques, we develop a novel H∞ memory controller with input limitation. Furthermore, a non-convex optimization model to minimize input energy consumption is proposed. Since it is difficult to solve this non-convex optimization model by optimization algorithm, we use a relaxation method with matrix operations to transform this non-convex optimization model to be a convex optimization model. Thus, it could be solved by a standard convex optimization solver in MATLAB or CPLEX. Finally, several numerical examples are given to validate the proposed models and methods.

  10. Effects of mesh-related complications in vaginal surgery on quality of life.

    PubMed

    Kowalik, Claudia R; Lakeman, Mariëlle M E; de Kraker, Alyde T; Roovers, Jan Paul W R

    2018-06-16

    Vaginal mesh surgery is subject of debate due to the impact of mesh-related complications on patient's lives. Not all of these complications are symptomatic. Restoration of the anatomy and improvement of pelvic floor function as a result may counter the experienced discomfort related to adverse events. We hypothesized that health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) is comparable in women after vaginal mesh surgery regardless of the presence or absence of a mesh-specific complication. This was a cross-sectional study of 128 women who had vaginal mesh surgery in a Dutch university hospital between 2007 and 2012. HR-QoL was measured in women with and without mesh complications using standardized QoL questionnaires Urogenital Distress Inventory-6 (UDI-6), Incontinence Impact Questionnaire (IIQ), Defecation Distress Inventory (DDI), and Pelvic Organ Prolapse/Urinary Incontinence Sexual Function Questionnaire (PISQ-12). Complications were scored according to the International Urogynecological Association (IUGA) complication classification. Comparisons between groups were performed with Student's t test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. In 29 (23%) women, a mesh-related complication occurred. The domain scores of the UDI-6, DDI, IIQ, and PISQ showed no statistically significant differences between women with and without a mesh-related complication. A post hoc analysis showed similar HR-QoL for those in whom the complication had been resolved and those with persistent symptoms of the complication. Mesh surgery imposes specific complications. When counseling patients about the potential adverse events related to vaginal mesh surgery, it is important to inform them that mesh-related complications do not negatively affect QoL related to micturition, defecation, and sexual functioning.

  11. Implicit solvers for unstructured meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Venkatakrishnan, V.; Mavriplis, Dimitri J.

    1991-01-01

    Implicit methods for unstructured mesh computations are developed and tested. The approximate system which arises from the Newton-linearization of the nonlinear evolution operator is solved by using the preconditioned generalized minimum residual technique. These different preconditioners are investigated: the incomplete LU factorization (ILU), block diagonal factorization, and the symmetric successive over-relaxation (SSOR). The preconditioners have been optimized to have good vectorization properties. The various methods are compared over a wide range of problems. Ordering of the unknowns, which affects the convergence of these sparse matrix iterative methods, is also investigated. Results are presented for inviscid and turbulent viscous calculations on single and multielement airfoil configurations using globally and adaptively generated meshes.

  12. Kinetic solvers with adaptive mesh in phase space

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Arslanbekov, Robert R.; Kolobov, Vladimir I.; Frolova, Anna A.

    2013-12-01

    An adaptive mesh in phase space (AMPS) methodology has been developed for solving multidimensional kinetic equations by the discrete velocity method. A Cartesian mesh for both configuration (r) and velocity (v) spaces is produced using a “tree of trees” (ToT) data structure. The r mesh is automatically generated around embedded boundaries, and is dynamically adapted to local solution properties. The v mesh is created on-the-fly in each r cell. Mappings between neighboring v-space trees is implemented for the advection operator in r space. We have developed algorithms for solving the full Boltzmann and linear Boltzmann equations with AMPS. Several recent innovations were used to calculate the discrete Boltzmann collision integral with dynamically adaptive v mesh: the importance sampling, multipoint projection, and variance reduction methods. We have developed an efficient algorithm for calculating the linear Boltzmann collision integral for elastic and inelastic collisions of hot light particles in a Lorentz gas. Our AMPS technique has been demonstrated for simulations of hypersonic rarefied gas flows, ion and electron kinetics in weakly ionized plasma, radiation and light-particle transport through thin films, and electron streaming in semiconductors. We have shown that AMPS allows minimizing the number of cells in phase space to reduce the computational cost and memory usage for solving challenging kinetic problems.

  13. On the application of hybrid meshes in hydraulic machinery CFD simulations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Schlipf, M.; Tismer, A.; Riedelbauch, S.

    2016-11-01

    The application of two different hybrid mesh types for the simulation of a Francis runner for automated optimization processes without user input is investigated. Those mesh types are applied to simplified test cases such as flow around NACA airfoils to identify the special mesh resolution effects with reduced complexity, like rotating cascade flows, as they occur in a turbomachine runner channel. The analysis includes the application of those different meshes on the geometries by keeping defined quality criteria and exploring the influences on the simulation results. All results are compared with reference values gained by simulations with blockstructured hexahedron meshes and the same numerical scheme. This avoids additional inaccuracies caused by further numerical and experimental measurement methods. The results show that a simulation with hybrid meshes built up by a blockstructured domain with hexahedrons around the blade in combination with a tetrahedral far field in the channel is sufficient to get results which are almost as accurate as the results gained by the reference simulation. Furthermore this method is robust enough for automated processes without user input and enables comparable meshes in size, distribution and quality for different similar geometries as occurring in optimization processes.

  14. Wireless Integrated Microelectronic Vacuum Sensor System

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Krug, Eric; Philpot, Brian; Trott, Aaron; Lawrence, Shaun

    2013-01-01

    -gauge measurements automatically and wirelessly, in near-real time - using a low-maintenance, lowpower sensor mesh network. The WIMVSS operates by using a self-configuring mesh network of wireless sensor units. Mesh networking is a type of networking where each sensor or node can capture and disseminate its own data, but also serve as a relay to receive and transmit data from other sensors. Each sensor node can synchronize with adjacent sensors, and propagate data from one sensor to the next, until the destination is reached. In this case, the destination is a Network Interface Unit (NIU). The WIMVSS sensors are mounted on the existing vacuum gauges. Information gathered by the sensors is sent to the NIU. Because of the mesh networking, if a sensor cannot directly send the data to the NIU, it can be propagated through the network of sensors. The NIU requires antenna access to the sensor units, AC power, and an Ethernet connection. The NIU bridges the sensor network to a WIMVSS server via an Ethernet connection. The server is configured with a database, a Web server, and proprietary interface software that makes it possible for the vacuum measurements from vacuum jacketed fluid lines to be saved, retrieved, and then displayed from any Web-enabled PC that has access to the Internet. Authorized users can then simply access the data from any PC with Internet connection. Commands can also be sent directly from the Web interface for control and maintenance of the sensor network. The technology enabled by the WIMVSS decreases labor required for gathering vacuum measurements, increases access to vacuum data by making it available on any computer with access to the Internet, increases the frequency with which data points can be acquired for evaluating the system, and decreases the recurring cost of the sensors by using off-the-shelf components and integrating these with heritage vacuum gauges.

  15. Grain Boundary Conformed Volumetric Mesh Generation from a Three-Dimensional Voxellated Polycrystalline Microstructure

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Myeong-Jin; Jeon, Young-Ju; Son, Ga-Eun; Sung, Sihwa; Kim, Ju-Young; Han, Heung Nam; Cho, Soo Gyeong; Jung, Sang-Hyun; Lee, Sukbin

    2018-03-01

    We present a new comprehensive scheme for generating grain boundary conformed, volumetric mesh elements from a three-dimensional voxellated polycrystalline microstructure. From the voxellated image of a polycrystalline microstructure obtained from the Monte Carlo Potts model in the context of isotropic normal grain growth simulation, its grain boundary network is approximated as a curvature-maintained conformal triangular surface mesh using a set of in-house codes. In order to improve the surface mesh quality and to adjust mesh resolution, various re-meshing techniques in a commercial software are applied to the approximated grain boundary mesh. It is found that the aspect ratio, the minimum angle and the Jacobian value of the re-meshed surface triangular mesh are successfully improved. Using such an enhanced surface mesh, conformal volumetric tetrahedral elements of the polycrystalline microstructure are created using a commercial software, again. The resultant mesh seamlessly retains the short- and long-range curvature of grain boundaries and junctions as well as the realistic morphology of the grains inside the polycrystal. It is noted that the proposed scheme is the first to successfully generate three-dimensional mesh elements for polycrystals with high enough quality to be used for the microstructure-based finite element analysis, while the realistic characteristics of grain boundaries and grains are maintained from the corresponding voxellated microstructure image.

  16. Grain Boundary Conformed Volumetric Mesh Generation from a Three-Dimensional Voxellated Polycrystalline Microstructure

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Myeong-Jin; Jeon, Young-Ju; Son, Ga-Eun; Sung, Sihwa; Kim, Ju-Young; Han, Heung Nam; Cho, Soo Gyeong; Jung, Sang-Hyun; Lee, Sukbin

    2018-07-01

    We present a new comprehensive scheme for generating grain boundary conformed, volumetric mesh elements from a three-dimensional voxellated polycrystalline microstructure. From the voxellated image of a polycrystalline microstructure obtained from the Monte Carlo Potts model in the context of isotropic normal grain growth simulation, its grain boundary network is approximated as a curvature-maintained conformal triangular surface mesh using a set of in-house codes. In order to improve the surface mesh quality and to adjust mesh resolution, various re-meshing techniques in a commercial software are applied to the approximated grain boundary mesh. It is found that the aspect ratio, the minimum angle and the Jacobian value of the re-meshed surface triangular mesh are successfully improved. Using such an enhanced surface mesh, conformal volumetric tetrahedral elements of the polycrystalline microstructure are created using a commercial software, again. The resultant mesh seamlessly retains the short- and long-range curvature of grain boundaries and junctions as well as the realistic morphology of the grains inside the polycrystal. It is noted that the proposed scheme is the first to successfully generate three-dimensional mesh elements for polycrystals with high enough quality to be used for the microstructure-based finite element analysis, while the realistic characteristics of grain boundaries and grains are maintained from the corresponding voxellated microstructure image.

  17. Revisiting the Least-squares Procedure for Gradient Reconstruction on Unstructured Meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mavriplis, Dimitri J.; Thomas, James L. (Technical Monitor)

    2003-01-01

    The accuracy of the least-squares technique for gradient reconstruction on unstructured meshes is examined. While least-squares techniques produce accurate results on arbitrary isotropic unstructured meshes, serious difficulties exist for highly stretched meshes in the presence of surface curvature. In these situations, gradients are typically under-estimated by up to an order of magnitude. For vertex-based discretizations on triangular and quadrilateral meshes, and cell-centered discretizations on quadrilateral meshes, accuracy can be recovered using an inverse distance weighting in the least-squares construction. For cell-centered discretizations on triangles, both the unweighted and weighted least-squares constructions fail to provide suitable gradient estimates for highly stretched curved meshes. Good overall flow solution accuracy can be retained in spite of poor gradient estimates, due to the presence of flow alignment in exactly the same regions where the poor gradient accuracy is observed. However, the use of entropy fixes has the potential for generating large but subtle discretization errors.

  18. Assessment of Pain and Quality of Life in Lichtenstein Hernia Repair Using a New Monofilament PTFE Mesh: Comparison of Suture vs. Fibrin-Sealant Mesh Fixation

    PubMed Central

    Fortelny, René H.; Petter-Puchner, Alexander H.; Redl, Heinz; May, Christopher; Pospischil, Wolfgang; Glaser, Karl

    2014-01-01

    Background: Inguinal hernia repair is one of the most common operations in general surgery. The Lichtenstein tension-free operation has become the gold standard in open inguinal hernia repair. Despite the low recurrence rates, pain and discomfort remain a problem for a large number of patients. The aim of this study was to compare suture fixation vs. fibrin sealing by using a new monofilament PTFE mesh, i.e., the Infinit® mesh by W. L. Gore & Associates. Methods: This study was designed as a controlled prospective single-center two-cohort study. A total of 38 patients were enrolled and operated in Lichtenstein technique either standard suture mesh fixation or fibrin-sealant mesh fixation were used as described in the TIMELI trial. Primary outcome parameters were postoperative complications with the new mesh (i.e., seroma, infection), pain, and quality of life evaluated by the VAS and the SF-36 questionnaire. Secondary outcome was recurrence assessed by ultrasound and physical examination. Follow-up time was 1 year. Results: Significantly, less postoperative pain was reported in the fibrin-sealant group compared to the suture group at 6 weeks (P = 0.035), 6 months (P = 0.023), and 1 year (P = 0.011) postoperatively. Additionally, trends toward a higher postoperative quality of life, a faster surgical procedure, and a shorter hospital stay were seen in the fibrin-sealant group. Conclusion: Fibrin-sealant mesh fixation in Lichtenstein hernioplasty effectively reduces acute and chronic postoperative pain. Monofilament, macro-porous, knitted PTFE meshes seem to be a practicable alternative to commonly used polypropylene meshes in open inguinal hernia repair. PMID:25593969

  19. Assessment of Pain and Quality of Life in Lichtenstein Hernia Repair Using a New Monofilament PTFE Mesh: Comparison of Suture vs. Fibrin-Sealant Mesh Fixation.

    PubMed

    Fortelny, René H; Petter-Puchner, Alexander H; Redl, Heinz; May, Christopher; Pospischil, Wolfgang; Glaser, Karl

    2014-01-01

    Inguinal hernia repair is one of the most common operations in general surgery. The Lichtenstein tension-free operation has become the gold standard in open inguinal hernia repair. Despite the low recurrence rates, pain and discomfort remain a problem for a large number of patients. The aim of this study was to compare suture fixation vs. fibrin sealing by using a new monofilament PTFE mesh, i.e., the Infinit(®) mesh by W. L. Gore & Associates. This study was designed as a controlled prospective single-center two-cohort study. A total of 38 patients were enrolled and operated in Lichtenstein technique either standard suture mesh fixation or fibrin-sealant mesh fixation were used as described in the TIMELI trial. Primary outcome parameters were postoperative complications with the new mesh (i.e., seroma, infection), pain, and quality of life evaluated by the VAS and the SF-36 questionnaire. Secondary outcome was recurrence assessed by ultrasound and physical examination. Follow-up time was 1 year. Significantly, less postoperative pain was reported in the fibrin-sealant group compared to the suture group at 6 weeks (P = 0.035), 6 months (P = 0.023), and 1 year (P = 0.011) postoperatively. Additionally, trends toward a higher postoperative quality of life, a faster surgical procedure, and a shorter hospital stay were seen in the fibrin-sealant group. Fibrin-sealant mesh fixation in Lichtenstein hernioplasty effectively reduces acute and chronic postoperative pain. Monofilament, macro-porous, knitted PTFE meshes seem to be a practicable alternative to commonly used polypropylene meshes in open inguinal hernia repair.

  20. A method to generate conformal finite-element meshes from 3D measurements of microstructurally small fatigue-crack propagation [A method to generate conformal finite-element meshes from 3D measurements of microstructurally small fatigue-crack propagation: 3D Meshes of Microstructurally Small Crack Growth

    DOE PAGES

    Spear, Ashley D.; Hochhalter, Jacob D.; Cerrone, Albert R.; ...

    2016-04-27

    In an effort to reproduce computationally the observed evolution of microstructurally small fatigue cracks (MSFCs), a method is presented for generating conformal, finite-element (FE), volume meshes from 3D measurements of MSFC propagation. The resulting volume meshes contain traction-free surfaces that conform to incrementally measured 3D crack shapes. Grain morphologies measured using near-field high-energy X-ray diffraction microscopy are also represented within the FE volume meshes. Proof-of-concept simulations are performed to demonstrate the utility of the mesh-generation method. The proof-of-concept simulations employ a crystal-plasticity constitutive model and are performed using the conformal FE meshes corresponding to successive crack-growth increments. Although the simulationsmore » for each crack increment are currently independent of one another, they need not be, and transfer of material-state information among successive crack-increment meshes is discussed. The mesh-generation method was developed using post-mortem measurements, yet it is general enough that it can be applied to in-situ measurements of 3D MSFC propagation.« less

  1. A method to generate conformal finite-element meshes from 3D measurements of microstructurally small fatigue-crack propagation [A method to generate conformal finite-element meshes from 3D measurements of microstructurally small fatigue-crack propagation: 3D Meshes of Microstructurally Small Crack Growth

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Spear, Ashley D.; Hochhalter, Jacob D.; Cerrone, Albert R.

