ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Mechanical Engineering
- Creators: Rajan, Subramaniam D.
To help better understand how the football helmet design features effect the brain response during impact, this research develops a validated football helmet model and couples it with a full LS-DYNA human body model developed by the Global Human Body Modeling Consortium (v4.1.1). The human body model is a conglomeration of several validated models of different sections of the body. Of particular interest for this research is the Wayne State University Head Injury Model for modeling the brain. These human body models were validated using a combination of cadaveric and animal studies. In this study, the football helmet was validated by laboratory testing using drop tests on the crown of the helmet. By coupling the two models into one finite element model, the brain response to impact loads caused by helmet design features can be investigated. In the present research, LS-DYNA is used to study a helmet crown impact with a rigid steel plate so as to obtain the strain-rate, strain, and stress experienced in the corpus callosum, midbrain, and brain stem as these anatomical regions are areas of concern with respect to mTBI.
In this work, two major accomplishments were achieved: 1) scaling laws were developed from hydrodynamic principles and numerical simulations to allow conversion of measured distributions of pressure peaks in a cavitating flow to distributions of microscopic impact loadings modeling individual bubble collapse events, and 2) a finite strain, thermo-mechanical material model for polyurea-based elastomers was developed using a logarithmic rate formulation and implemented into an explicit finite element code.
Combining the distribution of microscopic impact loads and finite element modeling, a semi-quantitative predictive framework is created to calculate the energy dissipation within the coating which can further the understanding of temperature induced coating failures.
The influence of coating thickness and elastomer rheology on the dissipation of impact energies experienced in cavitating flows has also been explored.
The logarithmic formulation has many desired features for the polyurea constitutive model, such as objectivity, integrability, and additive decomposition compatibility.
A review and discussion on the kinematics in large deformation, including a comparison between Lagrangian and Eulerian descriptions, are presented to explain the issues in building rate-dependent constitutive models in finite strains.
When comparing the logarithmic rate with other conventional rates in test examples, the logarithmic rate shows a better conservation of objectivity and integrability.
The modeling framework was validated by comparing predictions against temperatures measured within coatings subjected to a cavitating jet.
Both the experiments and models show that the temperatures generated, even under mild flow conditions, raise the coating temperature by a significant amount, suggesting that the failure of these coatings under more aggressive flows is thermally induced.
The models show that thin polyurea coatings synthesized with shorter molecular weight soft segments dissipate significantly less energy per impact and conduct heat more efficiently.
This work represents an important step toward understanding thermally induced failure in elastomers subjected to cavitating flows, which provides a foundation for design and optimization of coatings with enhanced erosion resistance.