ENIDH - EMM - Artigo Científico
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- Active-passive damping in functionally graded sandwich plate/shell structuresPublication . Moita, J.S; Araújo, A.L; M. Franco Correia, V.; Mota Soares, C.M; Herskovits, J.; ElsivierIn this work, a simple and efficient finite element model is applied to the vibration analysis of active–passive damped multilayer sandwich plates/shells with a viscoelastic core, sandwiched between functionally graded material (FGM) layers, and including piezoelectric layers. Both the FGM and the piezoelectric layers are modelled using the classical plate theory and the core is modelled using Reddy’s third-order shear deformation theory. The sandwich finite element is obtained performing the assembling of N “elements” through the thickness, by using specific assumptions on the displacement continuity at the interfaces between layers. To achieve a mechanism for the active control of the structural dynamics response, a feedback control algorithm is used, coupling the sensor and active piezoelectric layers. The dynamic analysis of the sandwich plate/shell structures is conducted in the frequency domain to obtain the natural frequencies and the loss factors of the viscoelastic core and in time domain for the steady state harmonic motion. For both analyses, a finite element code has been implemented. The model is applied in the solution of some illustrative examples and the results are presented and discussed.
- AIS Based Shipping Routes Using the Dijkstra AlgorithmPublication . Silveira, P.; Teixeira, A.P.; Guedes Soares, C.This paper proposes an approach for identifying and characterizing shipping routes using information contained in Automatic Identification System messages broadcasted by ships and recorded by the coastal Vessel Traffic Service centre. The approach consists of using historical Automatic Identification System data to build a graph, where nodes are cells of a grid covering the geographical area being studied and the weights of directional edges are inversely related to ship movements between cells. Based on this graph, the Dijkstra algorithm is used to identify a potential safe route, assumed to be the most used route by ships between two locations. A second graph is created simultaneously, with the same nodes and edges, but with edge weights equal to the average speed of transitions between cells, thus allowing the determination of the average speed profile for any possible path within the graph. The proposed approach is applied to two scenarios: an approach to the port of Lisbon and the entry through the fairway to a RO-RO terminal in the port of Setubal in Portugal.
- An overview on how failure analysis contributes to flight safety in the Portuguese Air ForcePublication . Duarte, Diogo.; Marado, Bruno.; Nogueira, João.; Serrano, Bruno.; Infante, Virgínia.; Moleiro, Filipa.Failure analysis has been, throughout the years, a fundamental tool used in the aerospace sector, supporting assessments performed by sustainment and design engineers mainly related to failure modes and material suitability. The predicted service life of aircrafts often exceeds 40 years, and the design assured life rarely accounts for all in service loads and in service environmental menaces that aging aircrafts must deal with throughout their service lives. From the most conservative safe-life conceptual design approaches to the most recent on-condition based design approaches, assessing the condition and predicting the failure modes of components and materials are essential for the development of adequate preventive and corrective maintenance actions as well as for the accomplishment and optimization of scheduled maintenance programs of aircrafts. Moreover, as the operational conditions of aircrafts may vary significantly from operator to operator (especially in military aircraft), it is necessary to access if the defined maintenance programs are adequate to guarantee the continuous reliability and safe usage of the aircrafts, preventing catastrophic failures which bear significant maintenance and repair costs, and that may lead to the loss of human lives. Thus being, failure analysis and material investigations performed as part of aircraft accidents and incidents investigations arise as powerful tools of the utmost importance for safety assurance and cost reduction within the aeronautical and aerospace sectors. The Portuguese Air Force (PRTAF) has operated different aircrafts throughout its long existence, and in some cases, has operated a particular type of aircraft for more than 30 years, gathering a great amount of expertise in: assessing failure modes of the aircrafts materials; conducting aircrafts accidents and incidents investigations (sometimes with the participation of the aircraft manufacturers and/or other operators); and in the development of design and repair solutions for in-service related problems. This paper addresses several studies to support the thesis that failure analysis plays a key role in flight safety improvement within the PRTAF. It presents a short summary of developed analysis and studies using optic and electronic (MEV) microscopy, material chemical composition analysis and Non Destructive Testing (NDT) to solve problems related to operation, maintenance and design issues. Additionally, it presents the investment that has been made by the Portuguese Air Force in the last two decades, to increase the flight safety through the implementation of powerful aircraft configuration management tools, and structural condition assessment methodologies based on strain measurements, NDT evaluation programs and, more recently, on Structural Health Monitoring systems in their fleets.
