• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.89 no.3
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• pp.225-238
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• 2024

In this paper, a quasi-3D hyperbolic shear deformation theory for the bending responses of a functionally graded (FG) porous micro-beam is based on a modified couple stress theory requiring only one material length scale parameter that can capture the size influence. The model proposed accounts for both shear and normal deformation effects through an illustrative variation of all displacements across the thickness and satisfies the zero traction boundary conditions on the top and bottom surfaces of the micro-beam. The effective material properties of the functionally graded micro-beam are assumed to vary in the thickness direction and are estimated using the homogenization method of power law distribution, which is modified to approximate the porous material properties with even and uneven distributions of porosity phases. The equilibrium equations are obtained using the virtual work principle and solved using Navier's technique. The validity of the derived formulation is established by comparing it with the ones available in the literature. Numerical examples are presented to investigate the influences of the power law index, material length scale parameter, beam thickness, and shear and normal deformation effects on the mechanical characteristics of the FG micro-beam. The results demonstrate that the inclusion of the size effects increases the microbeams stiffness, which consequently leads to a reduction in deflections. In contrast, the shear and normal deformation effects are just the opposite.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.497-504
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• 2020

For control of brucellosis in small ruminants, attenuated B. melitensis Rev1 is used but it can be virulent for animals and human. Based on these aspects, it is essential to identify potential immunogens to avoid these problems in prevention of brucellosis. The majority of OMPs in the Omp25/31 family have been studied because these proteins are relevant in maintaining the integrity of the outer membrane but their implication in the virulence of the different species of this genus is not clearly described. Therefore, in this work we studied the role of Omp31 on virulence by determining the residual virulence and detecting lesions in spleen and testis of mice inoculated with the B. melitensis LVM31 mutant strain. In addition, we evaluated the conferred protection in mice immunized with the mutant strain against the challenge with the B. melitensis Bm133 virulent strain. Our results showed that the mutation of omp31 caused a decrease in splenic colonization without generating apparent lesions or histopathological changes apparent in both organs in comparison with the control strains and that the mutant strain conferred similar protection as the B. melitensis Rev1 vaccine strain against the challenge with B. melitensis Bm133 virulent strain. These results allow us to conclude that Omp31 plays an important role on the virulence of B. melitensis in the murine model, and due to the attenuation shown by the strain, it could be considered a vaccine candidate for the prevention of goat brucellosis.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.547-567
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• 2013

Nonlinear behavior of functionally graded material (FGM) plates under thermal loads is investigated here using an efficient sinusoidal shear deformation theory. The displacement field is chosen based on assumptions that the in-plane and transverse displacements consist of bending and shear components, and the shear components of in-plane displacements give rise to the sinusoidal distribution of transverse shear stress through the thickness in such a way that shear stresses vanish on the plate surfaces. Therefore, there is no need to use shear correction factor. Unlike the conventional sinusoidal shear deformation theory, the proposed efficient sinusoidal shear deformation theory contains only four unknowns. The material is graded in the thickness direction and a simple power law based on the rule of mixture is used to estimate the effective material properties. The neutral surface position for such FGM plates is determined and the sinusoidal shear deformation theory based on exact neutral surface position is employed here. There is no stretching-bending coupling effect in the neutral surface-based formulation, and consequently, the governing equations and boundary conditions of functionally graded plates based on neutral surface have the simple forms as those of isotropic plates. The non-linear strain-displacement relations are also taken into consideration. The thermal loads are assumed as uniform, linear and non-linear temperature rises across the thickness direction. Closed-form solutions are presented to calculate the critical buckling temperature, which are useful for engineers in design. Numerical results are presented for the present efficient sinusoidal shear deformation theory, demonstrating its importance and accuracy in comparison to other theories.

• Mycobiology
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.385-391
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• 2017

The ability of Bacillus subtilis, strain ALICA to produce three mycolytic enzymes (chitinase, ${\beta}$-1,3-glucanase, and protease), was carried out by the chemical standard methods. Bacillus subtilis ALICA was screened based on their antifungal activity in dual plate assay and cell-free culture filtrate (25%) against five different phytopathogenic fungi Alternaria alternata, Macrophomina sp., Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, Botrytis cinerea, and Sclerotium rolfesii. The B. subtilis ALICA detected positive for chitinase, ${\beta}$-1,3-glucanase and protease enzymes. Fungal growth inhibition by both strain ALICA and its cell-free culture filtrate ranged from 51.36% to 86.3% and 38.43% to 68.6%, respectively. Moreover, hyphal morphological changes like damage, broken, swelling, distortions abnormal morphology were observed. Genes expression of protease, ${\beta}$-1,3-glucanase, and lipopeptides (subtilosin and subtilisin) were confirmed their presence in the supernatant of strain ALICA. Our findings indicated that strain ALICA provided a broad spectrum of antifungal activities against various phytopathogenic fungi and may be a potential effective alternative to chemical fungicides.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.10a
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• pp.422-424
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• 2022

We propose a novel data-driven mutation strategy for parent individuals selection, namely tensor-based DE with parapatric and cross-generation (TPCDE).