    In an effort to reproduce computationally the observed evolution of microstructurally small fatigue cracks (MSFCs), a method is presented for generating conformal, finite-element (FE), volume meshes from 3D measurements of MSFC propagation. The resulting volume meshes contain traction-free surfaces that conform to incrementally measured 3D crack shapes. Grain morphologies measured using near-field high-energy X-ray diffraction microscopy are also represented within the FE volume meshes. Proof-of-concept simulations are performed to demonstrate the utility of the mesh-generation method. The proof-of-concept simulations employ a crystal-plasticity constitutive model and are performed using the conformal FE meshes corresponding to successive crack-growth increments. Although the simulationsmore » for each crack increment are currently independent of one another, they need not be, and transfer of material-state information among successive crack-increment meshes is discussed. The mesh-generation method was developed using post-mortem measurements, yet it is general enough that it can be applied to in-situ measurements of 3D MSFC propagation.« less

  2. Definitive Surgical Treatment of Infected or Exposed Ventral Hernia Mesh

    PubMed Central

    Szczerba, Steven R.; Dumanian, Gregory A.

    2003-01-01

    Objective To discuss the difficulties in dealing with infected or exposed ventral hernia mesh, and to illustrate one solution using an autogenous abdominal wall reconstruction technique. Summary Background Data The definitive treatment for any infected prosthetic material in the body is removal and substitution. When ventral hernia mesh becomes exposed or infected, its removal requires a solution to prevent a subsequent hernia or evisceration. Methods Eleven patients with ventral hernia mesh that was exposed, nonincorporated, with chronic drainage, or associated with a spontaneous enterocutaneous fistula were referred by their initial surgeons after failed local wound care for definitive management. The patients were treated with radical en bloc excision of mesh and scarred fascia followed by immediate abdominal wall reconstruction using bilateral sliding rectus abdominis myofascial advancement flaps. Results Four of the 11 patients treated for infected mesh additionally required a bowel resection. Transverse defect size ranged from 8 to 18 cm (average 13 cm). Average procedure duration was 3 hours without bowel repair and 5 hours with bowel repair. Postoperative length of stay was 5 to 7 days without bowel repair and 7 to 9 days with bowel repair. Complications included hernia recurrence in one case and stitch abscesses in two cases. Follow-up ranges from 6 to 54 months (average 24 months). Conclusions Removal of infected mesh and autogenous flap reconstruction is a safe, reliable, and one-step surgical solution to the problem of infected abdominal wall mesh. PMID:12616130

  3. 3D face analysis by using Mesh-LBP feature

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Haoyu; Yang, Fumeng; Zhang, Yuming; Wu, Congzhong

    2017-11-01

    Objective: Face Recognition is one of the widely application of image processing. Corresponding two-dimensional limitations, such as the pose and illumination changes, to a certain extent restricted its accurate rate and further development. How to overcome the pose and illumination changes and the effects of self-occlusion is the research hotspot and difficulty, also attracting more and more domestic and foreign experts and scholars to study it. 3D face recognition fusing shape and texture descriptors has become a very promising research direction. Method: Our paper presents a 3D point cloud based on mesh local binary pattern grid (Mesh-LBP), then feature extraction for 3D face recognition by fusing shape and texture descriptors. 3D Mesh-LBP not only retains the integrity of the 3D geometry, is also reduces the need for recognition process of normalization steps, because the triangle Mesh-LBP descriptor is calculated on 3D grid. On the other hand, in view of multi-modal consistency in face recognition advantage, construction of LBP can fusing shape and texture information on Triangular Mesh. In this paper, some of the operators used to extract Mesh-LBP, Such as the normal vectors of the triangle each face and vertex, the gaussian curvature, the mean curvature, laplace operator and so on. Conclusion: First, Kinect devices obtain 3D point cloud face, after the pretreatment and normalization, then transform it into triangular grid, grid local binary pattern feature extraction from face key significant parts of face. For each local face, calculate its Mesh-LBP feature with Gaussian curvature, mean curvature laplace operator and so on. Experiments on the our research database, change the method is robust and high recognition accuracy.

  4. LES on unstructured deforming meshes: Towards reciprocating IC engines

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Haworth, D. C.; Jansen, K.

    1996-01-01

    A variable explicit/implicit characteristics-based advection scheme that is second-order accurate in space and time has been developed recently for unstructured deforming meshes (O'Rourke & Sahota 1996a). To explore the suitability of this methodology for Large-Eddy Simulation (LES), three subgrid-scale turbulence models have been implemented in the CHAD CFD code (O'Rourke & Sahota 1996b): a constant-coefficient Smagorinsky model, a dynamic Smagorinsky model for flows having one or more directions of statistical homogeneity, and a Lagrangian dynamic Smagorinsky model for flows having no spatial or temporal homogeneity (Meneveau et al. 1996). Computations have been made for three canonical flows, progressing towards the intended application of in-cylinder flow in a reciprocating engine. Grid sizes were selected to be comparable to the coarsest meshes used in earlier spectral LES studies. Quantitative results are reported for decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence, and for a planar channel flow. Computations are compared to experimental measurements, to Direct-Numerical Simulation (DNS) data, and to Rapid-Distortion Theory (RDT) where appropriate. Generally satisfactory evolution of first and second moments is found on these coarse meshes; deviations are attributed to insufficient mesh resolution. Issues include mesh resolution and computational requirements for a specified level of accuracy, analytic characterization of the filtering implied by the numerical method, wall treatment, and inflow boundary conditions. To resolve these issues, finer-mesh simulations and computations of a simplified axisymmetric reciprocating piston-cylinder assembly are in progress.

  5. [The use of a prolene double mesh for orbital wall reconstruction].

    PubMed

    Junceda-Moreno, J; Suárez-Suárez, E; Dos-Santos-Bernardo, V

    2005-08-01

    Patient with a recurrent carcinoma of the nasal fossae affecting the internal orbital wall. The intraorbital content was not affected. The orbital wall was reconstructed with a prolene double mesh anchored to the periosteum. Prolene mesh as a substitute of the orbital wall. Good stability and isolation of the intraorbital structures were observed. Ocular motility was completely normal after surgery without prolene mesh displacements. The prolene double mesh is a good surgical option to replace missing bone in the reconstruction of the internal orbital wall.

  6. Coated mesh photocatalytic reactor for air treatment applications: comparative study of support materials.

    PubMed

    Passalía, Claudio; Nocetti, Emanuel; Alfano, Orlando; Brandi, Rodolfo

    2017-03-01

    An experimental comparative study of different meshes as support materials for photocatalytic applications in gas phase is presented. The photocatalytic oxidation of dichloromethane in air was addressed employing different coated meshes in a laboratory-scale, continuous reactor. Two fiberglass meshes and a stainless steel mesh were studied regarding the catalyst load, adherence, and catalytic activity. Titanium dioxide photocatalyst was immobilized on the meshes by dip-coating cycles. Results indicate the feasibility of the dichloromethane elimination in the three cases. When the number of coating cycles was doubled, the achieved conversion levels were increased twofold for stainless steel and threefold for the fiberglass meshes. One of the fiberglass meshes (FG2) showed the highest reactivity per mass of catalyst and per catalytic surface area.

  7. Are patient specific meshes required for EIT head imaging?

    PubMed

    Jehl, Markus; Aristovich, Kirill; Faulkner, Mayo; Holder, David

    2016-06-01

    Head imaging with electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is usually done with time-differential measurements, to reduce time-invariant modelling errors. Previous research suggested that more accurate head models improved image quality, but no thorough analysis has been done on the required accuracy. We propose a novel pipeline for creation of precise head meshes from magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scans, which was applied to four different heads. Voltages were simulated on all four heads for perturbations of different magnitude, haemorrhage and ischaemia, in five different positions and for three levels of instrumentation noise. Statistical analysis showed that reconstructions on the correct mesh were on average 25% better than on the other meshes. However, the stroke detection rates were not improved. We conclude that a generic head mesh is sufficient for monitoring patients for secondary strokes following head trauma.

  8. Carpet: Adaptive Mesh Refinement for the Cactus Framework

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Schnetter, Erik; Hawley, Scott; Hawke, Ian

    2016-11-01

    Carpet is an adaptive mesh refinement and multi-patch driver for the Cactus Framework (ascl:1102.013). Cactus is a software framework for solving time-dependent partial differential equations on block-structured grids, and Carpet acts as driver layer providing adaptive mesh refinement, multi-patch capability, as well as parallelization and efficient I/O.

  9. Generating unstructured nuclear reactor core meshes in parallel

    DOE PAGES

    Jain, Rajeev; Tautges, Timothy J.

    2014-10-24

    Recent advances in supercomputers and parallel solver techniques have enabled users to run large simulations problems using millions of processors. Techniques for multiphysics nuclear reactor core simulations are under active development in several countries. Most of these techniques require large unstructured meshes that can be hard to generate in a standalone desktop computers because of high memory requirements, limited processing power, and other complexities. We have previously reported on a hierarchical lattice-based approach for generating reactor core meshes. Here, we describe efforts to exploit coarse-grained parallelism during reactor assembly and reactor core mesh generation processes. We highlight several reactor coremore » examples including a very high temperature reactor, a full-core model of the Korean MONJU reactor, a ¼ pressurized water reactor core, the fast reactor Experimental Breeder Reactor-II core with a XX09 assembly, and an advanced breeder test reactor core. The times required to generate large mesh models, along with speedups obtained from running these problems in parallel, are reported. A graphical user interface to the tools described here has also been developed.« less

  10. Local mesh adaptation technique for front tracking problems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lock, N.; Jaeger, M.; Medale, M.; Occelli, R.

    1998-09-01

    A numerical model is developed for the simulation of moving interfaces in viscous incompressible flows. The model is based on the finite element method with a pseudo-concentration technique to track the front. Since a Eulerian approach is chosen, the interface is advected by the flow through a fixed mesh. Therefore, material discontinuity across the interface cannot be described accurately. To remedy this problem, the model has been supplemented with a local mesh adaptation technique. This latter consists in updating the mesh at each time step to the interface position, such that element boundaries lie along the front. It has been implemented for unstructured triangular finite element meshes. The outcome of this technique is that it allows an accurate treatment of material discontinuity across the interface and, if necessary, a modelling of interface phenomena such as surface tension by using specific boundary elements. For illustration, two examples are computed and presented in this paper: the broken dam problem and the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. Good agreement has been obtained in the comparison of the numerical results with theory or available experimental data.

  11. Mesh size effects on assessments of planktonic hydrozoan abundance and assemblage structure

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nogueira Júnior, Miodeli; Pukanski, Luis Eduardo de M.; Souza-Conceição, José M.

    2015-04-01

    The choice of appropriate mesh-size is paramount to accurately quantify planktonic assemblages, however there is no such information available for hydrozoans. Here planktonic hydrozoan abundance and assemblage structure were compared using 200 and 500 μm meshes at Babitonga estuary (S Brazil), throughout a year cycle. Species richness and Shannon-Wiener diversity were higher in the 200 μm mesh, while evenness was typically higher in the 500 μm. Assemblage structure was significantly different between meshes (PERMANOVA, P < 0.05; n = 72 pairs of samples) both regarding taxa and size composition. These discrepancies are due to significant underestimation of small hydromedusae by the coarse mesh, like Obelia spp., young Liriope tetraphylla, Podocoryna loyola and others. Yet, larger taxa like Eucheilota maculata and adult L. tetraphylla were more abundant in the coarse mesh on some occasions and others such as Blackfordia virginica and Muggiaea kochi were similarly represented in both meshes. Overall collection efficiency of the coarse mesh (CE500) was 14.4%, with monthly averages between 1.6% and 43.0%, in July (winter) and January (summer) respectively. Differences between the meshes were size-dependent; CE500 was ~ 0.3% for hydrozoans sizing < 0.5 mm, ~ 21% for those between 1 and 2 mm, ~ 56% for those between 2 and 4 mm, and nearly 100% for larger ones, reaching up to 312% for hydrozoans > 8 mm in October. These results suggest that both meshes have their drawbacks and the best choice would depend on the objectives of each study. Nevertheless species richness, total abundances and most taxa were better represented by the 200 μm mesh, suggesting that it is more appropriate to quantitatively sample planktonic hydrozoan assemblages.

  12. Combined in vivo and ex vivo analysis of mesh mechanics in a porcine hernia model.

    PubMed

    Kahan, Lindsey G; Lake, Spencer P; McAllister, Jared M; Tan, Wen Hui; Yu, Jennifer; Thompson, Dominic; Brunt, L Michael; Blatnik, Jeffrey A

    2018-02-01

    Hernia meshes exhibit variability in mechanical properties, and their mechanical match to tissue has not been comprehensively studied. We used an innovative imaging model of in vivo strain tracking and ex vivo mechanical analysis to assess effects of mesh properties on repaired abdominal walls in a porcine model. We hypothesized that meshes with dissimilar mechanical properties compared to native tissue would alter abdominal wall mechanics more than better-matched meshes. Seven mini-pigs underwent ventral hernia creation and subsequent open repair with one of two heavyweight polypropylene meshes. Following mesh implantation with attached radio-opaque beads, fluoroscopic images were taken at insufflation pressures from 5 to 30 mmHg on postoperative days 0, 7, and 28. At 28 days, animals were euthanized and ex vivo mechanical testing performed on full-thickness samples across repaired abdominal walls. Testing was conducted on 13 mini-pig controls, and on meshes separately. Stiffness and anisotropy (the ratio of stiffness in the transverse versus craniocaudal directions) were assessed. 3D reconstructions of repaired abdominal walls showed stretch patterns. As pressure increased, both meshes expanded, with no differences between groups. Over time, meshes contracted 17.65% (Mesh A) and 0.12% (Mesh B; p = 0.06). Mesh mechanics showed that Mesh A deviated from anisotropic native tissue more than Mesh B. Compared to native tissue, Mesh A was stiffer both transversely and craniocaudally. Explanted repaired abdominal walls of both treatment groups were stiffer than native tissue. Repaired tissue became less anisotropic over time, as mesh properties prevailed over native abdominal wall properties. This technique assessed 3D stretch at the mesh level in vivo in a porcine model. While the abdominal wall expanded, mesh-ingrown areas contracted, potentially indicating stresses at mesh edges. Ex vivo mechanics demonstrate that repaired tissue adopts mesh properties, suggesting

  13. Finite element mesh refinement criteria for stress analysis

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kittur, Madan G.; Huston, Ronald L.

    1990-01-01

    This paper discusses procedures for finite-element mesh selection and refinement. The objective is to improve accuracy. The procedures are based on (1) the minimization of the stiffness matrix race (optimizing node location); (2) the use of h-version refinement (rezoning, element size reduction, and increasing the number of elements); and (3) the use of p-version refinement (increasing the order of polynomial approximation of the elements). A step-by-step procedure of mesh selection, improvement, and refinement is presented. The criteria for 'goodness' of a mesh are based on strain energy, displacement, and stress values at selected critical points of a structure. An analysis of an aircraft lug problem is presented as an example.

