A review of impact loads on composite wind turbine blades: Impact threats and classification

A fiber-reinforced composite wind turbine blade (WTB) is exposed to numerous impact threats during its service life causing damages that can be detrimental to its structural integrity. Currently, impact loads are not considered during blade design, so high safety factors are introduced, which result in a conservative design. However, as wind...

Additive manufacturing of vascular stents

With the advancement of additive manufacturing (AM), customized vascular stents can now be fabricated to fit the curvatures and sizes of a narrowed or blocked blood vessel, thereby reducing the possibility of thrombosis and restenosis. More importantly, AM enables the design and fabrication of complex and functional stent unit cells that...

Railway ballast performance: Recent advances in the understanding of geometry, distribution and degradation

Railway ballast performance is dictated by a complex mix of mechanical properties. These effect its performance at the particle level for example in terms of particle degradation, but also at the track system level in terms of settlement and stability. Therefore this paper seeks to develop new understandings of ballast behaviour and identify...

A critical review on the vertical stiffness irregularity of railway ballasted track

The dynamic performance of a railway track subjected to moving trains depends strongly on track support conditions. In reality, even for the well-constructed and well-maintained tracks, sleeper support stiffness and global track stiffness vary substantially along the track, which affects the train-track dynamic interactions, causing rapid...

Improving the Mechanical Properties of Additively Manufactured Micro-Architected Biodegradable Metals

Additively manufactured (AM) micro-architected biodegradable metals offer a unique combination of properties that are ideal for bone regeneration including biocompatibility, a fully interconnected porous structure, and the possibility to fully regenerate bony defects with native tissue upon biodegradation. Currently, the mechanical properties...