Papers by Author: Hiroomi Homma

Abstract: In this paper, the prediction and comparison of the behavior of thin-walled prismatic structures (square tube, top-hat and double-hat sections) in absorbing energy using theoretical and numerical analysis are presented. Equations to predict crushing length and dynamic mean crushing force of top-hat and double-hat sections were applied for material mild steel St37 and the effect of spot weld positions are also figured out. For comparison, an explicit non-linear commercial finite element code LS-DYNA was used to predict the response of the structures subjected to axial crushing. It was found that results of numerical methods and theoretical prediction have good agreement. Assuming that the failure of spot-weld is neglected, mean dynamic crushing force of double-hat section is 90% higher compared to that of square tube.

Abstract: Under very short pulse loads in range from 25 to 100 μs, crack tip plasticity a head of the crack tip in the mode I condition was investigated by discrete dislocation dynamics. The obtained dislocation array parameters such as the number of dislocations, dislocation distribution density, crack tip opening displacement and plastic zone size increase with the magnitude of stress intensity factor, KI and pulse durations. The numerical results were well compared with the experimental ones.

Abstract: To better understand the behavior of stresses generated inside a kidney stone by direct pulse impingement during extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL), numerical analyses are performed in this work. LS-DYNA, an explicit Finite Element code for non-linear dynamic analysis is employed to investigate the effect of stone geometry to the stress field evolution inside the stone when subjected to short pulse wave. Circular disks with parts removed from the front and the back are used to model the stones that assumed have already had initial fracture. The other variation of spherical geometry such as ellipse is also considered in the numerical calculation.

Abstract: The dynamic fracture tests were carried out for a glass fiber reinforced plastic specimen with a crack and dynamic fracture toughness was evaluated by examination of cracking at an initial slit root. Before the crack initiated at the slit root, a whitened damage zone was created surrounding the slit tip. The damage zone consists of micro cracking in the matrix, debonding between a fiber and the matrix, and fracture of the fiber. The comparison of the dynamic fracture toughness and the static fracture toughness value shows that the former is around 12 MPa√m and apparently higher than the later, which is 7 MPa√m. To understand those experimental results and mechanics of the damage zone, a dynamic debonding test was carried out and dynamic bonding strength was estimated as around 70 MPa.

Abstract: This paper proposes an application of the inverse analysis to estimate the elastic response ahead of the crack-tip of a one-point bend specimen. The difficulty of the problem lies on determination of the impulse response function that relates the elastic response to a unit applied impact force which is numerically ill-posed. Two iterative numerical regularization schemes are proposed, first is a time-domain regularization based on the conjugate-gradient method and second is a frequency-domain regularization based on an optimal filter approach. Both schemes are evaluated by using the data obtained from an impact experiment. The result shows that the estimation error is about 18.0%.

Abstract: To understand fundamentals of kidney stone™s fragmentation by shock wave impingement, experimental approach was carried out. Air gun system was used to transfer a well-controlled stress wave into a thin disk specimen. The specimen was fabricated with plaster and its dimensions are 10 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm in thickness. The obtained results are summarized as follows: As the stress pulse duration is decreased from 12 microseconds to 5 microseconds, the critical stress for fracture increased tremendously. The critical fracture stress for a specimen with a small hole in the specimen center is about one fifth of that for the plain specimen. The fracture takes place along the diameter perpendicular to the stress wave incident direction. Numerical stress analysis suggests that the principal stress criterion can explain the fracture mode.