Characterizing the Material Properties of the Kidney and Liver in Unconfined Compression and Probing Protocols with Special Reference to Varying Strain Rate

The liver and kidneys are the most commonly injured organs due to traumatic impact forces applied to the abdomen and pose a challenge to physicians due to a hard-to-diagnose risk of internal bleeding. A better understanding of the mechanism of injury will improve diagnosis, treatment, forensics, and other fields. Finite element modelling is a tool that can aid in this understanding, but accurate material properties are required including the strain rate dependency and the feasibility of using animal tissue properties instead of human. The elastic modulus in a probing protocol and the elastic modulus, failure stress, and failure strain in a compression protocol were found for both liver and kidney tissue from human and porcine specimens at varying strain rates. Increases in the elastic modulus were seen for both the human kidney and liver, but only for the porcine kidney, when comparing the unconfined compression and probing protocols. A strain rate dependency was found for both the liver and kidney properties and was observed to have a larger saturation effect at higher rates for the failure stress than for the elastic modulus. Overall, the material properties of intact liver and kidney were characterized, and the strain rate dependency was numerically modelled. The study findings suggest that some kidney and liver material properties vary from human to porcine tissue. Therefore, it is not always appropriate to use material properties of porcine tissue in computational or physical models of the human liver and kidney.

Strain-rate dependency of bio-based cellular materials under a large range of temperature

Polymeric cellular materials are used in many different application domains such as transport, sport, food, health and energy. Therefore, the conditions of use of these materials represent wide temperature and strain-rate ranges. The mechanical behaviour of these foams demonstrate a strong dependency to it. In order to be able to predict such dependency, its origin has to be better understood. For this study, a bio-based cellular material, agglomerated cork, has been chosen to evaluate the temperature and strain-rate dependency of the mechanical behaviour. The visco-elastic behaviour of the material was first studied between −80°C and 100°C at frequencies between 0.01 Hz and 100 Hz. The compressive mechanical behaviour was then studied on a large range of temperature (from −30°C to 100°C) and strain rates (from 4.2 10−5 s−1 to 1250 s−1). A specific set-up was finally used to operate dynamic tests at low and high temperature. These results were used to discuss the evolution of the mechanical beahviour with these environnemental conditions based on the knowledge of the mechanical behaviour of the constitutive materials.

Strain rate sensitivity of the aluminium-magnesium-scandium alloy - Scalmalloy®

This work investigates the strain rate sensitivity of the aluminiummagnesium-scandium alloy Scalmalloy, which is used extensively for additive manufacturing of lightweight structures. This high strength aluminium alloy combines very good weldability, machinability and mechanical strength: it can be heat-treated to reach nominal ultimate tensile strengths in excess of 500 MPa. We report tensile tests at strain rates ranging from 10−3 /s to 103 /s at room temperature. It is well known that Al-Mg alloys exhibit a negative strain rate dependency in combination with serrated flow caused by the Portevin-Le Chatelier effect, which describes the interaction of Mg solutes with dislocation propagations. In contrast, in Al-Sc alloys, the flow stress increases with increasing strain rate and displays positive strain rate dependency. Additionally, the presence of Sc in the form of Al3-Sc provides a fine-grained microstructure which allows higher tensile and fatigue strength. This research shows how these combined effects interact in the case of Scalmalloy, which contains both Mg and Sc. Tests are performed at quasi-static, intermediate and high strain rates with a servohydraulic testing machine and a Split-Hopkinson tension bar. Local specimen strain was performed using 2D Digital Image Correlation.

Dynamic Deformation Behaviour of Chiral Auxetic Lattices at Low and High Strain-Rates

The mechanical behaviour of three different auxetic cellular structures, hexa-chiral 2D, tetra-chiral 2D and tetra-chiral 3D, was experimentally investigated in this study. The structures were produced with the powder bed fusion method (PBF) from an austenitic stainless steel alloy. The fundamental material mechanical properties of the sample structures were determined with classic quasi-static compressive tests, where the deformation process was captured by a high-resolution digital camera. The Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) apparatus was used for dynamic impact testing at two impact velocities to study the strain-rate dependency of the structures. Two synchronised high-speed cameras were used to observe the impact tests. The captured images from both quasi-static and dynamic experiments were processed using a custom digital image correlation (DIC) algorithm to evaluate the displacement/strain fields and the Poisson’s ratio. Predominant auxetic behaviour was observed in all three structures throughout most of the deformation process both under quasi-static and impact loading regimes. The tetra-chiral 2D structure showed the most significant auxetic behaviour. Significant stress enhancement in all tested structures was observed in dynamic testing. The Poisson’s ratio strain-rate dependency was confirmed for all three auxetic structures.