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.3_4
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• pp.365-381
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• 2012

Recent earthquakes have damaged some bridges located on the Pacific Coast of Mexico; these bridges have been retrofitted or rebuilt. Based on the fact that the Pacific Coast is a highly active seismic zone where most of the strong earthquakes in the country occur, one fertile and important area of research is the study of the vulnerability of both new and existent bridges located in this area that can be subjected to strong earthquakes. This work is focused on estimating the contribution of some parameters identified to have major influence on the seismic vulnerability of reinforced concrete bridges. Ten models of typical reinforced concrete (RC) bridges, and two existing bridges located close to the Pacific Coast of Mexico are considered. The group of structures selected for the study is based on two span bridges, two pier heights and two substructure types. The bridges were designed according to recent codes in Mexico. For the vulnerability study, the capacity of the structure was evaluated based on the FEMA recommendations. On the other hand, the demand was evaluated using a group of more than one hundred accelerograms recorded close to the subduction zone of Mexico. The results show that the two existent bridges analyzed show similar trends of behavior of the group of bridge models studied. In spite of the contribution that traditional variables (height and substructure type) had to the bridge seismic response, the bridge length was also found to be one of the parameters that most contributed to the seismic vulnerability of these RC medium-length bridges.

• Iberoamérica
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.33-77
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• 2021

Starting from the capabilities approach, this work develops the concept of Sustainable Wellbeing, which highlights the importance of incorporating temporal sustainability in the analysis of wellbeing, with intergenerational justice. For its measurement, 12 dimensions are identified and defined, based on the philosophical approach of Central Capabilities of Martha Nussbaum. The measurement is applied to 18 Latin American countries, with 116 indicators and using a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). The results show the viability of operationalizing the capabilities approach and its potential to support the formulation of associated policies.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.609-623
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• 2020

This paper presents a displacement-based seismic design procedure for new structures with fluid viscous dampers and/or for existing structures, where these devices are required as a retrofit measure and damage control. To consider the non-proportional damping produced by these devices in a conventional modal spectral analysis, the effect of the fluid viscous dampers is approximated as the sum of a proportional damping matrix and a complementary matrix which is representative of non-proportional damping matrix. To illustrate the application of this procedure and evaluate the performance of structures designed with the procedure proposed, five regular plane frames: 8, 12, 17, 20 and 25-storey, and an 8-storey building are designed. The seismic demands used for design and validation were the records obtained at the SCT site during the 1985 Michoacan earthquake, and that of the 2017 Morelos - Puebla earthquake obtained at the Culhuacan site, both stations located on soft soil sites. To validate the procedure proposed, the performances and damage distributions used as design targets were compared with the corresponding results from the nonlinear step-by-step analyses of the designed structures subjected to the same seismic demands.

• International Journal of CAD/CAM
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2010

When Deterministic Design Optimization (DDO) methods are used, deterministic optimum designs are frequently pushed to the design constraint boundary, leaving little or no room for tolerances (or uncertainties) in design, manufacture, and operating processes. In the Reliability-Based Design Optimization (RBDO) model for robust system design, the mean values of uncertain system variables are usually used as design variables, and the cost is optimized subject to prescribed probabilistic constraints as defined by a nonlinear mathematical programming problem. Therefore, a RBDO solution that reduces the structural weight in uncritical regions does not only provide an improved design but also a higher level of confidence in the design. In this work, we seek to improve the quality of RBDO processes using efficient optimization techniques with object of improving the resulting objective function and satisfying the required constraints. Our recent RBDO developments show its efficiency and applicability in this context. So we present some recent structural engineering applications demonstrate the efficiency of these developed RBDO methods.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.13-30
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• 2019

This paper presents the recent improvements in the DeCART code for HTGR analysis. A new 190-group DeCART cross-section library based on ENDF/B-VII.0 was generated using the KAERI library processing system for HTGR. Two methods for the eigen-mode adjoint flux calculation were implemented. An azimuthal angle discretization method based on the Gaussian quadrature was implemented to reduce the error from the azimuthal angle discretization. A two-level parallelization using MPI and OpenMP was adopted for massive parallel computations. A quadratic depletion solver was implemented to reduce the error involved in the Gd depletion. A module to generate equivalent group constants was implemented for the nodal codes. The capabilities of the DeCART code were improved for geometry handling including an approximate treatment of a cylindrical outer boundary, an explicit border model, the R-G-B checker-board model, and a super-cell model for a hexagonal geometry. The newly improved and implemented functionalities were verified against various numerical benchmarks such as OECD/MHTGR-350 benchmark phase III problems, two-dimensional high temperature gas cooled reactor benchmark problems derived from the MHTGR-350 reference design, and numerical benchmark problems based on the compact nuclear power source experiment by comparing the DeCART solutions with the Monte-Carlo reference solutions obtained using the McCARD code.