- Antioxidant Capacity and Identification of Bioactive Compounds of Myrtus communis L. Extract Obtained by Ultrasound-Assisted ExtractionPublication . Pereira, P.; Cebola, M.J.; Oliveira, M.C.; Bernardo-Gil, M. G.Ultrasound-assisted extraction was used to investigate the polyphenolic compounds, particularly anthocyanins, present in myrtle alcoholic extracts. This type of extract is typical in the making of liqueurs obtained from herbs or plants, especially medicinal plants. The leaf extracts were found to contain flavonoids from the quercetin and myricetin families. Besides these, the berry extracts also showed the presence of anthocyanins, hydrolysable tannins and quinic acid. The antioxidant capacity was studied using the ORAC and TEAC methods and the polyphenol content was measured using the Folin–Ciocalteu method. The results showed that the values produced by the ORAC and TEAC methods were in agreement and that the antioxidant capacity correlated with the polyphenol content. The results showed that the leaf extracts exhibited higher antioxidant capacity than the berry extracts. The extraction method was easily implementable, and proved to be a swift method for obtaining bioactive compounds from vegetable matrices.
- Artemia salina model: An important tool to screen general toxicity samplesPublication . Ntungwe, Epole; Isca, Vera M. S.; Pereira, Paula; Cebola, Maria-João; Rijo, PatriciaMedicinal plants are a good source of novel therapeutic drugs, due to the phytochemicals present. Artemia, commonly known as brine shrimp, is a tiny halophilic invertebrate belonging to class Crustacean, which plays an important role in saline aquatic and marine eco-systems. Besides its usage in aquaculture, it is also highly valued for its application in toxicity detection and it is used in areas such as Ecology, Physiology, Ecotoxicology, Aquaculture and Genetics. Furthermore, Artemia based lethality assay (brine shrimp lethality assay, BSLA) is rapid, convenient and low cost. Presently, brine shrimp lethality assays are enormously employed in research and applied toxicology. It has been used in the study of natural products as a preliminary toxicity assay to screen a large number of extracts and compounds for drug discovery in medicinal plants. The aim of this review paper is to collect, organize, select and discuss the existing knowledge about the different uses of Artemia salina as a bench-top bioassay for the discovery and purification of bioactive natural products.
- Assessment of Replacement of Metal Parts by BFRP Composites into a Highly Efficient Electrical PrototypePublication . Marat-Mendes, R.; Ribeira, D.; Reis, L.This work intends to evaluate the use of epoxy composite materials reinforced with basalt fibers as replacement to metallic mechanical parts of a highly efficient electrical prototype. The analysis of the behavior of the original metallic bracket was made and an optimization process was carried out in order to achieve the most suitable geometry and stacking sequence if produced in composite material. Finite element analysis using Siemens NX12 and experimental tests to the produced composite part were performed in order to access it. It was verified that the total weight of the composite part shows a 45% reduction. The composite part shows a higher deformation than the metallic one due to basalt fiber’s higher flexibility. However, the advantages added by the new component largely compensate for the disadvantages that may have been added without compromising its performance. Obtained results show that the use of basalt fiber reinforced composites as the material of mechanical parts of a highly efficient electrical prototype that is a good alternative.
