ANALYSIS OF THE LOCALIZATION OF DAMAGE AND THE COMPLETE (STRESS-STRAIN) RELATION FOR MESOSCOPIC HETEROGENEOUS ROCK UNDER UNIAXIAL TENSILE LOADING

The mechanical behavior of rock under uniaxial tensile loading is different from that of rock under compressive loads. A micromechanics-based model was proposed for mesoscopic heterogeneous brittle rock undergoing irreversible changes of their microscopic structures due to microcrack growth. The complete stress-strain relation including linear elasticity, nonlinear hardening,rapid stress drop and strain softening was obtained. The influence of all microcracks with different sizes and orientations were introduced into the constitutive relation by using the probability density function describing the distribution of orientations and the probability density function describing the distribution of sizes. The influence of Weibull distribution describing the distribution of orientations and Rayleigh function describing the distribution of sizes on the constitutive relation were researched. Theoretical predictions have shown to be consistent with the experimental results.

Residual Tensile Strength of Plain Concrete Under Tensile Fatigue Loading

The functional relation between the residual tensile strength of plain concrete and number of cycles was determined. 99 tappered prism specimens of plain concrete were tested under uniaxial tensile fatigue loading. Based on the probability distribution of the residual tensile strength, the empirical expressions of the residual tensile strength corresponding to the number of cycles were obtained. The residual tensile strength attenuating curves can be used to predict the residual fatigue life of the specimen under variable-amplitude fatigue loading. There is a good correlation between residual tensile strength and residual secant elastic modulus. The relationship between the residual secant elastic modulus and number of cycles was also established.

Study on Fluid Shear Flow on Osteoblast-like Cells in Their Tensile Loading Experiments

In vitro cell loading experiments are used to investigate stimulation of strain to cellular proliferation. As the flowing conditions of culture fluid in loading systems has been little known, strictly people can not detect the influence of strain to cellular proliferation exactly because shear flow can enhance cell proliferation either. Based on the working principle and cyclic loading parameters, we simplify Navier-Stokes equation to describe the flow of culture fluid on substrates of uniaxial and equi-biaxial flat tensile loading systems and four point bending system. With approximate solutions, the distributions of velocity field and wall shear flow to cells are gained. Results show: shear flows are zero in the middle (or fixed point or line) of substrate for all systems, and they get larger proportionally to distance from middle and substrate elongate; the shear flow on the substrate of four point bending system is much greater than those of others. This shear flow in four point bending system, confirmed by Owan, I., et al with OPN mRNA increase in their experiment, could cause more influence to osteoblast-like cells than that caused by strain. We estimate the average magnitude of shear stress in Owan’s device, the results are consistent with other experimental data about shear flow. In conclusion our study makes it possible to differentiate the influence of strain on cellular proliferation to that of shear flow in loading experiments with the devices mentioned above quantitatively.