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In response to a series of engineering disasters encountered during the excavation and support construction of loess tunnels, considering the issues of water enrichment in surrounding rock induced by excavation disturbance and system bolt failure, drawing on the concepts of lime pile composite foundation and composite bearing arch, and based on the principle of the New Austrian Tunneling Method (NATM) that fully mobilizes and leverages the self-supporting capacity of surrounding rock, this study comprehensively considers the wetting and stress adjustment processes of the surrounding rock after excavation disturbance in loess tunnels. By adopting the technical principle of "water absorption and densification of shallow surrounding rock, suspension and anchoring of deep surrounding rock, and composite arch bearing", a new type of water-absorbing, densifying, and anchoring bolt was developed that can reduce the water content of surrounding rock while enhancing its resistance. To further investigate the water absorption, densification effect, and pull-out bearing characteristics of this new bolt, laboratory model tests were conducted, examining the temperature, pore water pressure, densification stress of the soil around the bolt, as well as the physical properties of the soil in the consolidation zone. The test results indicate that a cylindrical heat source forms around the water-absorbing, densifying, and anchoring bolt, significantly inducing the thermal consolidation of the surrounding soil. The variations in temperature, pore water pressure, and densification stress of the soil around the bolt truly reflect the qualitative patterns of hydro-thermal–mechanical changes during the water absorption, curing, and exothermic reaction processes. The water absorption and densification segment of the bolt effectively enhances the density of the soil in the water absorption, densification, and consolidation zone, improving soil strength parameters. Compared to traditional mortar-bonded bolts, the water-absorbing, densifying, and anchoring bolt exhibits a greater pull-out bearing capacity. The research findings provide important guidance for the theoretical design and engineering application of this new type of bolt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphene nanoplatelets (GPLs) are considered to be a desirable reinforcing nanofillers for nanocomposite materials owing to their superior thermo‐mechanical properties. Meanwhile, thermoelastic damping (TED), as a dominant intrinsic dissipation mechanisms, is a major challenge in optimizing high‐performance micro/nano‐resonators. Nevertheless, the classical TED models fail at the micro/nano‐scale due to without considering the influences of the size‐dependent effect and the thermal lagging effect. The present work focuses on investigating TED analysis of functionally graded (FG) microplate resonators reinforced with GPLs based on the modified coupled stress theory (MCST) and the Moore–Gibson–Thompson (MGT) heat conduction model. Four patterns of GPLs distribution including the UD, FG‐O, FG‐X and FG‐A pattern distributions are taken into account and the effective mechanical properties of the plate‐type nanocomposite are evaluated based on the Halpin–Tsai model. The energy equation and the transverse motion equation in the Kirchhoff microplate model are formulated, and then, the closed‐from analytical solution of TED is solved by complex frequency method. The influences of the various parameters involving the material length‐scale parameter, the thermal phase lag of the heat flux and the total weight fraction of GPLs on the TED are discussed in detail. The obtained results show that the effects of the modified parameter on the TED are pronounced. This results provide a more reasonable theoretical approach to estimate TED in the design of FG microplate resonators reinforced with GPLs with high performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Porous materials have been extensively used in electronic communications, aerospace, bio-medicine and petrochemical, etc. due to their attractive attributes such as low relative density, thermal and acoustical insulation and good permeability. Ultrashort laser pulses have a series of unique advantages including high energy density, ultrashort interaction time and high accuracy, which are widely used in the fields of precision machining and microelectronic manufacture. For porous materials heated by an ultrashort laser pulse, revealing the interplay between deformation field and temperature field is crucial to guide their engineering application and optimization design. The present work devotes to investigating the transient response of a porous half-space heated by a non-Gaussian laser beam on its boundary surface based on the newly established linear thermoelastic theory with strain and thermal relaxations. The coupled governing equations are formulated and solved through the Laplace transform and its numerical inversion. The distributions of the non-dimensional temperature, displacement, stress as well as volume fraction field are obtained and illustrated graphically. In calculation, the effects of the thermal relaxation factor, the strain relaxation factor on the temperature field, volume fraction field, displacement field as well as stress field are examined and discussed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With their abilities to induce electric charge, stress or deformation in response to external forces as well as the ease of fabrication, design flexibility and excellent electromechanical properties, piezoelectric materials have been widely used in actuators, sensors and even in nano/micro-electro-mechanical systems. With the rapid advancement of nano/micro-technology, from the perspective of theoretical analysis, the priority is to develop applicable models to describe the piezoelectric-thermoelastic responses of piezoelectric nano/micro-structures suffering transient heat conduction by taking the size-dependent effect and the memory-dependent effect into consideration. In this work, a new model based on the existing piezoelectric-thermoelastic model is established by introducing the nonlocality into the constitutive equations and the memory-dependent derivative into Moore-Gibson-Thompson (MGT) heat conduction equation respectively. Then, this new model is applied to investigating the dynamic responses of a piezoelectric nanoplate subjected to thermal shock. The corresponding governing equations are formulated and then solved by Laplace transform and its numerical inversion. In calculation, the influences of the time delay factor and the kernel function of MDD and the non-local parameter on the thermal, electric and elastic fields in the piezoelectric nanoplate are examined. Meanwhile, the predictions of transient response among different thermoelastic models are compared. The numerical results are illustrated graphically and discussed in detail. The obtained results show that MDD has a significant effect on the transient response, where the effect of the kernel function is more pronounced. This work may provide a theoretical reference for strength design, thermal protection and thermal processing strategies for piezoelectric nanodevices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, published in the International Journal of Applied Mechanics, discusses a new theory of fractional-order rate-dependent piezoelectric thermoelasticity and its application in analyzing the structural transient response of smart piezoelectric composite laminates. The authors develop unified forms of fractional-order strain and heat conduction by adopting different types of fractional derivatives. They establish a fractional-order rate-dependent piezoelectric thermoelasticity theory and derive constitutive and governing equations using an extended thermodynamics framework. The theory is then applied to investigate the dynamic thermo-electromechanical responses of smart piezoelectric composite laminates with imperfect interfacial conditions. The influences of different fractional derivatives, imperfect interfacial conditions, and materials constants ratios on wave propagations and structural thermo-electromechanical responses are evaluated and discussed. [Extracted from the article]

Functionally graded sandwich micro/nano-structures have attracted great attention due to the capability to resist high noise and thermal stress in a non-isothermal environment. Additionally, the design of high quality-factor micro/nano-resonators requires accurate estimation of their thermoelastic damping. However, the classical thermoelastic damping models fail at the micro/nano-scale due to the influences of the size-dependent effects related to heat transfer and elastic deformation. This work aims to investigate the influences of the size-dependent effects on the thermoelastic damping of functionally graded sandwich micro-beam resonators by combining the nonlocal dual-phase-lag heat conduction model and the nonlocal elasticity model. It is assumed that the functionally graded sandwich micro-beam resonators consist of a ceramic core and functionally graded surfaces. The energy equation and the transverse motion equation are derived. The analytical expression of thermoelastic damping is obtained by complex frequency method. Numerical results are analyzed for the effects of the thermal nonlocal parameter, the elastic nonlocal parameter, the power-law index, and the vibration modes on the thermoelastic damping of functionally graded sandwich micro-beam resonators. The results show that the thermoelastic damping of functionally graded sandwich micro-beam resonators can be adjusted by the suitably modified parameters, which strongly depends on the double nonlocal effects and the power-law index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]