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Every contacting surface inevitably experiences wear. Predicting the exact amount of material loss due to wear relies on empirical data and cannot be obtained from any physical model. Here, we analyze and quantify wear at the most fundamental level, i.e., ...
The macroscopic friction of particulate materials often weakens as the flow rate is increased, leading to potentially disastrous intermittent phenomena including earthquakes and landslides. We theoretically and numerically study this phenomenon in simple g ...
We present an omnidirectional ball wheel drive design that utilizes a permanent magnet as the drive roller to generate the contact force. Particularly interesting for novel human-mobile robot interaction scenarios where the users are expected to physically ...
The efficiency and peculiarities of processes such as surface adsorption or electron-to-photon energy conversion in organic and inorganic structures are determined by the dynamics at the scale of individual molecules, atoms and charges. The timescales of s ...
In this article, we propose a multi-staged algorithm to detect the magnitude, direction and location of a single external force applied to a humanoid robot while performing dynamic tasks. We use contact force and joint torque sensors as well as IMU to esti ...
Increasing demand for clean sources of energy have forced electricity providers to paymore attention to their hydropower assets. Silt erosion is a destructive phenomenon that may occur in hydropower plants. The power plant subjected to silt erosion require ...
In this work models with nonlinear wheel-rail contact forces are considered for analysing the dynamic interaction between high speed trains and bridges, in order to study dynamic effects both in the bridge and in the vehicles resulting from the coupling. N ...
We study nonlocal effects associated with particle collisions in dense suspension flows, in the context of the Affine Solvent Model, known to capture various aspects of the jamming transition. We show that an individual collision changes significantly the ...
Flat slabs are commonly used in Switzerland but also in north America and in many European countries. Slab bridges are also a typical solution for crossing of motorways for example. In both cases, supporting a slab by columns is justified by the simplicity ...
We study the relationship between microscopic structure and viscosity in non-Brownian suspensions. We argue that the formation and opening of contacts between particles in flow effectively leads to a negative selection of the contacts carrying weak forces. ...
