BackgroundThe differential diagnosis between patients with essential tremor (ET) and those with Parkinson’s disease (PD) whose main manifestation is tremor may be difficult unless using complex neuroimaging techniques such as 123I-FP-CIT SPECT. We considered that using smartphone’s accelerometer to stablish a diagnostic test based on time-frequency differences between PD an ET could support the clinical diagnosis.MethodsThe study was carried out in 17 patients with PD, 16 patients with ET, 12 healthy volunteers and 7 patients with tremor of undecided diagnosis (TUD), who were re-evaluated one year after the first visit to reach the definite diagnosis. The smartphone was placed over the hand dorsum to record epochs of 30 s at rest and 30 s during arm stretching. We generated frequency power spectra and calculated receiver operating characteristics curves (ROC) curves of total spectral power, to establish a threshold to separate subjects with and without tremor. In patients with PD and ET, we found that the ROC curve of relative energy was the feature discriminating better between the two groups. This threshold was then used to classify the TUD patients.ResultsWe could correctly classify 49 out of 52 subjects in the category with/without tremor (97.96% sensitivity and 83.3% specificity) and 27 out of 32 patients in the category PD/ET (84.38% discrimination accuracy). Among TUD patients, 2 of 2 PD and 2 of 4 ET were correctly classified, and one patient having PD plus ET was classified as PD.ConclusionsBased on the analysis of smartphone accelerometer recordings, we found several kinematic features in the analysis of tremor that distinguished first between healthy subjects and patients and, ultimately, between PD and ET patients. The proposed method can give immediate results for the clinician to gain valuable information for the diagnosis of tremor. This can be useful in environments where more sophisticated diagnostic techniques are unavailable.

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Incremental forming can be an alternative manufacturing means in producing biomedical parts characterized by the need of patient-specific geometry. A novel hybrid dieless sheet metal forming process, electrically-assisted mixed double-sided incremental forming (E-MDSIF), is proposed to manufacture difficult-to-form Ti6Al4V sheets. E-MDSIF is a spark-free technique shown to increase the formability and the geometric accuracy while decreasing the forming force. The effects of the electrical\ud process on microstructure, micro-hardness and surface roughness of the formed parts are investigated. Additionally, comparisons between E-MDSIF and the conventional E-ISF processes are illustrated based on fundamental mechanics. Limitations and potential applications are presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Electrically assisted (EA) wire drawing process is a hybrid manufacturing process characterized by enhancement of the formability, ductility, and elongation of the wire drawn specimen. A thermomechanical model to describe the change of the mechanical response due to the thermal contribution is proposed in this work. Additionally, a numerical simulation was conducted to study the potential and limitations of this hybrid process by using two different hardening laws: a phenomenological and a dislocation-based hardening laws. The results show how the flow stress, the effective plastic strain, and residual stresses behave under the electroplusing effect. In addition, electron backscattered diffraction was used to study the electropulsing treatments on the microstructure during cold drawing. It is observed a decrease of the high- and low-angle grain boundaries (LAGB) for samples deformed with electropulsing. This detwinning process has a strong influence on the strain hardening by improving the material formability. It was shown that the two proposed hardening laws adequately describe the EA wire drawing process showing a similar mechanical behavior. Nevertheless, the dislocation-based hardening law has the potential to be generalized to many other material and process configurations without extensive number of material tests as the phenomenological hardening law would require.

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In this article, the influence of electropulsing on the machinability of steel S235 and aluminium 6060 has been studied during conventional and electropulsing-assisted turning processes. The machinability indices such as chip compression ratio ξ, shear plane angle ϕ and specific cutting energy (SCE) are investigated by using different cutting parameters such as cutting speed, cutting feed and depth of cut during electrically-assisted turning process. The results and analysis of this work indicated that the electrically-assisted turning process improves the machinability of steel S235, whereas the machinability of aluminium 6060 gets worse. Finally, due to electropluses (EPs), the chip compression ratio ξ increases with the increase in cutting speed during turning of aluminium 6060 and the SCE decreases during turning of steel S235.

The aim of this study is to report the use of non-conventional material removal process technique. It was found that electropulses (EPs) assisted drilling process improves the material machinability based on the eletroplastic influence. The influence of EPs in drilling process is studied by combining different feed rates, drills diameters and current densities in 7075 aluminium and 1045 carbon steel. The results show that the electrically assisted drilling process improves material machinability, decreases the specific cutting energy up to 27% in aluminium and 17% in steel.