Facta Universitatis, Series: Mechanical Engineering

195 - 207

Authors: Hajar Razi, Annette I. Birkhold, Manfred Zehn, Georg N. Duda, Bettina M. Willie, Sara Checa

Though bone is known to adapt to its mechanical challenges, the relationship between the local mechanical stimuli and the adaptive tissue response seems so far unclear. A major challenge appears to be a proper characterization of the local mechanical stimuli of the bones (e.g. strains). The finite element modeling is a powerful tool to characterize these mechanical stimuli not only on the bone surface but across the tissue. However, generating a predictive finite element model of biological tissue strains (e.g., physiological-like loading) encounters aspects that are inevitably unclear or vague and thus might significantly influence the predicted findings. We aimed at investigating the influence of variations in bone alignment, joint contact surfaces and displacement constraints on the predicted strains in an in vivo mouse tibial compression experiment. We found that the general strain state within the mouse tibia under compressive loading was not affected by these uncertain factors. However, strain magnitudes at various tibial regions were highly influenced by specific modeling assumptions. The displacement constraints to control the joint contact sites appeared to be the most influential factor on the predicted strains in the mouse tibia. Strains could vary up to 150% by modifying the displacement constraints. To a lesser degree, bone misalignment (from 0 to 20°) also resulted in a change of strain (+300 με = 40%). The definition of joint contact surfaces could lead to up to 6% variation. Our findings demonstrate the relevance of the specific boundary conditions in the in vivo mouse tibia loading experiment for the prediction of local mechanical strain values using finite element modeling.

223 - 234

Authors: Maria Kyrarini, Siniša Slavnić, Danijela Ristić-Durrant

In this paper, an inverse kinematics based control algorithm for the joystick control of the mobile platform of the novel mobile robot-assisted gait rehabilitation system CORBYS is presented. The mobile platform has four independently steered and driven wheels. Given the linear and angular velocities of the mobile platform, the inverse kinematics algorithm gives as its output the steering angle and the driving angular velocity of each of the four wheels. The paper is focused on the steering control of the platform for which a fuzzy logic controller is developed and implemented. The experimental results of the real-world steering of the platform are presented in the paper.

251 - 260

Authors: Atta Badii, Ali Khan, Rajkumar Raval, Hamid Oudi, Ricardo Ayora, Wasiq Khan, Amine Jaidi, Nagarajan Viswanathan

Awareness of emerging situations in a dynamic operational environment of a robotic assistive device is an essential capability of such a cognitive system, based on its effective and efficient assessment of the prevailing situation. This allows the system to interact with the environment in a sensible (semi)autonomous / pro-active manner without the need for frequent interventions from a supervisor. In this paper, we report a novel generic Situation Assessment Architecture for robotic systems directly assisting humans as developed in the CORBYS project. This paper presents the overall architecture for situation assessment and its application in proof-of-concept Demonstrators as developed and validated within the CORBYS project. These include a robotic human follower and a mobile gait rehabilitation robotic system. We present an overview of the structure and functionality of the Situation Assessment Architecture for robotic systems with results and observations as collected from initial validation on the two CORBYS Demonstrators.

277 - 288

Authors: Dhanushkodi Saravanan, Vincent H. Wilson, Sudhakar Kumarasamy

Drying of Cashew nut to remove testa is one of the most energy-intensive processes of cashew nut process industry. For this reason a hybrid dryer consisting of a solar flat plate collector, a biomass heater and a drying chamber is designed and fabricated. 40 kg of Cashew nut with initial moisture of 9 % is used in the experiment. The performance test of the dryer is carried out in two modes of operation: hybrid-forced convection and hybrid-natural convection. Drying time and drying efficiency during these two modes of operation are estimated and compared with the sun drying. The system is capable of attaining drying temperature between 50º and 70ºC. In the hybrid forced drying, the required moisture content of 3% is achieved within 7 hours and the average system efficiency is estimated as 5.08%. In the hybrid natural drying, the required moisture content is obtained in 9 hours and the average system efficiency is 3.17%. The fuel consumption during the drying process is 0.5 kg/hr and 0.75 kg/hr for forced mode and natural mode, respectively. The drying process in the hybrid forced mode of operation is twice faster than the sun drying. The dryer can be operated in any climatic conditions: as a solar dryer on normal sunny days, as a biomass dryer at night time and as a hybrid dryer on cloudy days. Based on the experimental study, it is concluded that the developed hybrid dryer is suitable for small scale cashew nut farmers in rural areas of developing countries.

305 - 323

Authors: Jimit R. Patel, Gunamani Deheri

Efforts have been made to analyze the Shliomis model based ferrofluid lubrication of a squeeze film between rotating rough curved circular plates where the upper plate has a porous facing. Different models of porosity are treated. The stochastic modeling of Christensen and Tonder has been employed to evaluate the effect of surface roughness. The related stochastically averaged Reynolds type equation is numerically solved to obtain the pressure distribution, leading to the calculation of load carrying capacity. The results presented in graphical form establish that the Kozeny-Carman model is more favorable as compared to the Irmay one from the design point of view. It is observed that the Shliomis model based ferrofluid lubrication performs relatively better than the Neuringer-Rosensweig one. Although the bearing suffers due to transverse surface roughness, with a suitable choice of curvature parameters and rotational ratio, the negative effect of porosity and standard deviation can be minimized by the ferrofluid lubrication at least in the case of negatively skewed roughness.