The turbine designs differed in support strut section, blade-strut joint design and strut location to evaluate their effect on power output, torque fluctuation levels and mounting forces.
Strut section and blade-strut joint design were determined to significantly influence total power output between the three turbine designs, with strut location having a smaller but still significant effect.
In particular, the strut section of the AFO has an intricate geometry to allow the adjustment of the foot to shank angle and other attachment points while maintaining the strength required to withstand the forces generated during gait.
The design presented here is essentially a dynamic AFO and consists of four AM components: shank section, strut, foot section, and slider.
4.10 Two strut sectional ladder.
It is shown that the foam elastic properties depend on the relative foam density, the shape and size of the strut cross-section, and the Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio of the strut material.
It is predicted that reducing the number of grains through the strut cross section and increasing the number of grains along the strut length have detrimental effects on mechanical performance.
By applying the new model, a parametric study of sample cases involving the three loading modes and the four strut cross-section shapes is conducted for carbon foams, whose modeling motivated this work.
The use of these stiffness submatrices enables the incorporation of all four deformation mechanisms (i.e., stretching, shearing, bending and twisting) possible under the specified loadings and the treatment of four different strut cross-section shapes (i.e., circle, square, equilateral triangle and Plateau border) in a unified manner.
The critical strut region cross section area of knuckle was analyzed and geometrically optimized for minimum bending stress and deflection using genetic algorithm available in MatLab.
A recent analytical model describing the post-buckling behaviour of an I-section strut experiencing strong axis global local buckling interaction is extended to investigate the effects of modifying the strut geometry.
