The thermoelastic problem associated with a point heat source embedded in an anisotropic body containing an elliptic hole or a rigid inclusion is considered in this paper. By using the formalism of Stroh [1], the approach of analytic function continuation and the technique of conformal mapping, the expression for the temperature, displacements and stress functions is expressed in explicit matrix form. The present derived solutions are also valid for some special problems such as a crack or a rigid line inclusion if one lets the minor axis of the ellipse approach to zero. The stress intensity factors induced by a point heat source are also obtained.

Experiments are performed to study the unsteadiness of rectangular cavity flows at Mach 0.325, 0.620 and 0.818. Typical characteristics of mean surface pressure distributions show a slight pressure variation near the front face, a local peak surface pressure ahead of the rear corner and a low pressure at immediate downstream of the cavity. Larger peak pressure and pressure variation near the cavity rear face are observed as the length-to-depth ratio increases. Surface pressure fluctuation distribution shows an increase toward the cavity rear face and reaches a peak value. At further downstream locations, the level of surface pressure fluctuation approaches the value of incoming flow. The amplitude of peak surface pressure fluctuation is associated with length-to-depth ratio and reaches the maximum at length-to-depth ratio of 8.60. This is considered due to intermittent switching between open- and closed-cavity flows. Higher moments of surface pressure signal at immediate downstream of the cavity show a similar trend. More negative skewness coefficient and larger deviation of flatness coefficient indicate the presence of more large negative events, which is mainly corresponding to mass removal process (breath-out phase). This unsteady mass flow is more pronounced at higher Mach number.

Recently, in the fields of biosensing and nondestructive of materials, there are increasing interests on the investigations of the surface wave propagation in fluid loaded layered medium. Several different models for the elastic coefficients of viscous liquids are usually adopted in the investigations. The purpose of this paper is to study the variations of choosing different viscous liquid models on the dispersion and attenuation of waves in liquid loaded solids. In the paper, a derivation of the elastic coefficients of a viscous liquid based on the Stokes' assumption is given first. Then, for the hypothetical solid assumption of a viscous liquid, the associated wave equations and expressions of the stress components for different viscous liquid models utilized in the literatures are given. Finally, dispersion and attenuation of waves in a viscous liquid loaded A1 half space and a SiC plate immersed in a viscous liquid are calculated and utilized to discuss the differences among these four different models.

This paper develops a method to re-evaluate the reliability of a structure after a period of service. System identification is performed on the structure to identify the current properties of the structure. The Bayesian approach is adopted to modify the prior distributions of the properties based on the identification results. Then, reliability analysis is performed on the structure using the updated distributions of the properties. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to attain the maintenance strategy.

This paper uses a simple model, the lumped single-degree-of-freedom system on rigid mat foundation, to investigate the effects of soil-structure interaction on the dynamic response of a soil-structure system. Based on that, the key parameters affecting the natural frequency of a soil-structure system can be easily identified and be used to assess the effects of soil-structure interaction. Accordingly, it was used to simulate the dynamic response of the forced vibration tests conducted at Hualien, Taiwan. Results obtained show that the simple model can predict the field responses very satisfactorily.

For most composite structures, because of the uncertainty in some design variables, it is not possible to predict precisely the stresses during design stage. Therefore, monitoring the structural responses in service becomes crucial for structure with concerns, e.g., the composite panels on an airplane, etc. In this study, the strains at neighboring points of the interested location on surfaces of the laminate, along with the classical laminate theory and the higher-order shear deformation theory, are used to predict the interlaminar shear stresses in the cross-ply laminate. Several numerical examples using the simulated surface strains are employed to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed technique. It is found that the approach using the higher-order shear deformation theory has improved accuracy for the analysis of thick symmetric laminate over the approach using the classical laminate theory.