- Bell operator and Gaussian squeezed states in noncommutative quantum mechanicsPublication . Bernardini, Alex E.; Bastos, Catarina.; Bertolami, Orfeu.; Costa Dias, Nuno.; Prata, João Nuno.We examine putative corrections to the Bell operator due to the noncommutativity in the phase space. Starting from a Gaussian squeezed envelope whose time evolution is driven by commutative (standard quantum mechanics) and noncommutative dynamics, respectively, we conclude that although the time-evolving covariance matrix in the noncommutative case is different from the standard case, the squeezing parameter dominates and there are no noticeable noncommutative corrections to the Bell operator. This indicates that, at least for squeezed states, the privileged states to test Bell correlations, noncommutativity versions of quantum mechanics remain as nonlocal as quantum mechanics itself.
- Benchmark exact solutions for the static analysis of multilayered piezoelectric composite plates using PVDFPublication . Moleiro, F; Soares, C.M. Mota; Soares, C.A. Mota; Reddy, J.N.The three-dimensional (3D) exact solutions developed in the early 1970s by Pagano for simply supported multilayered orthotropic composite plates and later in the 1990s extended to piezoelectric plates by Heyliger have been extremely useful in the assessment and development of advanced laminated plate theories and related finite element models. In fact, the well-known test cases provided by Pagano and by Heyliger in those earlier works are still used today as benchmark solutions. However, the limited number of test cases whose 3D exact solutions have been published has somewhat restricted the assessment of recent advanced models to the same few test cases. This work aims to provide additional test cases to serve as benchmark exact solutions for the static analysis of multilayered piezoelectric composite plates. The method introduced by Heyliger to derive the 3D exact solutions has been successfully implemented using symbolic computing and a number of new test cases are here presented thoroughly. Specifically, two multilayered plates using PVDF piezoelectric material are selected as test cases under two different loading conditions and considering three plate aspect ratios for thick, moderately thick and thin plate, in a total of 12 distinct test cases. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
- Boundaries and profiles in the Wigner formalismoPublication . Dias, N. C.; Prata, J. N.We consider a quantum device contained in an interval in the context of the Weyl–Wigner formalism. This approach was originally suggested by Frensley and is known to be plagued with several problems, such as non-physical and non-unique solutions. We show that some of these problems may be avoided if one writes the correct dynamical equation. This requires the (non-local) infuence of the potential outside of the device and the inclusion of singular boundary potentials. We also discuss the problem of imposing boundary conditions on the Wigner function that mimic the efect of the external environment. We argue that these conditions have to be chosen with extreme care, as they may otherwise lead to non-physical solutions
- Buckling behavior of composite and functionally graded material plates.Publication . Moita, José S.; Araújo, Aurélio L.; Correia, Victor Franco; Soares, C. M. Mota; Herskovits, JoséIn this work the formulation for linear buckling and for geometrically nonlinear analysis of laminated composite and functionally graded material (FGM) plates under mechanical uniaxial in-plane uniform loads, and thermal loads, is presented. An implemented finite element model based on a non-conforming triangular flat plate/shell element with three nodes and eight degrees of freedom per node, associated with a higher order shear deformation theory is used. The through the thickness variation of the material properties, discrete for laminated composite plates or continuous for FGM plates, as well as the through the thickness temperature distribution, originate a non-symmetry with respect to the middle-surface. Thus, in general, the occurrence of bifurcation-type buckling should be studied, and the transverse deflection at the centre of the plate could be a good indicator to anticipate this occurrence. The solutions of some illustrative examples involving different boundary conditions, composite lay-up, FGM variation of volume fractions, temperature distributions, material combinations, and boundary conditions are presented for benchmarking purposes, with emphasis for the plate transverse deflections. Linear solutions are compared with numerical alternative models. The occurrence of bifurcation-type buckling is discussed for several representative cases, the validity of the linear buckling solutions is addressed and nonlinear analyses have been performed for confirmation purposes.