  14. Impact of MPEG-4 3D mesh coding on watermarking algorithms for polygonal 3D meshes

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Funk, Wolfgang

    2004-06-01

    The MPEG-4 multimedia standard addresses the scene-based composition of audiovisual objects. Natural and synthetic multimedia content can be mixed and transmitted over narrow and broadband communication channels. Synthetic natural hybrid coding (SNHC) within MPEG-4 provides tools for 3D mesh coding (3DMC). We investigate the robustness of two different 3D watermarking algorithms for polygonal meshes with respect to 3DMC. The first algorithm is a blind detection scheme designed for labelling applications that require high bandwidth and low robustness. The second algorithm is a robust non-blind one-bit watermarking scheme intended for copyright protection applications. Both algorithms have been proposed by Benedens. We expect 3DMC to have an impact on the watermarked 3D meshes, as the algorithms used for our simulations work on vertex coordinates to encode the watermark. We use the 3DMC implementation provided with the MPEG-4 reference software and the Princeton Shape Benchmark model database for our simulations. The watermarked models are sent through the 3DMC encoder and decoder, and the watermark decoding process is performed. For each algorithm under consideration we examine the detection properties as a function of the quantization of the vertex coordinates.

  15. Decay of grid turbulence in superfluid helium-4: Mesh dependence

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yang, J.; Ihas, G. G.

    2018-03-01

    Temporal decay of grid turbulence is experimentally studied in superfluid 4He in a large square channel. The second sound attenuation method is used to measure the turbulent vortex line density (L) with a phase locked tracking technique to minimize frequency shift effects induced by temperature fluctuations. Two different grids (0.8 mm and 3.0 mm mesh) are pulled to generate turbulence. Different power laws for decaying behavior are predicted by a theory. According to this theory, L should decay as t‑11/10 when the length scale of energy containing eddies grows from the grid mesh size to the size of the channel. At later time, after the energy containing eddy size becomes comparable to the channel, L should follow t‑3/2. Our recent experimental data exhibit evidence for t‑11/10 during the early time and t‑2 instead of t‑3/2 for later time. Moreover, a consistent bump/plateau feature is prominent between the two decay regimes for smaller (0.8 mm) grid mesh holes but absent with a grid mesh hole of 3.0 mm. This implies that in the large channel different types of turbulence are generated, depending on mesh hole size (mesh Reynolds number) compared to channel Reynolds number.

  16. Laparoscopic-assisted tension-free vaginal mesh: an innovative approach to placing synthetic mesh: transvaginally for surgical correction of pelvic organ prolapse.

    PubMed

    Watanabe, Toyohiko; Inoue, Miyabi; Ishii, Ayano; Yamato, Toyoko; Yamamoto, Masumi; Sasaki, Katsumi; Kobayashi, Yasuyuki; Araki, Motoo; Uehara, Shinya; Saika, Takashi; Kumon, Hiromi

    2012-01-01

    Polypropylene mesh implants for the correction of pelvic organ prolapse (POP) are now available in Japan. We developed an innovative approach for correcting POP by placing polypropylene mesh transvaginally with laparoscopic assistance. From June 2007 through March 2010, sixteen consecutive patients with symptomatic stage 2 or 3 pelvic organ prolapse underwent the laparoscopic-assisted tension-free vaginal mesh procedure at Okayama University Hospital. All patients were evaluated before and at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery. Female sexual function was also evaluated with the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). The procedure was performed successfully without significant complications. Fifteen of 16 patients were considered anatomically cured (93.8%) at 12 months postoperatively. One patient with a recurrent stage 3 vaginal vault prolapse required sacral colpopexy six months postoperatively. Total FSFI scores improved significantly from 10.3 ± 1.3 at baseline to 18.0 ± 1.2 at 12 months after surgery. The laparoscopic-assisted trans-vaginal mesh is a safe, effective, and simple procedure for POP repairs. The procedure not only restores anatomic relationships but also improves sexual function.

  17. Practical implementation of tetrahedral mesh reconstruction in emission tomography

    PubMed Central

    Boutchko, R.; Sitek, A.; Gullberg, G. T.

    2014-01-01

    This paper presents a practical implementation of image reconstruction on tetrahedral meshes optimized for emission computed tomography with parallel beam geometry. Tetrahedral mesh built on a point cloud is a convenient image representation method, intrinsically three-dimensional and with a multi-level resolution property. Image intensities are defined at the mesh nodes and linearly interpolated inside each tetrahedron. For the given mesh geometry, the intensities can be computed directly from tomographic projections using iterative reconstruction algorithms with a system matrix calculated using an exact analytical formula. The mesh geometry is optimized for a specific patient using a two stage process. First, a noisy image is reconstructed on a finely-spaced uniform cloud. Then, the geometry of the representation is adaptively transformed through boundary-preserving node motion and elimination. Nodes are removed in constant intensity regions, merged along the boundaries, and moved in the direction of the mean local intensity gradient in order to provide higher node density in the boundary regions. Attenuation correction and detector geometric response are included in the system matrix. Once the mesh geometry is optimized, it is used to generate the final system matrix for ML-EM reconstruction of node intensities and for visualization of the reconstructed images. In dynamic PET or SPECT imaging, the system matrix generation procedure is performed using a quasi-static sinogram, generated by summing projection data from multiple time frames. This system matrix is then used to reconstruct the individual time frame projections. Performance of the new method is evaluated by reconstructing simulated projections of the NCAT phantom and the method is then applied to dynamic SPECT phantom and patient studies and to a dynamic microPET rat study. Tetrahedral mesh-based images are compared to the standard voxel-based reconstruction for both high and low signal-to-noise ratio

  18. Practical implementation of tetrahedral mesh reconstruction in emission tomography

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Boutchko, R.; Sitek, A.; Gullberg, G. T.

    2013-05-01

    This paper presents a practical implementation of image reconstruction on tetrahedral meshes optimized for emission computed tomography with parallel beam geometry. Tetrahedral mesh built on a point cloud is a convenient image representation method, intrinsically three-dimensional and with a multi-level resolution property. Image intensities are defined at the mesh nodes and linearly interpolated inside each tetrahedron. For the given mesh geometry, the intensities can be computed directly from tomographic projections using iterative reconstruction algorithms with a system matrix calculated using an exact analytical formula. The mesh geometry is optimized for a specific patient using a two stage process. First, a noisy image is reconstructed on a finely-spaced uniform cloud. Then, the geometry of the representation is adaptively transformed through boundary-preserving node motion and elimination. Nodes are removed in constant intensity regions, merged along the boundaries, and moved in the direction of the mean local intensity gradient in order to provide higher node density in the boundary regions. Attenuation correction and detector geometric response are included in the system matrix. Once the mesh geometry is optimized, it is used to generate the final system matrix for ML-EM reconstruction of node intensities and for visualization of the reconstructed images. In dynamic PET or SPECT imaging, the system matrix generation procedure is performed using a quasi-static sinogram, generated by summing projection data from multiple time frames. This system matrix is then used to reconstruct the individual time frame projections. Performance of the new method is evaluated by reconstructing simulated projections of the NCAT phantom and the method is then applied to dynamic SPECT phantom and patient studies and to a dynamic microPET rat study. Tetrahedral mesh-based images are compared to the standard voxel-based reconstruction for both high and low signal-to-noise ratio

  19. Mesh materials and hernia repair

    PubMed Central

    Elango, Santhini; Perumalsamy, Sakthivel; Ramachandran, Krishnakumar; Vadodaria, Ketankumar

    2017-01-01

    Hernia incidence has been observed since ancient time. Advancement in the medical textile industry came up with the variety of mesh materials to repair hernia, but none of them are without complications including recurrence of hernia. Therefore individuals once developed with the hernia could not lead a healthy and comfortable life. This drawn attention of surgeons, patients, researchers and industry to know the exact mechanism behind its development, complications and recurrence. Recent investigations highlighted the role of genetic factors and connective tissue disorders being the reason for the development of hernia apart from the abnormal pressure that is known to develop during other disease conditions. This review discusses different mesh materials, their advantages and disadvantages and their biological response after its implantation. PMID:28840830

  20. Implicit solvers for unstructured meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Venkatakrishnan, V.; Mavriplis, Dimitri J.

    1991-01-01

    Implicit methods were developed and tested for unstructured mesh computations. The approximate system which arises from the Newton linearization of the nonlinear evolution operator is solved by using the preconditioned GMRES (Generalized Minimum Residual) technique. Three different preconditioners were studied, namely, the incomplete LU factorization (ILU), block diagonal factorization, and the symmetric successive over relaxation (SSOR). The preconditioners were optimized to have good vectorization properties. SSOR and ILU were also studied as iterative schemes. The various methods are compared over a wide range of problems. Ordering of the unknowns, which affects the convergence of these sparse matrix iterative methods, is also studied. Results are presented for inviscid and turbulent viscous calculations on single and multielement airfoil configurations using globally and adaptively generated meshes.

  1. The moving mesh code SHADOWFAX

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Vandenbroucke, B.; De Rijcke, S.

    2016-07-01

    We introduce the moving mesh code SHADOWFAX, which can be used to evolve a mixture of gas, subject to the laws of hydrodynamics and gravity, and any collisionless fluid only subject to gravity, such as cold dark matter or stars. The code is written in C++ and its source code is made available to the scientific community under the GNU Affero General Public Licence. We outline the algorithm and the design of our implementation, and demonstrate its validity through the results of a set of basic test problems, which are also part of the public version. We also compare SHADOWFAX with a number of other publicly available codes using different hydrodynamical integration schemes, illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of the moving mesh technique.

  2. Predicted and measured transmission and diffraction by a metallic mesh coating

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Halman, Jennifer I.; Ramsey, Keith A.; Thomas, Michael; Griffin, Andrew

    2009-05-01

    Metallic mesh coatings are used on visible and infrared windows and domes to provide shielding from electromagnetic interference (EMI) and as heaters to de-fog or de-ice windows or domes. The periodic metallic mesh structures that provide the EMI shielding and/or resistive electrical paths for the heating elements create a diffraction pattern when optical or infrared beams are incident on the coated windows. Over the years several different mesh geometries have been used to try to reduce the effects of diffraction. We have fabricated several different mesh patterns on small coupons of BK-7 and measured the transmitted power and the diffraction patterns of each one using a CW 1064 nm laser. In this paper we will present some predictions and measurements of the diffraction patterns of several different mesh patterns.

  3. An accuracy assessment of Cartesian-mesh approaches for the Euler equations

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Coirier, William J.; Powell, Kenneth G.

    1995-01-01

    A critical assessment of the accuracy of Cartesian-mesh approaches for steady, transonic solutions of the Euler equations of gas dynamics is made. An exact solution of the Euler equations (Ringleb's flow) is used not only to infer the order of the truncation error of the Cartesian-mesh approaches, but also to compare the magnitude of the discrete error directly to that obtained with a structured mesh approach. Uniformly and adaptively refined solutions using a Cartesian-mesh approach are obtained and compared to each other and to uniformly refined structured mesh results. The effect of cell merging is investigated as well as the use of two different K-exact reconstruction procedures. The solution methodology of the schemes is explained and tabulated results are presented to compare the solution accuracies.

  4. Free Mesh Method: fundamental conception, algorithms and accuracy study

    PubMed Central

    YAGAWA, Genki

    2011-01-01

    The finite element method (FEM) has been commonly employed in a variety of fields as a computer simulation method to solve such problems as solid, fluid, electro-magnetic phenomena and so on. However, creation of a quality mesh for the problem domain is a prerequisite when using FEM, which becomes a major part of the cost of a simulation. It is natural that the concept of meshless method has evolved. The free mesh method (FMM) is among the typical meshless methods intended for particle-like finite element analysis of problems that are difficult to handle using global mesh generation, especially on parallel processors. FMM is an efficient node-based finite element method that employs a local mesh generation technique and a node-by-node algorithm for the finite element calculations. In this paper, FMM and its variation are reviewed focusing on their fundamental conception, algorithms and accuracy. PMID:21558752

  5. Highly flexible transparent electrodes based on mesh-patterned rigid indium tin oxide.

    PubMed

    Sakamoto, Kosuke; Kuwae, Hiroyuki; Kobayashi, Naofumi; Nobori, Atsuki; Shoji, Shuichi; Mizuno, Jun

    2018-02-12

    We developed highly bendable transparent indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes with a mesh pattern for use in flexible electronic devices. The mesh patterns lowered tensile stress and hindered propagation of cracks. Simulations using the finite element method confirmed that the mesh patterns decreased tensile stress by over 10% because of the escaped strain to the flexible film when the electrodes were bent. The proposed patterned ITO electrodes were simply fabricated by photolithography and wet etching. The resistance increase ratio of a mesh-patterned ITO electrode after bending 1000 times was at least two orders of magnitude lower than that of a planar ITO electrode. In addition, crack propagation was stopped by the mesh pattern of the patterned ITO electrode. A mesh-patterned ITO electrode was used in a liquid-based organic light-emitting diode (OLED). The OLED displayed the same current density-voltage-luminance (J-V-L) curves before and after bending 100 times. These results indicate that the developed mesh-patterned ITO electrodes are attractive for use in flexible electronic devices.

  6. Assigning categorical information to Japanese medical terms using MeSH and MEDLINE.

    PubMed

    Onogi, Yuzo

    2007-01-01

    This paper reports on the assigning of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) categories to Japanese terms in an English-Japanese dictionary using the titles and abstracts of articles indexed in MEDLINE. In a previous study, 30,000 of 80,000 terms in the dictionary were mapped to MeSH terms by normalized comparison. It was reasoned that if the remaining dictionary terms appeared in MEDLINE-indexed articles that are indexed using MeSH terms, then relevancies between the dictionary terms and MeSH terms could be calculated, and thus MeSH categories assigned. This study compares two approaches for calculating the weight matrix. One is the TF*IDF method and the other uses the inner product of two weight matrices. About 20,000 additional dictionary terms were identified in MEDLINE-indexed articles published between 2000 and 2004. The precision and recall of these algorithms were evaluated separately for MeSH terms and non-MeSH terms. Unfortunately, the precision and recall of the algorithms was not good, but this method will help with manual assignment of MeSH categories to dictionary terms.

  7. Surface orientation effects on bending properties of surgical mesh are independent of tensile properties.

    PubMed

    Simon, David D; Andrews, Sharon M; Robinson-Zeigler, Rebecca; Valdes, Thelma; Woods, Terry O

    2018-02-01

    Current mechanical testing of surgical mesh focuses primarily on tensile properties even though implanted devices are not subjected to pure tensile loads. Our objective was to determine the flexural (bending) properties of surgical mesh and determine if they correlate with mesh tensile properties. The flexural rigidity values of 11 different surgical mesh designs were determined along three textile directions (machine, cross-machine, and 45° to machine; n = 5 for each) using ASTM D1388-14 while tracking surface orientation. Tensile testing was also performed on the same specimens using ASTM D882-12. Linear regressions were performed to compare mesh flexural rigidity to mesh thickness, areal mass density, filament diameter, ultimate tensile strength, and maximum extension. Of 33 mesh specimen groups, 30 had significant differences in flexural rigidity values when comparing surface orientations (top and bottom). Flexural rigidity and mesh tensile properties also varied with textile direction (machine and cross-machine). There was no strong correlation between the flexural and tensile properties, with mesh thickness having the best overall correlation with flexural rigidity. Currently, surface orientation is not indicated on marketed surgical mesh, and a single mesh may behave differently depending on the direction of loading. The lack of correlation between flexural stiffness and tensile properties indicates the need to examine mesh bending stiffness to provide a more comprehensive understanding of surgical mesh mechanical behaviors. Further investigation is needed to determine if these flexural properties result in the surgical mesh behaving mechanically different depending on implantation direction. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 106B: 854-862, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  8. Impact of Variable-Resolution Meshes on Regional Climate Simulations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fowler, L. D.; Skamarock, W. C.; Bruyere, C. L.

