Call number: LD2668 .T4 1933 H305

No description available.

This research deals with the mechanical characterisation of thick composite laminates in the through-thickness direction. Three independent glass fibre/epoxy laminate configurations, namely cross, quasi-isotropic, and woven, plies were investigated. Six specimen configurations, of which two were developed herein, were employed in order to determine the strength behaviour of these three laminate configurations when subjected to interlaminar shear and interlaminar tensile stresses in isolation and in combination. The stress and strain distributions were estimated using the ABAQUS FEA package. The strain distribution obtained thereby was verified experimentally via Moirandeacute; interferometry which records the exact strain field at the test section. A two dimensional failure envelope is defined for each laminate configuration using the experimentally obtained data. All three independent laminate configurations exhibited almost identical failure envelopes. The woven laminate exhibited superior interlaminar shear strength when subjected to combined interlaminar shear and interlaminar tensile stresses, whereas the cross-ply laminate exhibited superior interlaminar tensile strength when subjected to the same combination of stress. The characteristics of the quasi-isotropic laminate were similar to that of the cross-ply laminate. A partial three dimensional failure envelope was also defined for the materials tested.

Στην παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή παρουσιάζεται η δυνατότητα ανάπτυξης νέων αισθητήρων με χρήση μιας καινοτόμας οπτικής ίνας, γνωστή ως Ίνα Φωτονικών Κρυστάλλων (ΙΦΚ) - (Photonic crystal fiber) σε συνδυασμό με νέα και λειτουργικά υλικά. Η ΙΦΚ αποτελείται από μια περιοδική συνήθως εξαγωνική δομή οπών που δρα ως τον μανδύα της ίνας και τις περισσότερες φορές κατασκευάζεται από γυαλί (SiO2) ή πολυμερές (PMMA, TOPAS, κτλ). Η αλλαγή στην διάμετρο των οπών και της απόστασης μεταξύ τους δίνει πολύ μεγάλη ευελιξία για διαχείριση των οπτικών ιδιοτήτων της. Εδώ παρουσιάζεται πώς η διήθηση νέων υλικών στις οπές της ΙΦΚ είναι μια αποδοτική μέθοδος για ενεργοποίηση της ΙΦΚ σε εξωτερικές παρεμβολές χωρίς να απαιτείται η κατασκευή μιας νέας ίνας από την αρχή. / This PhD thesis presents the possibility of development of new sensors using a novel optical fiber, called as photonic crystal fiber (PCF) in combination with new functional materials. PCF is consisted by a periodical, usually hexagonal structure of holes which acts as the cladding of the fiber and most of the times this fiber is made of glass (SiO2) or polymer (PMMA, TOPAS, etc.). The hole diameter and the pitch size of these fibers provides great flexibility for manipulation of their optical properties. Here, it is presented how the infiltration of new materials inside the holes of PCF constitutes an efficient method to sensitize the fiber to external perturbations without the need of a new fiber.

The quantity and length of optical fibers required for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy eXperiment (HETDEX) create unique fiber handling challenges. More than 33,000 optical fibers will enable the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) to collect data on at least one million galaxies that are 9 billion to 11 billion light-years away, yielding the largest map of the universe ever produced [1,2]. The design advantages made possible by optical fibers also forms challenges to prevent damage to the fragile fibers that can lead to Focal Ratio Degradation (FRD) [3]. Therefore, a life cycle test must be conducted to study fiber behavior and measure FRD as a function of time. This thesis describes the design and design methodology of an electro-mechanical test apparatus for accelerated life testing of optical fiber assemblies. The design methodology summarizes the development of functional requirements and constraints that drove the design. The test apparatus design utilizes six linear actuators to replicate the movement of the fiber system deployed on HETDEX for over 65,000 accelerated cycles, simulating five years of actual operation. The electro-mechanical test apparatus will provide insight into the effects of load history on the performance of optical fibers which published data has thus far been lacking. Performance of the electro-mechanical test apparatus will be demonstrated through simulation, modeling and calculations. The test results that will be generated from the accelerated life test will be of great interest to designers of robotic fiber handling systems for major telescopes. / text

Hyperthermia can occur in lungs and airways during both physiological and pathophysiological conditions. A previous study carried out in our laboratory showed that hyperthermia activates and sensitizes vagal bronchopulmonary Cfiber afferents, whether this effect is through a direct action of hyperthermia on sensory nerves is not known. This dissertation study was aimed to investigate the thermal-sensitivity of pulmonary sensory neurons, and the roles of thermalsensitive transient receptor potential vanilloid (TRPV) channels. Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings of neurons isolated from nodose/jugular ganglia were applied in the study. Results of this study showed that hyperthermia directly activates pulmonary sensory neurons, and this effect is partially mediated through the TRPV subtype 1 (TRPV1) channel as well as other thermal-sensitive TRPV (2–4) channels. In addition, hyperthermia exerts potentiating effects on responses of pulmonary sensory neurons to TRPV1 activators, but not to non- TRPV1 activators. Furthermore, results obtained in the study of TRPV1-null mice revealed that TRPV1 plays a dominant role in mediating the potentiating effect of hyperthermia on pulmonary sensory neurons, but is only partially involved in the direct activation of these sensory neurons by increasing temperature. These results suggested that the thermal-sensitivity of pulmonary sensory neurons is dependent upon the function of the TRPV1 channel, and TRPV1-mediated sensitization of these sensory neurons may contribute to airway hyperreactivity and augmented reflex responses under hyperthermic conditions.

