Analysis of Force Mitigation by Boots in Axial Impacts using a Lower Leg Finite Element Model.

Lower extremity injuries caused by floor plate impacts through the axis of the lower leg are a major source of injury and disability for civilian and military vehicle occupants. A collection of PMHS pendulum impacts was revisited to obtain data for paired booted/unbooted test on the same leg. Five sets of paired pendulum impacts (10 experiments in total) were found using four lower legs from two PMHS.

Large Electro-Optic Kerr Effect in Ionic Liquid Crystals: Connecting Features of Liquid Crystals and Polyelectrolytes.

The electro-optic Kerr effect in simple dipolar fluids such as nitrobenzene has been widely applied in electro-optical phase modulators and light shutters. In 2005, the discovery of the large Kerr effect in liquid-crystalline blue phases (Y. Hisakado et al.

Human Foot-Ankle Injuries and Associated Risk Curves from Under Body Blast Loading Conditions.

Under body blast (UBB) loading to military transport vehicles is known to cause foot-ankle fractures to occupants due to energy transfer from the vehicle floor to the feet of the soldier. The soldier posture, the proximity of the event with respect to the soldier, the personal protective equipment (PPE) and age/sex of the soldier are some variables that can influence injury severity and injury patterns. Recently conducted experiments to simulate the loading environment to the human foot/ankle in UBB events (~5ms rise time) with variables such as posture, age and PPE were used for the current study.

Biomechanical Response of Military Booted and Unbooted Foot-Ankle-Tibia from Vertical Loading.

A new anthropomorphic test device (ATD) is being developed by the US Army to be responsive to vertical loading during a vehicle underbody blast event. To obtain design parameters for the new ATD, a series of non-injurious tests were conducted to derive biofidelity response corridors for the foot-ankle complex under vertical loading. Isolated post mortem human surrogate (PMHS) lower leg specimens were tested with and without military boot and in different initial foot-ankle positions.

First Examples of de Vries-like Smectic A to Smectic C Phase Transitions in Ionic Liquid Crystals.

In ionic liquid crystals, the orthogonal smectic A phase is the most common phase whereas the tilted smectic C phase is rather rare. We present a new study with five novel ionic liquid crystals exhibiting both a smectic A as well as the rare smectic C phase. Two of them have a phenylpyrimidine core whereas the other three are imidazolium azobenzenes.