    2014-12-01

    The Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) is currently being used for seasonal-scale simulations on globally-uniform and regionally-refined meshes. Our ongoing research aims at analyzing simulations of tropical convective activity and tropical cyclone development during one hurricane season over the North Atlantic Ocean, contrasting statistics obtained with a variable-resolution mesh against those obtained with a quasi-uniform mesh. Analyses focus on the spatial distribution, frequency, and intensity of convective and grid-scale precipitations, and their relative contributions to the total precipitation as a function of the horizontal scale. Multi-month simulations initialized on May 1st 2005 using ERA-Interim re-analyses indicate that MPAS performs satisfactorily as a regional climate model for different combinations of horizontal resolutions and transitions between the coarse and refined meshes. Results highlight seamless transitions for convection, cloud microphysics, radiation, and land-surface processes between the quasi-uniform and locally- refined meshes, despite the fact that the physics parameterizations were not developed for variable resolution meshes. Our goal of analyzing the performance of MPAS is twofold. First, we want to establish that MPAS can be successfully used as a regional climate model, bypassing the need for nesting and nudging techniques at the edges of the computational domain as done in traditional regional climate modeling. Second, we want to assess the performance of our convective and cloud microphysics parameterizations as the horizontal resolution varies between the lower-resolution quasi-uniform and higher-resolution locally-refined areas of the global domain.

  9. Impact of Variable-Resolution Meshes on Regional Climate Simulations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fowler, L. D.; Skamarock, W. C.; Bruyere, C. L.

    2013-12-01

    The Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) is currently being used for seasonal-scale simulations on globally-uniform and regionally-refined meshes. Our ongoing research aims at analyzing simulations of tropical convective activity and tropical cyclone development during one hurricane season over the North Atlantic Ocean, contrasting statistics obtained with a variable-resolution mesh against those obtained with a quasi-uniform mesh. Analyses focus on the spatial distribution, frequency, and intensity of convective and grid-scale precipitations, and their relative contributions to the total precipitation as a function of the horizontal scale. Multi-month simulations initialized on May 1st 2005 using NCEP/NCAR re-analyses indicate that MPAS performs satisfactorily as a regional climate model for different combinations of horizontal resolutions and transitions between the coarse and refined meshes. Results highlight seamless transitions for convection, cloud microphysics, radiation, and land-surface processes between the quasi-uniform and locally-refined meshes, despite the fact that the physics parameterizations were not developed for variable resolution meshes. Our goal of analyzing the performance of MPAS is twofold. First, we want to establish that MPAS can be successfully used as a regional climate model, bypassing the need for nesting and nudging techniques at the edges of the computational domain as done in traditional regional climate modeling. Second, we want to assess the performance of our convective and cloud microphysics parameterizations as the horizontal resolution varies between the lower-resolution quasi-uniform and higher-resolution locally-refined areas of the global domain.

  10. Polypropylene Surgical Mesh Coated with Extracellular Matrix Mitigates the Host Foreign Body Response

    PubMed Central

    Wolf, Matthew T.; Carruthers, Christopher A.; Dearth, Christopher L.; Crapo, Peter M.; Huber, Alexander; Burnsed, Olivia A.; Londono, Ricardo; Johnson, Scott A.; Daly, Kerry A.; Stahl, Elizabeth C.; Freund, John M.; Medberry, Christopher J.; Carey, Lisa E.; Nieponice, Alejandro; Amoroso, Nicholas J.; Badylak, Stephen F.

    2013-01-01

    Surgical mesh devices composed of synthetic materials are commonly used for ventral hernia repair. These materials provide robust mechanical strength and are quickly incorporated into host tissue; factors which contribute to reduced hernia recurrence rates. However, such mesh devices cause a foreign body response with the associated complications of fibrosis and patient discomfort. In contrast, surgical mesh devices composed of naturally occurring extracellular matrix (ECM) are associated with constructive tissue remodeling, but lack the mechanical strength of synthetic materials. A method for applying a porcine dermal ECM hydrogel coating to a polypropylene mesh is described herein with the associated effects upon the host tissue response and biaxial mechanical behavior. Uncoated and ECM coated heavy-weight BARD™ Mesh were compared to the light-weight ULTRAPRO™ and BARD™ Soft Mesh devices in a rat partial thickness abdominal defect overlay model. The ECM coated mesh attenuated the pro-inflammatory response compared to all other devices, with a reduced cell accumulation and fewer foreign body giant cells. The ECM coating degraded by 35 days, and was replaced with loose connective tissue compared to the dense collagenous tissue associated with the uncoated polypropylene mesh device. Biaxial mechanical characterization showed that all of the mesh devices were of similar isotropic stiffness. Upon explantation, the light-weight mesh devices were more compliant than the coated or uncoated heavy-weight devices. The present study shows that an ECM coating alters the default host response to a polypropylene mesh, but not the mechanical properties in an acute in vivo abdominal repair model. PMID:23873846

  11. 3D level set methods for evolving fronts on tetrahedral meshes with adaptive mesh refinement

    DOE PAGES

    Morgan, Nathaniel Ray; Waltz, Jacob I.

    2017-03-02

    The level set method is commonly used to model dynamically evolving fronts and interfaces. In this work, we present new methods for evolving fronts with a specified velocity field or in the surface normal direction on 3D unstructured tetrahedral meshes with adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). The level set field is located at the nodes of the tetrahedral cells and is evolved using new upwind discretizations of Hamilton–Jacobi equations combined with a Runge–Kutta method for temporal integration. The level set field is periodically reinitialized to a signed distance function using an iterative approach with a new upwind gradient. We discuss themore » details of these level set and reinitialization methods. Results from a range of numerical test problems are presented.« less

  12. MESH2D Grid generator design and use

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Flach, G. P.

    Mesh2d is a Fortran90 program originally designed to generate two-dimensional structured grids of the form [x(i),y(i,j)] where [x,y] are grid coordinates identified by indices (i,j). x-coordinates depending only on index i implies strictly vertical x-grid lines, whereas the y-grid lines can undulate. Mesh2d also assigns an integer material type to each grid cell, mtyp(i,j), in a user-specified manner. The complete grid is specified through three separate input files defining the x(i), y(i,j), and mtyp(i,j) variations. Since the original development effort, Mesh2d has been extended to more general two-dimensional structured grids of the form [x(i,j),(i,j)].

  13. Multi-mesh gear dynamics program evaluation and enhancements

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Boyd, L. S.; Pike, J.

    1985-01-01

    A multiple mesh gear dynamics computer program was continually developed and modified during the last four years. The program can handle epicyclic gear systems as well as single mesh systems with internal, buttress, or helical tooth forms. The following modifications were added under the current funding: variable contact friction, planet cage and ring gear rim flexibility options, user friendly options, dynamic side bands, a speed survey option and the combining of the single and multiple mesh options into one general program. The modified program was evaluated by comparing calculated values to published test data and to test data taken on a Hamilton Standard turboprop reduction gear-box. In general, the correlation between the test data and the analytical data is good.

  14. An Agent Based Collaborative Simplification of 3D Mesh Model

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Li-Rong; Yu, Bo; Hagiwara, Ichiro

    Large-volume mesh model faces the challenge in fast rendering and transmission by Internet. The current mesh models obtained by using three-dimensional (3D) scanning technology are usually very large in data volume. This paper develops a mobile agent based collaborative environment on the development platform of mobile-C. Communication among distributed agents includes grasping image of visualized mesh model, annotation to grasped image and instant message. Remote and collaborative simplification can be efficiently conducted by Internet.

  15. Determination of the optimal mesh parameters for Iguassu centrifuge flow and separation calculations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Romanihin, S. M.; Tronin, I. V.

    2016-09-01

    We present the method and the results of the determination for optimal computational mesh parameters for axisymmetric modeling of flow and separation in the Iguasu gas centrifuge. The aim of this work was to determine the mesh parameters which provide relatively low computational cost whithout loss of accuracy. We use direct search optimization algorithm to calculate optimal mesh parameters. Obtained parameters were tested by the calculation of the optimal working regime of the Iguasu GC. Separative power calculated using the optimal mesh parameters differs less than 0.5% from the result obtained on the detailed mesh. Presented method can be used to determine optimal mesh parameters of the Iguasu GC with different rotor speeds.

  16. Adjoint-Based Mesh Adaptation for the Sonic Boom Signature Loudness

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Rallabhandi, Sriram K.; Park, Michael A.

    2017-01-01

    The mesh adaptation functionality of FUN3D is utilized to obtain a mesh optimized to calculate sonic boom ground signature loudness. During this process, the coupling between the discrete-adjoints of the computational fluid dynamics tool FUN3D and the atmospheric propagation tool sBOOM is exploited to form the error estimate. This new mesh adaptation methodology will allow generation of suitable meshes adapted to reduce the estimated errors in the ground loudness, which is an optimization metric employed in supersonic aircraft design. This new output-based adaptation could allow new insights into meshing for sonic boom analysis and design, and complements existing output-based adaptation techniques such as adaptation to reduce estimated errors in off-body pressure functional. This effort could also have implications for other coupled multidisciplinary adjoint capabilities (e.g., aeroelasticity) as well as inclusion of propagation specific parameters such as prevailing winds or non-standard atmospheric conditions. Results are discussed in the context of existing methods and appropriate conclusions are drawn as to the efficacy and efficiency of the developed capability.

  17. Preparation and biocompatibility evaluation of polypropylene mesh coated with electrospinning membrane for pelvic defects repair.

    PubMed

    Lu, Yao; Fu, Shaoju; Zhou, Shuanglin; Chen, Ge; Zhu, Chaoting; Li, Nannan; Ma, Ying

    2018-05-01

    Composite mesh with different materials composition could compensate for the drawbacks brought by single component mesh. Coating a membrane layer on the surface of macroporous mesh is a common method for preparing composite medical mesh. Electrospinning and dipping methods were introduced to form the two kinds of membrane-coated PP meshes (electro-mesh and dip-mesh); several properties were measured based on subcutaneous implantation model in rat. The results revealed that continuous tissue ingrowth could be observed for electro-mesh only with evidences of strength increase (electro-mesh: 0 week - 13.1 ± 0.88 N, 2 week - 16.87 ± 1.39 N, 4 week - 22.04 ± 2.05 N) and thickness increase (electro-mesh: 0 week - 0.437 ± 0.023 mm, 2 week - 0.488 ± 0.025 mm, 4 week - 0.576 ± 0.028 mm). However, no tissues were observed for dip-mesh in the first 2 weeks, both on macroscopic level and microscopic level, proved by strength data (dip-mesh: 0 week - 13.36 ± 1.06 N, 2 week - 13.4 ± 1.33 N, 4 week - 18.61 ± 1.89 N) and thickness data (dip-mesh: 0 week - 0.439 ± 0.018 mm, 2 week - 0.439 ± 0.019 mm, 4 week - 0.502 ± 0.032 mm). Electro-mesh had larger surface area decrease (10.74 ± 1.22%) than that of dip-mesh (2.78 ± 0.52%). The adhesion level of electro-mesh (medium adhesion) was also higher than that of dip-mesh (mild adhesion). Even if showing differences in several properties, both meshes were similar under histological observation, with the ability to support fresh tissues ingrowth. Considering operation environment, electro-mesh seems more suitable than dip-mesh with a rapid tissue growing, medium adhesion rate for repairing pelvic floor defects. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Application of Advanced Concepts and Techniques in Electromagnetic Topology Based Simulations: CRIPTE and Related Codes

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2008-12-01

    multiconductor transmission line theory. The per-unit capacitance, inductance , and characteristic impedance matrices generated from the companion LAPLACE...code based on the Method of Moments application, by meshing different sections of the multiconductor cable for capacitance and inductance matrices [21...conductors held together in four pairs and resided in the cable jacket. Each of eight conductors was also designed with the per unit length resistance

  19. Geometrical and topological issues in octree based automatic meshing

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Saxena, Mukul; Perucchio, Renato

    1987-01-01

    Finite element meshes derived automatically from solid models through recursive spatial subdivision schemes (octrees) can be made to inherit the hierarchical structure and the spatial addressability intrinsic to the underlying grid. These two properties, together with the geometric regularity that can also be built into the mesh, make octree based meshes ideally suited for efficient analysis and self-adaptive remeshing and reanalysis. The element decomposition of the octal cells that intersect the boundary of the domain is discussed. The problem, central to octree based meshing, is solved by combining template mapping and element extraction into a procedure that utilizes both constructive solid geometry and boundary representation techniques. Boundary cells that are not intersected by the edge of the domain boundary are easily mapped to predefined element topology. Cells containing edges (and vertices) are first transformed into a planar polyhedron and then triangulated via element extractor. The modeling environments required for the derivation of planar polyhedra and for element extraction are analyzed.

  20. Meshing of a Spiral Bevel Gearset with 3D Finite Element Analysis

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Bibel, George D.; Handschuh, Robert

    1996-01-01

    Recent advances in spiral bevel gear geometry and finite element technology make it practical to conduct a structural analysis and analytically roll the gearset through mesh. With the advent of user specific programming linked to 3D solid modelers and mesh generators, model generation has become greatly automated. Contact algorithms available in general purpose finite element codes eliminate the need for the use and alignment of gap elements. Once the gearset is placed in mesh, user subroutines attached to the FE code easily roll the gearset through mesh. The method is described in detail. Preliminary results for a gearset segment showing the progression of the contact lineload is given as the gears roll through mesh.

  1. The numerical simulation study of hemodynamics of the new dense-mesh stent

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ma, Jiali; Yuan, Zhishan; Yu, Xuebao; Feng, Zhaowei; Miao, Weidong; Xu, Xueli; Li, Juntao

    2017-09-01

    The treatment of aortic aneurysm in new dense mesh stent is based on the principle of hemodynamic changes. But the mechanism is not yet very clear. This paper analyzed and calculated the hemodynamic situation before and after the new dense mesh stent implanting by the method of numerical simulation. The results show the dense mesh stent changed and impacted the blood flow in the aortic aneurysm. The changes include significant decrement of blood velocity, pressure and shear forces, while ensuring blood can supply branches, which means the new dense mesh stent's hemodynamic mechanism in the treatment of aortic aneurysm is clearer. It has very important significance in developing new dense mesh stent in order to cure aortic aneurysm.

  2. Deploy production sliding mesh capability with linear solver benchmarking.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Domino, Stefan P.; Thomas, Stephen; Barone, Matthew F.

    Wind applications require the ability to simulate rotating blades. To support this use-case, a novel design-order sliding mesh algorithm has been developed and deployed. The hybrid method combines the control volume finite element methodology (CVFEM) with concepts found within a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method (FEM) to manage a sliding mesh. The method has been demonstrated to be design-order for the tested polynomial basis (P=1 and P=2) and has been deployed to provide production simulation capability for a Vestas V27 (225 kW) wind turbine. Other stationary and canonical rotating ow simulations are also presented. As the majority of wind-energymore » applications are driving extensive usage of hybrid meshes, a foundational study that outlines near-wall numerical behavior for a variety of element topologies is presented. Results indicate that the proposed nonlinear stabilization operator (NSO) is an effective stabilization methodology to control Gibbs phenomena at large cell Peclet numbers. The study also provides practical mesh resolution guidelines for future analysis efforts. Application-driven performance and algorithmic improvements have been carried out to increase robustness of the scheme on hybrid production wind energy meshes. Specifically, the Kokkos-based Nalu Kernel construct outlined in the FY17/Q4 ExaWind milestone has been transitioned to the hybrid mesh regime. This code base is exercised within a full V27 production run. Simulation timings for parallel search and custom ghosting are presented. As the low-Mach application space requires implicit matrix solves, the cost of matrix reinitialization has been evaluated on a variety of production meshes. Results indicate that at low element counts, i.e., fewer than 100 million elements, matrix graph initialization and preconditioner setup times are small. However, as mesh sizes increase, e.g., 500 million elements, simulation time associated with \\setup-up" costs can increase to

  3. Research Trend Visualization by MeSH Terms from PubMed.

    PubMed

    Yang, Heyoung; Lee, Hyuck Jai

    2018-05-30

    Motivation : PubMed is a primary source of biomedical information comprising search tool function and the biomedical literature from MEDLINE which is the US National Library of Medicine premier bibliographic database, life science journals and online books. Complimentary tools to PubMed have been developed to help the users search for literature and acquire knowledge. However, these tools are insufficient to overcome the difficulties of the users due to the proliferation of biomedical literature. A new method is needed for searching the knowledge in biomedical field. Methods : A new method is proposed in this study for visualizing the recent research trends based on the retrieved documents corresponding to a search query given by the user. The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are used as the primary analytical element. MeSH terms are extracted from the literature and the correlations between them are calculated. A MeSH network, called MeSH Net, is generated as the final result based on the Pathfinder Network algorithm. Results : A case study for the verification of proposed method was carried out on a research area defined by the search query (immunotherapy and cancer and "tumor microenvironment"). The MeSH Net generated by the method is in good agreement with the actual research activities in the research area (immunotherapy). Conclusion : A prototype application generating MeSH Net was developed. The application, which could be used as a "guide map for travelers", allows the users to quickly and easily acquire the knowledge of research trends. Combination of PubMed and MeSH Net is expected to be an effective complementary system for the researchers in biomedical field experiencing difficulties with search and information analysis.

