The fabrication procedure of ferroelectric thin film capacitors onto conventional Si LSIs is investigated. Electrical characteristics of the integrated Ba_{1- x} Sr _x TiO₃ (BST) capacitors and the metal-oxide-semiconductor transistors embedded in the Si substrate are examined. Results of these measurements suggest the usefulness of this integration process for the fabrication of ferroelectric thin film devices, which is substantiated by the evaluation of an analog/digital IC with the integrated BST bypass capacitor.

Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with radiolabeled drugs holds great promise to assess the influence of membrane transporters on hepatobiliary clearance of drugs. To exploit the full...

As an improvement of the intensity correlation used widely in conventional electronic speckle photography, we propose a new technique for displacement measurement based on correlating Stokes‐like parameters derivatives for transformed speckle patterns. The method is based on a Riesz transform of the intensity speckle pattern, which converts the original real‐valued signal into a complex signal. In closest analogy to the polarisation of a vector wave, the Stokes‐like vector constructed from the spatial derivative of the generated complex signal has been applied for correlation. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the validity and advantage of the proposed pseudo‐Stokes vector correlation technique over conventional intensity correlation technique.

In this study, the finite element analysis of the string planes of badminton racquets was investigated to evaluate the effect of the mechanical characteristics of polymer strings. The nonlinear mechanical characteristics of commercially available polymer strings were obtained by the uniaxial loading tests experimentally. The effects of the strain rate on the mechanical characteristics of the polymer strings were also investigated to consider the dynamic effect on the numerical simulation. The numerical simulation code used to analyze the string planes of the badminton racquets was developed originally. A nonlinear elastic model (Yeoh model) was applied to the mechanical characteristics of the polymer string. Simulated results were compared with the experimental results. The effect of the mechanical characteristics of the polymer strings and the geometrical shape of the badminton racquets on the out-of-plane stiffnesses were investigated.

Materials such as natural leather and artificial leather are some of the most important materials in sports. Natural leathers have been widely used for sports equipment. Currently, artificial leathers are also often used in sports as an alternative to natural leathers. However, the structure of both artificial and natural leather materials is complex because both biochemical and artificial fibers are contained in the body. Due to the effect of internal fibers, anisotropic mechanical characteristics of leathers are observed. Also, the fiber orientations are dispersed, and fiber orientation dispersion and degree of anisotropy have correlations. Regarding the manufacturing process of sports equipment made with artificial and natural leather materials, it is important to consider the anisotropic mechanical characteristics and fiber orientation dispersion to improve design performance. In this study, uniaxial tensile loading tests were conducted on three types of leather materials to investigate their anisotropic characteristics, and an anisotropic hyperelastic model for leather materials was proposed. Also, numerical simulations using the finite element method (FEM) were performed. Tensile loading tests were performed on an artificial leather and two types of natural leather. The results revealed that all materials exhibited anisotropic behaviors and different anisotropic characteristics were observed in each material. The existence of one fiber family was revealed in the artificial leather and that of two fiber families was revealed in the natural leathers. Regarding the FE simulations, the mechanical properties of the three types of leathers were reproduced by the proposed model. The mechanical characteristics of leather materials which had one fiber family and two fiber families could be reproduced. The applicability of the proposed hyperelastic model to evaluate the mechanical properties of leather materials was demonstrated.

The effect of string pattern on the mechanical characteristics of a tennis racket were simulated numerically. A numerical simulation program to evaluate deformation of the string bed of a tennis racket was developed using the finite element method. The formulation of a numerical simulation code is described in this paper. The applicability of the developed simulation program was investigated by comparing experimental results of loading tests on string bed specimens, for which the distance between strings was 12 mm. The out-of-plane stiffness and sliding characteristics of strings of an actual racket were simulated using the developed simulation code.