Polytechnic University of Milan

About: Polytechnic University of Milan is a education organization based out in Milan, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Computer science & Finite element method. The organization has 18231 authors who have published 58416 publications receiving 1229711 citations. The organization is also known as: PoliMi & L-NESS.

Molecular and Nanostructural Mechanisms of Deformation, Strength and Toughness of Spider Silk Fibrils.

Abstract: Spider dragline silk is one of the strongest, most extensible and toughest biological materials known, exceeding the properties of many engineered materials including steel. Silk features a hierarchical architecture where highly organized, densely H-bonded beta-sheet nanocrystals are arranged within a semiamorphous protein matrix consisting of 3(1)-helices and beta-turn protein structures. By using a bottom-up molecular-based approach, here we develop the first spider silk mesoscale model, bridging the scales from Angstroms to tens to potentially hundreds of nanometers. We demonstrate that the specific nanoscale combination of a crystalline phase and a semiamorphous matrix is crucial to achieve the unique properties of silks. Our results reveal that the superior mechanical properties of spider silk can be explained solely by structural effects, where the geometric confinement of beta-sheet nanocrystals, combined with highly extensible semiamorphous domains, is the key to reach great strength and great toughness, despite the dominance of mechanically inferior chemical interactions such as H-bonding. Our model directly shows that semiamorphous regions govern the silk behavior at small deformation, unraveling first when silk is being stretched and leading to the large extensibility of the material. Conversely, beta-sheet nanocrystals play a significant role in defining the mechanical behavior of silk at large-deformation. In particular, the ultimate tensile strength of silk is controlled by the strength of beta-sheet nanocrystals, which is directly related to their size, where small beta-sheet nanocrystals are crucial to reach outstanding levels of strength and toughness. Our results and mechanistic insight directly explain recent experimental results, where it was shown that a significant change in the strength and toughness of silk can be achieved solely by tuning the size of beta-sheet nanocrystals. Our findings help to unveil the material design strategy that enables silk to achieve superior material performance despite simple and inferior material constituents. This concept could lead to a new materials design paradigm, where enhanced functionality is not achieved using complex building blocks but rather through the utilization of simple repetitive constitutive elements arranged in hierarchical structures from nano to macro.

Human respiratory muscle actions and control during exercise

Abstract: Aliverti, A., S. J. Cala, R. Duranti, G. Ferrigno, C. M. Kenyon, A. Pedotti, G. Scano, P. Sliwinski, Peter T. Macklem, and S. Yan. Human respiratory muscle actions and control during exercise.J. Ap...

Finite-Time Event-Triggered $\mathcal{H}_{\infty }$ Control for T–S Fuzzy Markov Jump Systems

Abstract: This paper investigates the finite-time event-triggered $\mathcal{H}_{\infty }$ control problem for Takagi–Sugeno Markov jump fuzzy systems. Because of the sampling behaviors and the effect of network environment, the premise variables considered in this paper are subject to asynchronous constraints. The aim of this paper is to synthesize a controller via an event-triggered communication scheme such that not only the resulting closed-loop system is finite-time bounded and satisfies a prescribed $\mathcal{H}_{\infty }$ performance level, but also the communication burden is reduced. First, a sufficient condition is established for the finite-time bounded $\mathcal{H} _{\infty }$ performance analysis of the closed-loop fuzzy system with fully considering the asynchronous premises. Then, based on the derived condition, the method of the desired controller design is presented. Two illustrative examples are finally presented to demonstrate the practicability and efficacy of the proposed method.