  4. Tooth-meshing-harmonic static-transmission-error amplitudes of helical gears

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mark, William D.

    2018-01-01

    The static transmission errors of meshing gear pairs arise from deviations of loaded tooth working surfaces from equispaced perfect involute surfaces. Such deviations consist of tooth-pair elastic deformations and geometric deviations (modifications) of tooth working surfaces. To a very good approximation, the static-transmission-error tooth-meshing-harmonic amplitudes of helical gears are herein expressed by superposition of Fourier transforms of the quantities: (1) the combination of tooth-pair elastic deformations and geometric tooth-pair modifications and (2) fractional mesh-stiffness fluctuations, each quantity (1) and (2) expressed as a function of involute "roll distance." Normalization of the total roll-distance single-tooth contact span to unity allows tooth-meshing-harmonic amplitudes to be computed for different shapes of the above-described quantities (1) and (2). Tooth-meshing harmonics p = 1, 2, … are shown to occur at Fourier-transform harmonic values of Qp, p = 1, 2, …, where Q is the actual (total) contact ratio, thereby verifying its importance in minimizing transmission-error tooth-meshing-harmonic amplitudes. Two individual shapes and two series of shapes of the quantities (1) and (2) are chosen to illustrate a wide variety of shapes. In most cases representative of helical gears, tooth-meshing-harmonic values p = 1, 2, … are shown to occur in Fourier-transform harmonic regions governed by discontinuities arising from tooth-pair-contact initiation and termination, thereby showing the importance of minimizing such discontinuities. Plots and analytical expressions for all such Fourier transforms are presented, thereby illustrating the effects of various types of tooth-working-surface modifications and tooth-pair stiffnesses on transmission-error generation.

  5. Altering surface characteristics of polypropylene mesh via sodium hydroxide treatment.

    PubMed

    Regis, Shawn; Jassal, Manisha; Mukherjee, Nilay; Bayon, Yves; Scarborough, Nelson; Bhowmick, Sankha

    2012-05-01

    Incisional hernias represent a serious and common complication following laparotomy. The use of synthetic (e.g. polypropylene) meshes to aid repair of these hernias has considerably reduced recurrence rates. While polypropylene is biocompatible and has a long successful clinical history in treating hernias and preventing reherniation, this material may suffer some limitations, particularly in challenging patients at risk of wound failure due to, for example, an exaggerated inflammation reaction, delayed wound healing, and infection. Surface modification of the polypropylene mesh without sacrificing its mechanical properties, critical for hernia repair, represents one way to begin to address these clinical complications. Our hypothesis is treatment of a proprietary polypropylene mesh with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) will increase in vitro NIH/3T3 cell attachment, predictive of earlier and improved cell colonization and tissue integration of polypropylene materials. Our goal is to achieve this altered surface functionality via enhanced removal of chemicals/oils used during material synthesis without compromising the mechanical properties of the mesh. We found that NaOH treatment does not appear to compromise the mechanical strength of the material, despite roughly a 10% decrease in fiber diameter. The treatment increases in vitro NIH/3T3 cell attachment within the first 72 h and this effect is sustained up to 7 days in vitro. This research demonstrates that sodium hydroxide treatment is an efficient way to modify the surface of polypropylene hernia meshes without losing the mechanical integrity of the material. This simple procedure could also allow the attachment of a variety of biomolecules to the polypropylene mesh that may aid in reducing the complications associated with polypropylene meshes today. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  6. Topological patterns of mesh textures in serpentinites

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Miyazawa, M.; Suzuki, A.; Shimizu, H.; Okamoto, A.; Hiraoka, Y.; Obayashi, I.; Tsuji, T.; Ito, T.

    2017-12-01

    Serpentinization is a hydration process that forms serpentine minerals and magnetite within the oceanic lithosphere. Microfractures crosscut these minerals during the reactions, and the structures look like mesh textures. It has been known that the patterns of microfractures and the system evolutions are affected by the hydration reaction and fluid transport in fractures and within matrices. This study aims at quantifying the topological patterns of the mesh textures and understanding possible conditions of fluid transport and reaction during serpentinization in the oceanic lithosphere. Two-dimensional simulation by the distinct element method (DEM) generates fracture patterns due to serpentinization. The microfracture patterns are evaluated by persistent homology, which measures features of connected components of a topological space and encodes multi-scale topological features in the persistence diagrams. The persistence diagrams of the different mesh textures are evaluated by principal component analysis to bring out the strong patterns of persistence diagrams. This approach help extract feature values of fracture patterns from high-dimensional and complex datasets.

  7. Madness Decolonized?: Madness as Transnational Identity in Gail Hornstein's Agnes's Jacket.

    PubMed

    Miller, Gavin

    2017-02-13

    The US psychologist Gail Hornstein's monograph, Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness (2009), is an important intervention in the identity politics of the mad movement. Hornstein offers a resignified vision of mad identity that embroiders the central trope of an "anti-colonial" struggle to reclaim the experiential world "colonized" by psychiatry. A series of literal and figurative appeals makes recourse to the inner world and (corresponding) cultural world of the mad as well as to the ethno-symbolic cultural materials of dormant nationhood. This rhetoric is augmented by a model in which the mad comprise a diaspora without an origin, coalescing into a single transnational community. The mad are also depicted as persons displaced from their metaphorical homeland, the "inner" world "colonized" by the psychiatric regime. There are a number of difficulties with Hornstein's rhetoric, however. Her "ethnicity-and-rights" response to the oppression of the mad is symptomatic of Western parochialism, while her proposed transmutation of putative psychopathology from limit upon identity to parameter of successful identity is open to contestation. Moreover, unless one accepts Hornstein's porous vision of mad identity, her self-ascribed insider status in relation to the mad community may present a problematic "re-colonization" of mad experience.

  8. Grouper: A Compact, Streamable Triangle Mesh Data Structure

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Luffel, Mark; Gurung, Topraj; Lindstrom, Peter

    2014-01-01

    Here, we present Grouper: an all-in-one compact file format, random-access data structure, and streamable representation for large triangle meshes. Similarly to the recently published SQuad representation, Grouper represents the geometry and connectivity of a mesh by grouping vertices and triangles into fixed-size records, most of which store two adjacent triangles and a shared vertex. Unlike SQuad, however, Grouper interleaves geometry with connectivity and uses a new connectivity representation to ensure that vertices and triangles can be stored in a coherent order that enables memory-efficient sequential stream processing. We also present a linear-time construction algorithm that allows streaming out Grouper meshesmore » using a small memory footprint while preserving the initial ordering of vertices. In this construction, we show how the problem of assigning vertices and triangles to groups reduces to a well-known NP-hard optimization problem, and present a simple yet effective heuristic solution that performs well in practice. Our array-based Grouper representation also doubles as a triangle mesh data structure that allows direct access to vertices and triangles. Storing only about two integer references per triangle-i.e., less than the three vertex references stored with each triangle in a conventional indexed mesh format-Grouper answers both incidence and adjacency queries in amortized constant time. Our compact representation enables data-parallel processing on multicore computers, instant partitioning and fast transmission for distributed processing, as well as efficient out-of-core access. We demonstrate the versatility and performance benefits of Grouper using a suite of example meshes and processing kernels.« less

  9. Adaptive moving mesh methods for simulating one-dimensional groundwater problems with sharp moving fronts

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Huang, W.; Zheng, Lingyun; Zhan, X.

    2002-01-01

    Accurate modelling of groundwater flow and transport with sharp moving fronts often involves high computational cost, when a fixed/uniform mesh is used. In this paper, we investigate the modelling of groundwater problems using a particular adaptive mesh method called the moving mesh partial differential equation approach. With this approach, the mesh is dynamically relocated through a partial differential equation to capture the evolving sharp fronts with a relatively small number of grid points. The mesh movement and physical system modelling are realized by solving the mesh movement and physical partial differential equations alternately. The method is applied to the modelling of a range of groundwater problems, including advection dominated chemical transport and reaction, non-linear infiltration in soil, and the coupling of density dependent flow and transport. Numerical results demonstrate that sharp moving fronts can be accurately and efficiently captured by the moving mesh approach. Also addressed are important implementation strategies, e.g. the construction of the monitor function based on the interpolation error, control of mesh concentration, and two-layer mesh movement. Copyright ?? 2002 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.

  10. Marine magnetotelluric inversion with an unstructured tetrahedral mesh

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Usui, Yoshiya; Kasaya, Takafumi; Ogawa, Yasuo; Iwamoto, Hisanori

    2018-05-01

    The finite element method using an unstructured tetrahedral mesh is one of the most effective methods for the three-dimensional modelling of marine magnetotelluric data which are strongly affected by bathymetry, because it enables us to incorporate both small-scale and regional-scale bathymetry into a computational mesh with a practical number of elements. The authors applied a three-dimensional inversion scheme using mesh of this type to marine magnetotelluric problems for the first time and verified its applicability. Forward calculations for two bathymetry models demonstrated that the results obtained with an unstructured tetrahedral mesh are close to the reference solutions. To evaluate the forward calculation results, we developed a general TM-mode analytical formulation for a two-dimensional sinusoidal topography. Moreover, synthetic inversion test results confirmed that a three-dimensional inversion scheme with an unstructured tetrahedral mesh enables us to recover subseafloor resistivity structure properly even for a model including a land-sea boundary as well as seafloor undulations. The verified inversion scheme was subsequently applied to a set of marine magnetotelluric data observed around the Iheya North Knoll, the middle Okinawa Trough. Three-dimensional modelling using a mesh with precise bathymetry demonstrated that the data observed around the Iheya North Knoll are strongly affected by bathymetry, especially by the sea-depth differences between the depression of the trough and the shallow East China Sea. The estimated resistivity structure under the knoll is characterized by a conductive surface layer underlain by a resistive layer. The conductive layer implies permeable pelagic/hemi-pelagic sediments, which are consistent with a previous seismological study. Furthermore, the conductive layer has a resistive part immediately below the knoll, which is regarded as the consolidated magma intrusion that formed the knoll. Furthermore, at depth of 10 km

  11. Analyte separation utilizing temperature programmed desorption of a preconcentrator mesh

    DOEpatents

    Linker, Kevin L.; Bouchier, Frank A.; Theisen, Lisa; Arakaki, Lester H.

    2007-11-27

    A method and system for controllably releasing contaminants from a contaminated porous metallic mesh by thermally desorbing and releasing a selected subset of contaminants from a contaminated mesh by rapidly raising the mesh to a pre-determined temperature step or plateau that has been chosen beforehand to preferentially desorb a particular chemical specie of interest, but not others. By providing a sufficiently long delay or dwell period in-between heating pulses, and by selecting the optimum plateau temperatures, then different contaminant species can be controllably released in well-defined batches at different times to a chemical detector in gaseous communication with the mesh. For some detectors, such as an Ion Mobility Spectrometer (IMS), separating different species in time before they enter the IMS allows the detector to have an enhanced selectivity.

  12. A moving mesh finite difference method for equilibrium radiation diffusion equations

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Yang, Xiaobo, E-mail: xwindyb@126.com; Huang, Weizhang, E-mail: whuang@ku.edu; Qiu, Jianxian, E-mail: jxqiu@xmu.edu.cn

    2015-10-01

    An efficient moving mesh finite difference method is developed for the numerical solution of equilibrium radiation diffusion equations in two dimensions. The method is based on the moving mesh partial differential equation approach and moves the mesh continuously in time using a system of meshing partial differential equations. The mesh adaptation is controlled through a Hessian-based monitor function and the so-called equidistribution and alignment principles. Several challenging issues in the numerical solution are addressed. Particularly, the radiation diffusion coefficient depends on the energy density highly nonlinearly. This nonlinearity is treated using a predictor–corrector and lagged diffusion strategy. Moreover, the nonnegativitymore » of the energy density is maintained using a cutoff method which has been known in literature to retain the accuracy and convergence order of finite difference approximation for parabolic equations. Numerical examples with multi-material, multiple spot concentration situations are presented. Numerical results show that the method works well for radiation diffusion equations and can produce numerical solutions of good accuracy. It is also shown that a two-level mesh movement strategy can significantly improve the efficiency of the computation.« less

  13. Effect of ground control mesh on dust sampling and explosion mitigation.

    PubMed

    Alexander, D W; Chasko, L L

    2015-07-01

    Researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Office of Mine Safety and Health Research conducted an assessment of the effects that ground control mesh might have on rock and float coal dust distribution in a coal mine. The increased use of mesh to control roof and rib spall introduces additional elevated surfaces on which rock or coal dust can collect. It is possible to increase the potential for dust explosion propagation if any float coal dust is not adequately inerted. In addition, the mesh may interfere with the collection of representative dust samples when using the pan-and-brush sampling method developed by the U.S. Bureau of Mines and used by the Mine Safety and Health Administration for band sampling. This study estimates the additional coal or rock dust that could accumulate on mesh and develops a means to collect representative dust samples from meshed entries.

  14. ESCHER: An interactive mesh-generating editor for preparing finite-element input

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Oakes, W. R., Jr.

    1984-01-01

    ESCHER is an interactive mesh generation and editing program designed to help the user create a finite-element mesh, create additional input for finite-element analysis, including initial conditions, boundary conditions, and slidelines, and generate a NEUTRAL FILE that can be postprocessed for input into several finite-element codes, including ADINA, ADINAT, DYNA, NIKE, TSAAS, and ABUQUS. Two important ESCHER capabilities, interactive geometry creation and mesh archival storge are described in detail. Also described is the interactive command language and the use of interactive graphics. The archival storage and restart file is a modular, entity-based mesh data file. Modules of this file correspond to separate editing modes in the mesh editor, with data definition syntax preserved between the interactive commands and the archival storage file. Because ESCHER was expected to be highly interactive, extensive user documentation was provided in the form of an interactive HELP package.

  15. Multigrid solution strategies for adaptive meshing problems

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mavriplis, Dimitri J.

    1995-01-01

    This paper discusses the issues which arise when combining multigrid strategies with adaptive meshing techniques for solving steady-state problems on unstructured meshes. A basic strategy is described, and demonstrated by solving several inviscid and viscous flow cases. Potential inefficiencies in this basic strategy are exposed, and various alternate approaches are discussed, some of which are demonstrated with an example. Although each particular approach exhibits certain advantages, all methods have particular drawbacks, and the formulation of a completely optimal strategy is considered to be an open problem.

  16. The long-term behavior of lightweight and heavyweight meshes used to repair abdominal wall defects is determined by the host tissue repair process provoked by the mesh.