A new interferometric method which indirectly measures the total chromatic dispersion of a single mode fiber is demonstrated. The technique utilizes a short length of fiber, an unmodulated broadband source, simple low frequency electronics, and a standard interferometer. The concept of this measurement is based on the behavior of the uncorrelated individual bursts of light from the elemental emitters that constitute a thermal source. Their propagation through a dispersive media, e.g., silica fiber, which is placed in one arm of the interferometer, is delayed and broadened. They will interfere with their counterpart from the other arm, generating a train of time-varying fringes as one mirror of the interferometer is uniformly translated. The local frequency of the fringes at a given position of the moving mirror is a direct measure of the instantaneous wavelength, while the mirror position itself demarks the corresponding relative delay. A colinearly launched HeNe laser beam is used as a reference to calibrate the other source's fringe width and location of the mirror. In this experiment, an edge-emitting LED of λo = 830 nm and Δλ = 60 nm was used. The tested fibers had a length of 27.9 cm and 38.3 cm, which made the width of the crosscorrelation function approximately 100 times greater than the source's coherence length. The speed of the mechanically driven mirror set the frequency of the HeNe fringes to approximately 800 Hz with an r.m.s. fluctuation around the mean of 0.2%. The SNR of the HeNe fringes was four times larger than the LED's. Ten different runs for each fiber were executed. Data from the two sets of simultaneous measurements of delay versus wavelength were used to fit the best linear and quadratic polynomials with a minimum residual mean error square. The derivative of this function with respect to wavelength gave the dispersion relation. The accuracy of measured delay and wavelength were 0.1 ps and 6 nm, respectively. The dispersion value and its standard error for the best linear fit was approximately 117 ∓ 2 ps/km nm. The standard error for the quadratic fit was much larger due to the high noise level accompanying signal. A thorough investigation of the noise sources, accuracies, standard error of the polynomial's coefficient, and SNR analysis is conducted. This measurement is simple and has the potential of achieving substantially higher accuracy--especially for the longer wavelength region where dispersion is minute.

The fibrous aerosol monitor (FAM) was designed to count fibrous particulates as accurately as the standard method, P & CAM 239, now NIOSH 7400. The Hi-Vol (HV) method, a modification of the standard method, was developed to collect fibers over a shorter time interval (i.e., 10-minutes) with the same accuracy as the standard method. The current study sought to compare the HV method with the FAM to assess its validity in measuring airborne asbestos levels and to assess the importance of short-term variation in asbestos levels in determining appropriate respiratory protection. Correlation between the FAM and HV showed a poor linear relationship in all comparison studies. However, there was good correlation between the average of short-term HV samples and long-term time-weighted average (TWA) samples at reported low levels of airborne asbestos. All membrane filter techniques showed strong correlation with each other, but were weakly correlated with the FAM. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

Recent experiments with optical fibers have reached a remarkable development for optical communication spectroscopy as well as a medical technology. Hollow optical fibers are required for optical communications. The measurement of the transmission of light through fibers can provide information about the fiber quality and about the far-field energy which radiates from the fiber end. We used five flexible hollow fused quartz fibers to study laser beam propagation down the fiber axis. Five different refractive index fluids were prepared and inserted into the fiber core to measure the transmitted intensity as a function of core property. The plots of the normalized, relative transmitted intensity measured as a function of the beam insertion point show the dependence of the transmitted intensity as a function of fiber diameter and refractive index fluid.

Myocardial infarction activates the renin-angiotensin system, consequently upregulating aldosterone production that may stimulate pathological cardiac fibrosis via mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) activation. Results presented in this thesis were derived from an in vitro experimental model using cultures of human cardiac fibroblasts to study the effect of aldosterone on elastin production. They first confirmed that treatment with 1-50 nM of aldosterone leads to a significant increase in collagen type I production via MR activation. Most importantly, we discovered that treatment with 1-50 nM of aldosterone also increases elastin mRNA levels, tropoelastin synthesis, and elastic fiber deposition. Strikingly, pretreatment with MR antagonist spironolactone did not eliminate aldosterone-induced increases in elastin production. Interestingly, while cultures treated with elevated aldosterone concentrations (100 nM and 1 µM) showed a further increase (~3.5-fold) in collagen and (~3-fold) in elastin mRNA levels, they demonstrated subsequent increases only in the net deposition of collagen but not elastin. In fact, cultures treated with elevated aldosterone concentrations displayed a striking decrease in the net deposition of insoluble elastin, which could be reversed with spironolactone or with MMP inhibitors doxycycline or GM6001. Most importantly, we discovered that the pro-elastogenic effect of aldosterone involves a rapid increase in tyrosine phosphorylation of the insulin-like growth factor-I receptor (IGF-IR) and that the IGF-IR kinase inhibitor AG1024 or an anti-IGF-IR neutralizing antibody inhibits both IGF-I- and aldosterone-induced elastogenesis (Bunda et al., Am J Pathol. 171:809-819, 2007). Furthermore, we showed that the PI3 kinase signaling pathway propagates the elastogenic signal following IGF-IR activation and that activation of c-Src is an important prerequisite for aldosterone-dependent facilitation of the IGF-IR/PI3 kinase signaling. Results of explorative microarray analysis of 1 hour aldosterone-treated cultures revealed that aldosterone treatment upregulated expression of a heterotrimeric G protein, Gα13, that activates the PI3 kinase signaling pathway. We additionally demonstrated that aldosterone treatment transiently increases the interaction between Gα13 and c-Src and that siRNA-dependent elimination of Gα13 inhibited the pro-elastogenic effect of aldosterone. In summary, aldosterone, which stimulates collagen production in cardiac fibroblasts through the MR-dependent pathway, also increases elastogenesis via a parallel MR-independent pathway involving the activation of Gα13, c-Src, and IGF-IR/PI3 kinase signaling.