A technique for measuring dynamic friction coefficient under impact loading.

We develop a novel setup based on the split Hopkinson pressure bar technique to test the dynamic friction coefficient under impact loading. In the setup, the major improvement is that the end of the incident bar near the specimen is wedge-shaped, which results in a combined compressive and shear loading applied to the specimen. In fact, the shear loading is caused by the interfacial friction between specimen and bars. Therefore, when the two loading force histories are measured, the friction coefficient histories can be calculated without any assumptions and theoretical derivations. The geometry of the friction pairs is simple, and can be either cuboid or cylindrical. Regarding the measurements, two quartz transducers are used to directly record the force histories, and an optical apparatus is designed to test the interfacial slip movement. By using the setup, the dynamic friction coefficient of PTFE/aluminum 7075 friction pairs was tested. The time resolved dynamic friction coefficient and slip movement histories were achieved. The results show that the friction coefficient changes during the loading process, the average data of the relatively stable flat plateau section of the friction coefficient curves is 0.137, the maximum normal pressure is 52 MPa, the maximum relative slip velocity is 1.5 m/s, and the acceleration is 8400 m(2)/s. Furthermore, the friction test was simulated using an explicit FEM code LS-DYNA. The simulation results showed that the constant pressure and slip velocity can both be obtained with a wide flat plateau incident pulse. For some special friction pairs, normal pressure up to a few hundred MPa, interfacial slip velocities up to 10 m/s, and slip movement up to centimeter-level can be expected.

Intranasal immunisation with Stx2B-Tir-Stx1B-Zot protein leads to decreased shedding in goats after challenge with Escherichia coli O157:H7.

Ruminants are an important reservoir of Escherichia coli O157:H7. To reduce E coli O157:H7 excretion by these animals could play a key role in prevention and control of human infections. In the present study, the authors used 12 three-month-old goats to evaluate the efficacy of intranasal administration of the Stx2B-Tir-Stx1B-Zot protein. These goats were inoculated on days 0 and 21 and infected with 10(10) colony-forming units (cfu) of E coli O157:H7 by oral inoculation on day 36. Faecal shedding was monitored daily for two weeks. All of six goats immunised with recombinant protein elicited significant Stx2b-Tir-Stx1b-Zot-specific serum IgG antibodies, and three of them also showed production of antigen-specific IgA in faeces. The immunised goats showed much less shedding of E coli O157:H7 after challenge. These results demonstrate the potential for the use of Stx2B-Tir-Stx1B-Zot protein in mucosal vaccine formulations to prevent colonisation and shedding of E coli O157:H7 in goats.

A technique for combined dynamic compression-shear test.

It is critically important to study the dynamic response of materials under a combined compression-shear loading for developing constitutive laws more accurately and fully. We present a novel technique to achieve the combined compression and shear loadings at high strain rates. The main apparatus consists of a strike bar, an incident bar, and two transmission bars. The close-to-specimen end of the incident bar is wedge-shaped with 90°. In each experiment, there are two identical specimens, respectively, agglutinated between one side of the wedge and one of transmission bars. When a loading impulse travels to specimens along the incident bar, because of the special geometrical shape, the specimen-incident bar interface gets an axial and a transverse velocity. Specimens endure a combined compression-shear loading at high strain rates. The compression stress and strain of the specimens are deduced from signals recorded by strain gages mounted on the bars. The shear stress is measured by two piezoelectric transducers of quartz (Y-cut with rotation angle 17.7°) embedded at the close-to-specimen end of transmission bars; the shear strain is measured with a novel optical technique, which is based on the luminous flux method. An analytic model was proposed and validated by the numerical simulations. The simulation results yield good agreement with the analytic results. The proposed technique was then validated through experiments carried out on lead specimens, by comparing experimental results with that of the split Hopkinson pressure bar experiments.