    PubMed

    Pascual, Gemma; Hernández-Gascón, Belén; Rodríguez, Marta; Sotomayor, Sandra; Peña, Estefania; Calvo, Begoña; Bellón, Juan M

    2012-11-01

    Although heavyweight (HW) or lightweight (LW) polypropylene (PP) meshes are widely used for hernia repair, other alternatives have recently appeared. They have the same large-pore structure yet are composed of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). This study compares the long-term (3 and 6 months) behavior of meshes of different pore size (HW compared with LW) and composition (PP compared with PTFE). Partial defects were created in the lateral wall of the abdomen in New Zealand White rabbits and then repaired by the use of a HW or LW PP mesh or a new monofilament, large-pore PTFE mesh (Infinit). At 90 and 180 days after implantation, tissue incorporation, gene and protein expression of neocollagens (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction/immunofluorescence), macrophage response (immunohistochemistry), and biomechanical strength were determined. Shrinkage was measured at 90 days. All three meshes induced good host tissue ingrowth, yet the macrophage response was significantly greater in the PTFE implants (P < .05). Collagen 1/3 mRNA levels failed to vary at 90 days yet in the longer term, the LW meshes showed the reduced genetic expression of both collagens (P < .05) accompanied by increased neocollagen deposition, indicating more efficient mRNA translation. After 90-180 days of implant, tensile strengths and elastic modulus values were similar for all 3 implants (P > .05). Host collagen deposition is mesh pore size dependent whereas the macrophage response induced is composition dependent with a greater response shown by PTFE. In the long term, macroporous meshes show comparable biomechanical behavior regardless of their pore size or composition. Copyright © 2012 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Optimisation and evaluation of pre-design models for offshore wind turbines with jacket support structures and their influence on integrated load simulations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Schafhirt, S.; Kaufer, D.; Cheng, P. W.

    2014-12-01

    In recent years many advanced load simulation tools, allowing an aero-servo-hydroelastic analyses of an entire offshore wind turbine, have been developed and verified. Nowadays, even an offshore wind turbine with a complex support structure such as a jacket can be analysed. However, the computational effort rises significantly with an increasing level of details. This counts especially for offshore wind turbines with lattice support structures, since those models do naturally have a higher number of nodes and elements than simpler monopile structures. During the design process multiple load simulations are demanded to obtain an optimal solution. In the view of pre-design tasks it is crucial to apply load simulations which keep the simulation quality and the computational effort in balance. The paper will introduce a reference wind turbine model consisting of the REpower5M wind turbine and a jacket support structure with a high level of detail. In total twelve variations of this reference model are derived and presented. Main focus is to simplify the models of the support structure and the foundation. The reference model and the simplified models are simulated with the coupled simulation tool Flex5-Poseidon and analysed regarding frequencies, fatigue loads, and ultimate loads. A model has been found which reaches an adequate increase of simulation speed while holding the results in an acceptable range compared to the reference results.

  18. Use of a novel silk mesh for ventral midline hernioplasty in a mare.

    PubMed

    Haupt, Jennifer; García-López, José M; Chope, Kate

    2015-03-13

    Ventral midline hernia formation following abdominal surgery in horses is an uncommon complication; however, it can have serious consequences leading to increased morbidity and mortality. Currently, mesh hernioplasty is the treatment of choice for large ventral midline hernias in horses to allow potential return to normal function. Complications following mesh hernioplasty using polypropylene or polyester mesh in horses can be serious and similar to complications seen in human patients, including persistent incisional drainage, mesh infection, hernia recurrence, intra-abdominal adhesions, mesh or body wall failure, recurrent abdominal pain (colic), and peritonitis. This report describes the use of a novel bioresorbable silk mesh for repair of a large ventral midline incisional hernia in a mature, 600-kg horse. To our knowledge, this is the first report of its kind in the literature. A 9-year-old, 600-kg Warmblood mare presented with a ventral midline hernia following emergency exploratory celiotomy 20 months prior. The mare was anesthetized and a hernioplasty was performed using a novel bioresorbable silk mesh (SERI(®) Surgical Scaffold; Allergan Medical, Boston, MA). No complications were encountered either intra- or postoperatively. The mare was discharged from the hospital at 3 days postoperatively in an abdominal support bandage. At 8 and 20 weeks postoperatively, ultrasonographic assessment showed evidence of tissue ingrowth within and around the mesh. The mare was able to be bred 2 years in a row, carrying both foals to full gestation with no complications. Following both foalings, the abdomen has maintained a normal contour with no evidence of hernia recurrence. Ventral abdominal hernias can be repaired in horses using a bioresorbable silk mesh, which provides adequate biomechanical strength while allowing for fibrous tissue ingrowth. The use of a bioresorbable silk mesh for the repair of ventral hernias can be considered as a realistic option as it

  19. Monte Carlo design of optimal wire mesh collimator for breast tumor imaging process

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Saad, W. H. M.; Roslan, R. E.; Mahdi, M. A.; Choong, W.-S.; Saion, E.; Saripan, M. I.

    2011-08-01

    This paper presents the modeling of breast tumor imaging process using wire mesh collimator gamma camera. Previous studies showed that the wire mesh collimator has a potential to improve the sensitivity of the tumor detection. In this paper, we extend our research significantly, to find an optimal configuration of the wire mesh collimator specifically for semi-compressed breast tumor detection, by looking into four major factors: weight, sensitivity, spatial resolution and tumor contrast. The numbers of layers in the wire mesh collimator is varied to optimize the collimator design. The statistical variations of the results are studied by simulating multiple realizations for each experiment using different starting random numbers. All the simulation environments are modeled using Monte Carlo N-Particle Code (MCNP). The quality of the detection is measured directly by comparing the sensitivity, spatial resolution and tumor contrast of the images produced by the wire mesh collimator and benchmarked that with a standard multihole collimator. The proposed optimal configuration of the wire mesh collimator is optimized by selecting the number of layers in wire mesh collimator, where the tumor contrast shows a relatively comparable value to the multihole collimator, when it is tested with uniformly semi-compressed breast phantom. The wire mesh collimator showed higher number of sensitivity because of its loose arrangement while the spatial resolution of wire mesh collimator does not shows much different compared to the multihole collimator. With a relatively good tumor contrast and spatial resolution, and increased in sensitivity, a new proposed wire mesh collimator gives a significant improvement in the wire mesh collimator design for breast cancer imaging process. The proposed collimator configuration is reduced to 44.09% from the total multihole collimator weight.

  20. Mesh refinement in finite element analysis by minimization of the stiffness matrix trace

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kittur, Madan G.; Huston, Ronald L.

    1989-01-01

    Most finite element packages provide means to generate meshes automatically. However, the user is usually confronted with the problem of not knowing whether the mesh generated is appropriate for the problem at hand. Since the accuracy of the finite element results is mesh dependent, mesh selection forms a very important step in the analysis. Indeed, in accurate analyses, meshes need to be refined or rezoned until the solution converges to a value so that the error is below a predetermined tolerance. A-posteriori methods use error indicators, developed by using the theory of interpolation and approximation theory, for mesh refinements. Some use other criterions, such as strain energy density variation and stress contours for example, to obtain near optimal meshes. Although these methods are adaptive, they are expensive. Alternatively, a priori methods, until now available, use geometrical parameters, for example, element aspect ratio. Therefore, they are not adaptive by nature. An adaptive a-priori method is developed. The criterion is that the minimization of the trace of the stiffness matrix with respect to the nodal coordinates, leads to a minimization of the potential energy, and as a consequence provide a good starting mesh. In a few examples the method is shown to provide the optimal mesh. The method is also shown to be relatively simple and amenable to development of computer algorithms. When the procedure is used in conjunction with a-posteriori methods of grid refinement, it is shown that fewer refinement iterations and fewer degrees of freedom are required for convergence as opposed to when the procedure is not used. The mesh obtained is shown to have uniform distribution of stiffness among the nodes and elements which, as a consequence, leads to uniform error distribution. Thus the mesh obtained meets the optimality criterion of uniform error distribution.

  1. Assessment of adhesion formation after laparoscopic intraperitoneal implantation of Dynamesh IPOM mesh

    PubMed Central

    Jałyński, Marek; Piskorz, Łukasz; Brocki, Marian

    2013-01-01

    Introduction Formation of adhesions after laparoscopic hernia repair using the intra-peritoneal onlay mesh (IPOM) procedure can lead to intestinal obstruction or mesh erosion into intestinal lumen. The aims of this study included: measurement of adhesion formation with Dynamesh IPOM after laparoscopic intraperitoneal implantation, and assessment of the occurrence of isolated adhesions at the fastening sites of slowly absorbable sutures. Material and methods Twelve healthy pigs underwent laparoscopic implantation of 2 Dynamesh IPOM mesh fragments each, one was fastened with PDSII, and the other with Maxon sutures. An assessment of adhesion formation was carried out after 6 weeks and included an evaluation of surface area, hardness according to the Zhulke scale, and index values. The occurrence of isolated adhesions at slowly absorbable suture fixation points was also analyzed. Results Adhesions were noted in 83.3% of Dynamesh IPOM meshes. Adhesions covered on average 37.7% of the mesh surface with mean hardness 1.46 and index value 78.8. In groups fixed with PDS in comparison to Maxon sutures adhesions covered mean 31.6% vs. 42.5% (p = 0.62) of the mesh surface, mean hardness was 1.67 vs.1.25 (p = 0.34) and index 85.42 vs. 72.02 (p = 0.95). Conclusions The Dynamesh IPOM mesh, in spite of its anti-adhesive layer of PVDF, does not prevent the formation of adhesions. Adhesion hardness, surface area, and index values of the Dynamesh IPOM mesh are close to the mean values of these parameters for other commercially available 2-layer meshes. Slowly absorbable sutures used for fastening did not increase the risk of adhesion formation. PMID:23847671

  2. In-memory integration of existing software components for parallel adaptive unstructured mesh workflows

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Smith, Cameron W.; Granzow, Brian; Diamond, Gerrett

    Unstructured mesh methods, like finite elements and finite volumes, support the effective analysis of complex physical behaviors modeled by partial differential equations over general threedimensional domains. The most reliable and efficient methods apply adaptive procedures with a-posteriori error estimators that indicate where and how the mesh is to be modified. Although adaptive meshes can have two to three orders of magnitude fewer elements than a more uniform mesh for the same level of accuracy, there are many complex simulations where the meshes required are so large that they can only be solved on massively parallel systems.

  3. In-memory integration of existing software components for parallel adaptive unstructured mesh workflows

    DOE PAGES

    Smith, Cameron W.; Granzow, Brian; Diamond, Gerrett; ...

    2017-01-01

    Unstructured mesh methods, like finite elements and finite volumes, support the effective analysis of complex physical behaviors modeled by partial differential equations over general threedimensional domains. The most reliable and efficient methods apply adaptive procedures with a-posteriori error estimators that indicate where and how the mesh is to be modified. Although adaptive meshes can have two to three orders of magnitude fewer elements than a more uniform mesh for the same level of accuracy, there are many complex simulations where the meshes required are so large that they can only be solved on massively parallel systems.

  4. Procedure for Adapting Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Woronowicz, Michael S.; Wilmoth, Richard G.; Carlson, Ann B.; Rault, Didier F. G.

    1992-01-01

    A technique is presented for adapting computational meshes used in the G2 version of the direct simulation Monte Carlo method. The physical ideas underlying the technique are discussed, and adaptation formulas are developed for use on solutions generated from an initial mesh. The effect of statistical scatter on adaptation is addressed, and results demonstrate the ability of this technique to achieve more accurate results without increasing necessary computational resources.

  5. Laparoscopic mesh fixation using laser-assisted tissue soldering in a porcine model.

    PubMed

    Lanzafame, Raymond J; Soltz, Barbara A; Stadler, Istvan; Soltz, Robert

    2009-01-01

    Animal studies using open surgical models indicate that collagen solder is capable of fixation of surgical meshes without interfering with tissue integration, increasing adhesions, or increasing inflammation intraperitoneally. This study describes development of instrumentation and techniques for laparoscopic herniorrhaphy using laser-assisted soldering technology. Anesthetized 20 kg to 25 kg female Yorkshire pigs underwent laparoscopy with a 3-trocar technique. Parietex TET, Parietex TEC, and Prolene mesh segments (5 x 5 cm) were embedded in 55% collagen solder. Segments were inserted by using a specially designed introducer and affixed to the peritoneum by using prototype laser devices (1.45 micro, 4.5 W continuous wave, 5-mm spot, 55 degrees C set temperature) and a custom laparoscopic handpiece (IPOM). Parietex PCO mesh was inserted and affixed using the Endo-hernia stapler (Control). Animals were recovered and underwent second-look laparoscopy at 6 weeks. Mesh sites were harvested after animals were euthanized. The mesh-solder constructs were easily inserted and affixed in an IPOM approach. Prolene mesh tended to curl at its edges as the solder was melted. Postoperative healing was similar to that in Control segments in all cases. Collagen-based tissue soldering permits normal wound healing and may mitigate or reduce the use of staples or other foreign bodies for laparoscopic mesh fixation, prevent tissue ischemia and possibly nerve entrapment, which result in severe postoperative pain and morbidity. Laser-assisted mesh fixation is a promising alternative for laparoscopic herniorrhaphy. Further development of this strategy is warranted.

  6. Effect of ground control mesh on dust sampling and explosion mitigation

    PubMed Central

    Alexander, D.W.; Chasko, L.L.

    2017-01-01

    Researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Office of Mine Safety and Health Research conducted an assessment of the effects that ground control mesh might have on rock and float coal dust distribution in a coal mine. The increased use of mesh to control roof and rib spall introduces additional elevated surfaces on which rock or coal dust can collect. It is possible to increase the potential for dust explosion propagation if any float coal dust is not adequately inerted. In addition, the mesh may interfere with the collection of representative dust samples when using the pan-and-brush sampling method developed by the U.S. Bureau of Mines and used by the Mine Safety and Health Administration for band sampling. This study estimates the additional coal or rock dust that could accumulate on mesh and develops a means to collect representative dust samples from meshed entries. PMID:28936000

  7. Graded meshes in bio-thermal problems with transmission-line modeling method.

    PubMed

    Milan, Hugo F M; Carvalho, Carlos A T; Maia, Alex S C; Gebremedhin, Kifle G

    2014-10-01

    In this study, the transmission-line modeling (TLM) applied to bio-thermal problems was improved by incorporating several novel computational techniques, which include application of graded meshes which resulted in 9 times faster in computational time and uses only a fraction (16%) of the computational resources used by regular meshes in analyzing heat flow through heterogeneous media. Graded meshes, unlike regular meshes, allow heat sources to be modeled in all segments of the mesh. A new boundary condition that considers thermal properties and thus resulting in a more realistic modeling of complex problems is introduced. Also, a new way of calculating an error parameter is introduced. The calculated temperatures between nodes were compared against the results obtained from the literature and agreed within less than 1% difference. It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the improved TLM model described herein has great potential in heat transfer of biological systems. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Effects of Mesh Irregularities on Accuracy of Finite-Volume Discretization Schemes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Diskin, Boris; Thomas, James L.

    2012-01-01

    The effects of mesh irregularities on accuracy of unstructured node-centered finite-volume discretizations are considered. The focus is on an edge-based approach that uses unweighted least-squares gradient reconstruction with a quadratic fit. For inviscid fluxes, the discretization is nominally third order accurate on general triangular meshes. For viscous fluxes, the scheme is an average-least-squares formulation that is nominally second order accurate and contrasted with a common Green-Gauss discretization scheme. Gradient errors, truncation errors, and discretization errors are separately studied according to a previously introduced comprehensive methodology. The methodology considers three classes of grids: isotropic grids in a rectangular geometry, anisotropic grids typical of adapted grids, and anisotropic grids over a curved surface typical of advancing layer grids. The meshes within the classes range from regular to extremely irregular including meshes with random perturbation of nodes. Recommendations are made concerning the discretization schemes that are expected to be least sensitive to mesh irregularities in applications to turbulent flows in complex geometries.

  9. Improvement of finite element meshes - Heat transfer in an infinite cylinder

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kittur, Madan G.; Huston, Ronald L.; Oswald, Fred B.

    1989-01-01

    An extension of a structural finite element mesh improvement technique to heat conduction analysis is presented. The mesh improvement concept was originally presented by Prager in studying tapered, axially loaded bars. It was further shown that an improved mesh can be obtained by minimizing the trace of the stiffnes matrix. These procedures are extended and applied to the analysis of heat conduction in an infinitely long hollow circular cylinder.

  10. Improvement in finite element meshes: Heat transfer in an infinite cylinder

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Kittur, Madan G.; Huston, Ronald L.; Oswald, Fred B.

    1988-01-01

    An extension of a structural finite element mesh improvement technique to heat conduction analysis is presented. The mesh improvement concept was originally presented by Prager in studying tapered, axially loaded bars. It was further shown that an improved mesh can be obtained by minimizing the trace of the stiffness matrix. These procedures are extended and applied to the analysis of heat conduction in an infinitely long hollow circular cylinder.

  11. Note: Radial-thrust combo metal mesh foil bearing for microturbomachinery.

    PubMed

    Park, Cheol Hoon; Choi, Sang Kyu; Hong, Doo Euy; Yoon, Tae Gwang; Lee, Sung Hwi

    2013-10-01

    This Note proposes a novel radial-thrust combo metal mesh foil bearing (MMFB). Although MMFBs have advantages such as higher stiffness and damping over conventional air foil bearings, studies related to MMFBs have been limited to radial MMFBs. The novel combo MMFB is composed of a radial top foil, thrust top foils, and a ring-shaped metal mesh damper--fabricated by compressing a copper wire mesh--with metal mesh thrust pads for the thrust bearing at both side faces. In this study, the combo MMFB was fabricated in half-split type to support the rotor for a micro gas turbine generator. The manufacture and assembly process for the half-split-type combo MMFB is presented. In addition, to verify the proposed combo MMFB, motoring test results up to 250,000 rpm and axial displacements as a function of rotational speed are presented.

  12. High-Fidelity Geometric Modeling and Mesh Generation for Mechanics Characterization of Polycrystalline Materials

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2014-10-26

    From the parameterization results, we extract adaptive and anisotropic T-meshes for the further T- spline surface construction. Finally, a gradient flow...field-based method [7, 12] to generate adaptive and anisotropic quadrilateral meshes, which can be used as the control mesh for high-order T- spline ...parameterization results, we extract adaptive and anisotropic T-meshes for the further T- spline surface construction. Finally, a gradient flow-based

  13. High-Fidelity Geometric Modeling and Mesh Generation for Mechanics Characterization of Polycrystalline Materials

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2015-01-07

    and anisotropic quadrilateral meshes, which can be used as the control mesh for high-order T- spline surface modeling. Archival publications (published...anisotropic T-meshes for the further T- spline surface construction. Finally, a gradient flow-based method is developed to improve the T-mesh quality...shade-off. Halos are bright or dark thin regions around the boundary of the sample. These false edges around the object make many segmentation

  14. Three new models for evaluation of standard involute spur gear mesh stiffness

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liang, Xihui; Zhang, Hongsheng; Zuo, Ming J.; Qin, Yong

    2018-02-01

    Time-varying mesh stiffness is one of the main internal excitation sources of gear dynamics. Accurate evaluation of gear mesh stiffness is crucial for gear dynamic analysis. This study is devoted to developing new models for spur gear mesh stiffness evaluation. Three models are proposed. The proposed model 1 can give very accurate mesh stiffness result but the gear bore surface must be assumed to be rigid. Enlighted by the proposed model 1, our research discovers that the angular deflection pattern of the gear bore surface of a pair of meshing gears under a constant torque basically follows a cosine curve. Based on this finding, two other models are proposed. The proposed model 2 evaluates gear mesh stiffness by using angular deflections at different circumferential angles of an end surface circle of the gear bore. The proposed model 3 requires using only the angular deflection at an arbitrary circumferential angle of an end surface circle of the gear bore but this model can only be used for a gear with the same tooth profile among all teeth. The proposed models are accurate in gear mesh stiffness evaluation and easy to use. Finite element analysis is used to validate the accuracy of the proposed models.

  15. Particle-mesh techniques

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Macneice, Peter

    1995-01-01

    This is an introduction to numerical Particle-Mesh techniques, which are commonly used to model plasmas, gravitational N-body systems, and both compressible and incompressible fluids. The theory behind this approach is presented, and its practical implementation, both for serial and parallel machines, is discussed. This document is based on a four-hour lecture course presented by the author at the NASA Summer School for High Performance Computational Physics, held at Goddard Space Flight Center.

  16. A Novel Coarsening Method for Scalable and Efficient Mesh Generation

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Yoo, A; Hysom, D; Gunney, B

    2010-12-02

    In this paper, we propose a novel mesh coarsening method called brick coarsening method. The proposed method can be used in conjunction with any graph partitioners and scales to very large meshes. This method reduces problem space by decomposing the original mesh into fixed-size blocks of nodes called bricks, layered in a similar way to conventional brick laying, and then assigning each node of the original mesh to appropriate brick. Our experiments indicate that the proposed method scales to very large meshes while allowing simple RCB partitioner to produce higher-quality partitions with significantly less edge cuts. Our results further indicatemore » that the proposed brick-coarsening method allows more complicated partitioners like PT-Scotch to scale to very large problem size while still maintaining good partitioning performance with relatively good edge-cut metric. Graph partitioning is an important problem that has many scientific and engineering applications in such areas as VLSI design, scientific computing, and resource management. Given a graph G = (V,E), where V is the set of vertices and E is the set of edges, (k-way) graph partitioning problem is to partition the vertices of the graph (V) into k disjoint groups such that each group contains roughly equal number of vertices and the number of edges connecting vertices in different groups is minimized. Graph partitioning plays a key role in large scientific computing, especially in mesh-based computations, as it is used as a tool to minimize the volume of communication and to ensure well-balanced load across computing nodes. The impact of graph partitioning on the reduction of communication can be easily seen, for example, in different iterative methods to solve a sparse system of linear equation. Here, a graph partitioning technique is applied to the matrix, which is basically a graph in which each edge is a non-zero entry in the matrix, to allocate groups of vertices to processors in such a way that

  17. Etched poly(ether ether ketone) jacket stir bar with detachable dumbbell-shaped structure for stir bar sorptive extraction.

    PubMed

    Zhou, Wei; Wang, Chenlu; Wang, Xuemei; Chen, Zilin

    2018-06-08

    Development of stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) device with high stability and extraction efficiency is critical and challenging by date. In this work, etched poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) tube with high mechanical strength and large specific surface area was used as jacket for SBSE device. By etching with concentrated sulfuric acid, the smooth outer surface of PEEK become porous with plenty of micro holes, which was beneficial for coating of sorbents and significantly improved the extraction performance. After functionalized by bio-polydopamine method, strong hydrophobic p-naphtholbenzein molecular was immobilized onto the chemical resistant PEEK surface (PNB@E-PEEK) as stationary phase. We also firstly developed a simple detachable dumbbell-shaped structure for improving the workability of PEEK jacket stir bar. The dumbbell-shaped construction can eliminate the friction between stir bar and container, and the design of detachable structure make elution can be accomplished easier with small amount of organic solvent. It was interesting that the developed detachable dumbbell-shaped PNB@E-PEEK stir bar showed exceptional stability and extraction efficiency for SBSE enrichment of multiple analytes including several Sudan dyes, triazines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), alkaloids and flavonoid. By coupling with high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detection (HPLC-UV), PNB@E-PEEK stir bar based SBSE-HPLC-UV method was applied for the analysis of common Sudan dye pollutants. The method showed low limits of detection (0.02-0.03 ng/mL), good linearity (R 2  ≥ 0.9979) and good reproducibility (relative standard deviation ≤ 7.96%). It has been successfully applied to determine three dye pollutants in tap and lake water. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. Scalable Video Streaming in Wireless Mesh Networks for Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Liu, Yan; Wang, Xinheng; Zhao, Liqiang

    2011-01-01

    In this paper, a video streaming system for education based on a wireless mesh network is proposed. A wireless mesh network is a self-organizing, self-managing and reliable intelligent network, which allows educators to deploy a network quickly. Video streaming plays an important role in this system for multimedia data transmission. This new…

  19. A new parallelization scheme for adaptive mesh refinement

    DOE PAGES

    Loffler, Frank; Cao, Zhoujian; Brandt, Steven R.; ...

    2016-05-06

    Here, we present a new method for parallelization of adaptive mesh refinement called Concurrent Structured Adaptive Mesh Refinement (CSAMR). This new method offers the lower computational cost (i.e. wall time x processor count) of subcycling in time, but with the runtime performance (i.e. smaller wall time) of evolving all levels at once using the time step of the finest level (which does more work than subcycling but has less parallelism). We demonstrate our algorithm's effectiveness using an adaptive mesh refinement code, AMSS-NCKU, and show performance on Blue Waters and other high performance clusters. For the class of problem considered inmore » this paper, our algorithm achieves a speedup of 1.7-1.9 when the processor count for a given AMR run is doubled, consistent with our theoretical predictions.« less

  20. A new parallelization scheme for adaptive mesh refinement

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Loffler, Frank; Cao, Zhoujian; Brandt, Steven R.

    Here, we present a new method for parallelization of adaptive mesh refinement called Concurrent Structured Adaptive Mesh Refinement (CSAMR). This new method offers the lower computational cost (i.e. wall time x processor count) of subcycling in time, but with the runtime performance (i.e. smaller wall time) of evolving all levels at once using the time step of the finest level (which does more work than subcycling but has less parallelism). We demonstrate our algorithm's effectiveness using an adaptive mesh refinement code, AMSS-NCKU, and show performance on Blue Waters and other high performance clusters. For the class of problem considered inmore » this paper, our algorithm achieves a speedup of 1.7-1.9 when the processor count for a given AMR run is doubled, consistent with our theoretical predictions.« less

  1. Continuously differentiable PIC shape functions for triangular meshes

    DOE PAGES

    Barnes, D. C.

    2018-03-21

    In this study, a new class of continuously-differentiable shape functions is developed and applied to two-dimensional electrostatic PIC simulation on an unstructured simplex (triangle) mesh. It is shown that troublesome aliasing instabilities are avoided for cold plasma simulation in which the Debye length is as small as 0.01 cell sizes. These new shape functions satisfy all requirements for PIC particle shape. They are non-negative, have compact support, and partition unity. They are given explicitly by cubic expressions in the usual triangle logical (areal) coordinates. The shape functions are not finite elements because their structure depends on the topology of themore » mesh, in particular, the number of triangles neighboring each mesh vertex. Nevertheless, they may be useful as approximations to solution of other problems in which continuity of derivatives is required or desired.« less

  2. Continuously differentiable PIC shape functions for triangular meshes

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Barnes, D. C.

    In this study, a new class of continuously-differentiable shape functions is developed and applied to two-dimensional electrostatic PIC simulation on an unstructured simplex (triangle) mesh. It is shown that troublesome aliasing instabilities are avoided for cold plasma simulation in which the Debye length is as small as 0.01 cell sizes. These new shape functions satisfy all requirements for PIC particle shape. They are non-negative, have compact support, and partition unity. They are given explicitly by cubic expressions in the usual triangle logical (areal) coordinates. The shape functions are not finite elements because their structure depends on the topology of themore » mesh, in particular, the number of triangles neighboring each mesh vertex. Nevertheless, they may be useful as approximations to solution of other problems in which continuity of derivatives is required or desired.« less

  3. The Role of the Surgeon on Outcomes of Vaginal Prolapse Surgery With Mesh.

    PubMed

    Eilber, Karyn S; Alperin, Marianna; Khan, Aqsa; Wu, Ning; Pashos, Chris L; Clemens, J Quentin; Anger, Jennifer T

    Adverse outcomes after surgery for pelvic organ prolapse (POP) with mesh are often attributed to the mesh material with little attention paid to the influence of surgeon factors. We used a national data set to determine whether surgeon case volume and specialty influenced vaginal prolapse surgery outcomes with mesh. Public Use File data on a 5% random national sample of female Medicare beneficiaries were obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Women with a diagnosis of POP who underwent surgery with mesh between 2007 and 2008 were identified by relevant International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification and Current Procedural Terminology, 4th Edition procedure codes. Outcomes were compared by surgeon case volume and specialty. From 2007 to 2008, 1657 surgeries for POP were performed with mesh. Low-, intermediate-, and high-volume surgeons performed 881 (53%), 408 (25%), and 368 (22%) of the cases with mesh, respectively. The cumulative reoperation rates for low-, intermediate-, and high-volume providers were 6%, 2%, and 3%, respectively. The difference in reoperation rates between low and intermediate and low- and high-volume surgeons was statistically significant (P = 0.007 and 0.003, respectively). There was no significant difference in reoperation rates between gynecologists and urologists when vaginal mesh was implanted for POP surgery. Low-volume surgeons performed most of the vaginal prolapse repairs with mesh and had significantly higher reoperation rates. Surgeon experience must be a consideration when reporting mesh-related complications of POP surgery.

  4. Lightweight 3.66-meter-diameter conical mesh antenna reflector

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Moore, D. M.

    1974-01-01

    A description is given of a 3.66 m diameter nonfurlable conical mesh antenna incorporating the line source feed principle recently developed. The weight of the mesh reflector and its support structure is 162 N. An area weighted RMS surface deviation of 0.28 mm was obtained. The RF performance measurements show a gain of 48.3 db at 8.448 GHz corresponding to an efficiency of 66%. During the design and development of this antenna, the technology for fabricating the large conical membranes of knitted mesh was developed. As part of this technology a FORTRAN computer program, COMESH, was developed which permits the user to predict the surface accuracy of a stretched conical membrane.

  5. Committee Opinion no. 513: vaginal placement of synthetic mesh for pelvic organ prolapse.

    PubMed

    2011-12-01

    Since 2004, use of synthetic mesh has increased in vaginal surgery for the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse. However, concerns exist about the safety and efficacy of transvaginally placed mesh. Based on the currently available limited data, although many patients undergoing mesh-augmented vaginal repairs heal well without problems, there seems to be a small but significant group of patients who experience permanent and life-altering sequelae, including pain and dyspareunia, from the use of vaginal mesh. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Urogynecologic Society provide background information on the use of vaginally placed mesh for the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse and offer recommendations for practice.

  6. A New Approach to Parallel Dynamic Partitioning for Adaptive Unstructured Meshes

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Heber, Gerd; Biswas, Rupak; Gao, Guang R.

    1999-01-01

    Classical mesh partitioning algorithms were designed for rather static situations, and their straightforward application in a dynamical framework may lead to unsatisfactory results, e.g., excessive data migration among processors. Furthermore, special attention should be paid to their amenability to parallelization. In this paper, a novel parallel method for the dynamic partitioning of adaptive unstructured meshes is described. It is based on a linear representation of the mesh using self-avoiding walks.

  7. An Angular Method with Position Control for Block Mesh Squareness Improvement

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Yao, J.; Stillman, D.

    We optimize a target function de ned by angular properties with a position control term for a basic stencil with a block-structured mesh, to improve element squareness in 2D and 3D. Comparison with the condition number method shows that besides a similar mesh quality regarding orthogonality can be achieved as the former does, the new method converges faster and provides a more uniform global mesh spacing in our numerical tests.

  8. A mesh regeneration method using quadrilateral and triangular elements for compressible flows

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Vemaganti, G. R.; Thornton, E. A.

    1989-01-01

    An adaptive remeshing method using both triangular and quadrilateral elements suitable for high-speed viscous flows is presented. For inviscid flows, the method generates completely unstructured meshes. For viscous flows, structured meshes are generated for boundary layers, and unstructured meshes are generated for inviscid flow regions. Examples of inviscid and viscous adaptations for high-speed flows are presented.

  9. Laparoscopic Mesh Fixation Using Laser-Assisted Tissue Soldering in a Porcine Model

    PubMed Central

    Soltz, Barbara A.; Stadler, Istvan; Soltz, Robert

    2009-01-01

    Background and Objective: Animal studies using open surgical models indicate that collagen solder is capable of fixation of surgical meshes without interfering with tissue integration, increasing adhesions, or increasing inflammation intraperitoneally. This study describes development of instrumentation and techniques for laparoscopic herniorrhaphy using laser-assisted soldering technology. Study Design and Methods: Anesthetized 20 kg to 25 kg female Yorkshire pigs underwent laparoscopy with a 3-trocar technique. Parietex TET, Parietex TEC, and Prolene mesh segments (5 × 5 cm) were embedded in 55% collagen solder. Segments were inserted by using a specially designed introducer and affixed to the peritoneum by using prototype laser devices (1.45 µ, 4.5 W continuous wave, 5-mm spot, 55° C set temperature) and a custom laparoscopic handpiece (IPOM). Parietex PCO mesh was inserted and affixed using the Endo-hernia stapler (Control). Animals were recovered and underwent second-look laparoscopy at 6 weeks. Mesh sites were harvested after animals were euthanized. Results: The mesh-solder constructs were easily inserted and affixed in an IPOM approach. Prolene mesh tended to curl at its edges as the solder was melted. Postoperative healing was similar to that in Control segments in all cases. Discussion and Conclusion: Collagen-based tissue soldering permits normal wound healing and may mitigate or reduce the use of staples or other foreign bodies for laparoscopic mesh fixation, prevent tissue ischemia and possibly nerve entrapment, which result in severe postoperative pain and morbidity. Laser-assisted mesh fixation is a promising alternative for laparoscopic herniorrhaphy. Further development of this strategy is warranted. PMID:19793465

  10. What is the evidence for the use of biologic or biosynthetic meshes in abdominal wall reconstruction?

    PubMed

    Köckerling, F; Alam, N N; Antoniou, S A; Daniels, I R; Famiglietti, F; Fortelny, R H; Heiss, M M; Kallinowski, F; Kyle-Leinhase, I; Mayer, F; Miserez, M; Montgomery, A; Morales-Conde, S; Muysoms, F; Narang, S K; Petter-Puchner, A; Reinpold, W; Scheuerlein, H; Smietanski, M; Stechemesser, B; Strey, C; Woeste, G; Smart, N J

    2018-04-01

    Although many surgeons have adopted the use of biologic and biosynthetic meshes in complex abdominal wall hernia repair, others have questioned the use of these products. Criticism is addressed in several review articles on the poor standard of studies reporting on the use of biologic meshes for different abdominal wall repairs. The aim of this consensus review is to conduct an evidence-based analysis of the efficacy of biologic and biosynthetic meshes in predefined clinical situations. A European working group, "BioMesh Study Group", composed of invited surgeons with a special interest in surgical meshes, formulated key questions, and forwarded them for processing in subgroups. In January 2016, a workshop was held in Berlin where the findings were presented, discussed, and voted on for consensus. Findings were set out in writing by the subgroups followed by consensus being reached. For the review, 114 studies and background analyses were used. The cumulative data regarding biologic mesh under contaminated conditions do not support the claim that it is better than synthetic mesh. Biologic mesh use should be avoided when bridging is needed. In inguinal hernia repair biologic and biosynthetic meshes do not have a clear advantage over the synthetic meshes. For prevention of incisional or parastomal hernias, there is no evidence to support the use of biologic/biosynthetic meshes. In complex abdominal wall hernia repairs (incarcerated hernia, parastomal hernia, infected mesh, open abdomen, enterocutaneous fistula, and component separation technique), biologic and biosynthetic meshes do not provide a superior alternative to synthetic meshes. The routine use of biologic and biosynthetic meshes cannot be recommended.

  11. A self-cleaning underwater superoleophobic mesh for oil-water separation.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Lianbin; Zhong, Yujiang; Cha, Dongkyu; Wang, Peng

    2013-01-01

    Oil-water separation has recently become a global challenging task because of the frequent occurrence of oil spill accidents due to the offshore oil production and transportation, and there is an increasing demand for the development of effective and inexpensive approaches for the cleaning-up of the oily pollution in water system. In this study, a self-cleaning underwater superoleophobic mesh that can be used for oil-water separation is prepared by the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of sodium silicate and TiO2 nanoparticles on the stainless steel mesh. The integration of the self-cleaning property into the all-inorganic separation mesh by using TiO2 enables the convenient removal of the contaminants by ultraviolet (UV) illumination, and allows for the facile recovery of the separation ability of the contaminated mesh, making it promising for practial oil-water separation applications.

  12. A self-cleaning underwater superoleophobic mesh for oil-water separation

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Lianbin; Zhong, Yujiang; Cha, Dongkyu; Wang, Peng

    2013-01-01

    Oil–water separation has recently become a global challenging task because of the frequent occurrence of oil spill accidents due to the offshore oil production and transportation, and there is an increasing demand for the development of effective and inexpensive approaches for the cleaning-up of the oily pollution in water system. In this study, a self-cleaning underwater superoleophobic mesh that can be used for oil-water separation is prepared by the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of sodium silicate and TiO2 nanoparticles on the stainless steel mesh. The integration of the self-cleaning property into the all-inorganic separation mesh by using TiO2 enables the convenient removal of the contaminants by ultraviolet (UV) illumination, and allows for the facile recovery of the separation ability of the contaminated mesh, making it promising for practial oil-water separation applications. PMID:23900109

  13. The impact of hydrophobic hernia mesh coating by omega fatty acid on atraumatic fibrin sealant fixation.

    PubMed

    Gruber-Blum, S; Brand, J; Keibl, C; Redl, H; Fortelny, R H; May, C; Petter-Puchner, A H

    2015-08-01

    Fibrin sealant (FS) is a safe and efficient fixation method in open intraperitoneal hernia repair. While favourable results have been achieved with hydrophilic meshes, hydrophobic (such as Omega fatty acid coated) meshes (OFM) have not been specifically assessed so far. Atrium C-qur lite(®) mesh was tested in rats in models of open onlay and intraperitoneal hernia repair. 44 meshes (2 × 2 cm) were implanted in 30 male Sprague-Dawley rats in open (n = 2 meshes per animal) and intraperitoneal technique (IPOM; n = 1 mesh per animal). Animals were randomised to four groups: onlay and IPOM sutured vs. sealed. Follow-up was 6 weeks, sutured groups serving as controls. Evaluation criteria were mesh dislocation, adhesions and foreign body reaction. FS provided a reliable fixation in onlay technique, whereas OFM meshes dislocated in the IPOM position when sealed only. FS mesh fixation was safe with OFM meshes in open onlay repair. Intraperitoneal placement of hydrophobic meshes requires additional fixation and cannot be achieved with FS alone.

  14. Impact experiments into multiple-mesh targets: Concept development of a lightweight collisional bumper

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Hoerz, Friedrich; Cintala, Mark J.; Bernhard, Ronald P.; Cardenas, Frank; Davidson, William; Haynes, Gerald; See, Thomas H.; Winkler, Jerry; Gray, Barry

    1993-01-01

    The utility of multiple-mesh targets as potential lightweight shields to protect spacecraft in low-Earth orbit against collisional damage is explored. Earlier studies revealed that single meshes comminute hypervelocity impactors with efficiencies comparable to contiguous targets. Multiple interaction of projectile fragments with any number of meshes should lead to increased comminution, deceleration, and dispersion of the projectile, such that all debris exiting the mesh stack possesses low specific energies (ergs/sq cm) that would readily be tolerated by many flight systems. The study is conceptually exploring the sensitivity of major variables such as impact velocity, the specific areal mass (g/sq cm) of the total mesh stack (SM), and the separation distance (S) between individual meshes. Most experiments employed five or ten meshes with total SM typically less than 0.5 the specific mass of the impactor, and silicate glass impactors rather than metal projectiles. While projectile comminution increases with increasing impact velocity due to progressively higher shock stresses, encounters with multiple-meshes at low velocity (1-2 km/s) already lead to significant disruption of the glass impactors, with the resulting fragments being additionally decelerated and dispersed by subsequent meshes, and, unlike most contiguous single-plate bumpers, leading to respectable performance at low velocity. Total specific bumper mass must be the subject of careful trade-off studies; relatively massive bumpers will generate too much debris being dislodged from the bumper itself, while exceptionally lightweight designs will not cause sufficient comminution, deceleration, or dispersion of the impactor. Separation distance was found to be a crucial design parameter, as it controls the dispersion of the fragment cloud. Substantial mass savings could result if maximum separation distances were employed. The total mass of debris dislodged by multiple-mesh stacks is modestly smaller than

  15. Terrain-driven unstructured mesh development through semi-automatic vertical feature extraction

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bilskie, Matthew V.; Coggin, David; Hagen, Scott C.; Medeiros, Stephen C.

    2015-12-01

    A semi-automated vertical feature terrain extraction algorithm is described and applied to a two-dimensional, depth-integrated, shallow water equation inundation model. The extracted features describe what are commonly sub-mesh scale elevation details (ridge and valleys), which may be ignored in standard practice because adequate mesh resolution cannot be afforded. The extraction algorithm is semi-automated, requires minimal human intervention, and is reproducible. A lidar-derived digital elevation model (DEM) of coastal Mississippi and Alabama serves as the source data for the vertical feature extraction. Unstructured mesh nodes and element edges are aligned to the vertical features and an interpolation algorithm aimed at minimizing topographic elevation error assigns elevations to mesh nodes via the DEM. The end result is a mesh that accurately represents the bare earth surface as derived from lidar with element resolution in the floodplain ranging from 15 m to 200 m. To examine the influence of the inclusion of vertical features on overland flooding, two additional meshes were developed, one without crest elevations of the features and another with vertical features withheld. All three meshes were incorporated into a SWAN+ADCIRC model simulation of Hurricane Katrina. Each of the three models resulted in similar validation statistics when compared to observed time-series water levels at gages and post-storm collected high water marks. Simulated water level peaks yielded an R2 of 0.97 and upper and lower 95% confidence interval of ∼ ± 0.60 m. From the validation at the gages and HWM locations, it was not clear which of the three model experiments performed best in terms of accuracy. Examination of inundation extent among the three model results were compared to debris lines derived from NOAA post-event aerial imagery, and the mesh including vertical features showed higher accuracy. The comparison of model results to debris lines demonstrates that additional

  16. Mechanical behaviour of synthetic surgical meshes: finite element simulation of the herniated abdominal wall.

    PubMed

    Hernández-Gascón, B; Peña, E; Melero, H; Pascual, G; Doblaré, M; Ginebra, M P; Bellón, J M; Calvo, B

    2011-11-01

    The material properties of meshes used in hernia surgery contribute to the overall mechanical behaviour of the repaired abdominal wall. The mechanical response of a surgical mesh has to be defined since the haphazard orientation of an anisotropic mesh can lead to inconsistent surgical outcomes. This study was designed to characterize the mechanical behaviour of three surgical meshes (Surgipro®, Optilene® and Infinit®) and to describe a mechanical constitutive law that accurately reproduces the experimental results. Finally, through finite element simulation, the behaviour of the abdominal wall was modelled before and after surgical mesh implant. Uniaxial loading of mesh samples in two perpendicular directions revealed the isotropic response of Surgipro® and the anisotropic behaviour of Optilene® and Infinit®. A phenomenological constitutive law was used to reproduce the measured experimental curves. To analyze the mechanical effect of the meshes once implanted in the abdomen, finite element simulation of the healthy and partially herniated repaired rabbit abdominal wall served to reproduce wall behaviour before and after mesh implant. In all cases, maximal displacements were lower and maximal principal stresses higher in the implanted abdomen than the intact wall model. Despite the fact that no mesh showed a behaviour that perfectly matched that of abdominal muscle, the Infinit® mesh was able to best comply with the biomechanics of the abdominal wall. Copyright © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Finite Element in Angle Unit Sphere Meshing for Charged Particle Transport.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Ortega, Mario Ivan; Drumm, Clifton R.

    Finite element in angle formulations of the charged particle transport equation require the discretization of the unit sphere. In Sceptre, a three-dimensional surface mesh of a sphere is transformed into a two-dimensional mesh. Projection of a sphere onto a two-dimensional surface is well studied with map makers spending the last few centuries attempting to create maps that preserve proportion and area. Using these techniques, various meshing schemes for the unit sphere were investigated.

  18. Latency-Efficient Communication in Wireless Mesh Networks under Consideration of Large Interference Range

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xin, Qin; Yao, Xiaolan; Engelstad, Paal E.

    2010-09-01

    Wireless Mesh Networking is an emerging communication paradigm to enable resilient, cost-efficient and reliable services for the future-generation wireless networks. We study here the minimum-latency communication primitive of gossiping (all-to-all communication) in multi-hop ad-hoc Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). Each mesh node in the WMN is initially given a message and the objective is to design a minimum-latency schedule such that each mesh node distributes its message to all other mesh nodes. Minimum-latency gossiping problem is well known to be NP-hard even for the scenario in which the topology of the WMN is known to all mesh nodes in advance. In this paper, we propose a new latency-efficient approximation scheme that can accomplish gossiping task in polynomial time units in any ad-hoc WMN under consideration of Large Interference Range (LIR), e.g., the interference range is much larger than the transmission range. To the best of our knowledge, it is first time to investigate such a scenario in ad-hoc WMNs under LIR, our algorithm allows the labels (e.g., identifiers) of the mesh nodes to be polynomially large in terms of the size of the WMN, which is the first time that the scenario of large labels has been considered in ad-hoc WMNs under LIR. Furthermore, our gossiping scheme can be considered as a framework which can be easily implied to the scenario under consideration of mobility-related issues since we assume that the mesh nodes have no knowledge on the network topology even for its neighboring mesh nodes.

  19. Transvaginal single-incision mesh reconstruction for recurrent or advanced anterior vaginal wall prolapse.

    PubMed

    Marschke, J; Hengst, L; Schwertner-Tiepelmann, N; Beilecke, K; Tunn, R

    2015-05-01

    Single-incision transvaginal mesh for reconstruction of Level I and II prolapses in women with recurrent or advanced prolapse. We evaluated functional, anatomical, sonomorphological and quality-of-life outcome. Data were collected retrospectively for preoperative parameters and at follow-up visits. Anatomical cure was assessed with vaginal examination using the ICS-POP-Q system; introital-ultrasound scan for postvoidal residual and description of mesh characteristics was performed. We applied a visual analogue scale (VAS) and the German Pelvic Floor Questionnaire to assess quality-of-life. Seventy women with cystocele (III: 61.3%/IV: 16%), all post-hysterectomy and in majority (81.4%) after previous cystocele repair, were operated using a single-incision transvaginal technique. Overall anatomical success rate was 95.7% with significant improvement in quality-of-life (p < 0.0001). Mesh erosion occurred in 5.7%, one patient presented symptomatic vaginal vault prolapse. Postvoidal residual declined significantly (58 vs. 2.9%). Sonographic mesh length was 55.7% of implanted mesh with a wide range of mesh position, but no signs of mesh dislocation. There was no de novo dyspareunia reported, one case of preoperative existing dyspareunia worsened. No severe adverse event was observed. We hereby present a trial of a high-risk group of patients requiring reconstruction of anterior and apical vaginal wall in mostly recurrent prolapse situation. Our data support the hypothesis of improved anatomical and functional results and less mesh shrinkage caused by the single-incision technique with fixation in sacrospinous ligament in combination with modification in mesh quality compared to former multi-incision techniques.

  20. Discrete Surface Evolution and Mesh Deformation for Aircraft Icing Applications

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Thompson, David; Tong, Xiaoling; Arnoldus, Qiuhan; Collins, Eric; McLaurin, David; Luke, Edward; Bidwell, Colin S.

    2013-01-01

    Robust, automated mesh generation for problems with deforming geometries, such as ice accreting on aerodynamic surfaces, remains a challenging problem. Here we describe a technique to deform a discrete surface as it evolves due to the accretion of ice. The surface evolution algorithm is based on a smoothed, face-offsetting approach. We also describe a fast algebraic technique to propagate the computed surface deformations into the surrounding volume mesh while maintaining geometric mesh quality. Preliminary results presented here demonstrate the ecacy of the approach for a sphere with a prescribed accretion rate, a rime ice accretion, and a more complex glaze ice accretion.