The acral skin contains arteriovenous anastomoses, which probably is the main part of skin microcirculation for blood flow adjustments and thermoregulation in the thermoneutral zone. The objective was to investigate if an increase in sympathetic activation during cooling influences the oscillatory pattern of acral skin blood flow. We had measurements of bilateral acral skin blood flow (n = 12) during lowering of ambient temperature from 32 °C to 18 °C. We quantified the oscillatory pattern as the time averaged wavelet spectral powers, coherence and phase angles in three frequency intervals (0.01-0.02 Hz, 0.02-0.05 Hz and 0.05-0.08 Hz). The differences were tested by Wilcoxon signed rank sum method between adjacent intervals. The absolute fluctuations in laser Doppler flux at 0.01-0.02 Hz, 0.02-0.05 Hz and 0.05-0.08 Hz were similar at 32 °C and 25 °C, and decreased at 18 °C (p < 0.001). The relative fluctuations (amplitude of the fluctuations relative to median flux value) in laser Doppler flux at 0.01-0.02 Hz, 0.02-0.05 Hz and 0.05-0.08 Hz were higher at 25 °C and 18 °C as compared to 32 °C (p < 0.002). The coherence between the oscillations of signals from right and left finger tips was highest (median coherence > 0.89) at 25 °C, and lower at 32 °C and at 18 °C.The median phase angles between the flux signals from right and left finger tips were close to 0 radians. We found that the relative fluctuations in acral skin blood flow increased during vasoconstriction due to cooling. Wavelet analysis of acral skin blood flow oscillations could serve as a future clinical tool.
Inflatable devices that provide reserve buoyancy to damaged ships, preventing capsizing and/or sinking, along with lifting wreckages from the seabed, were studied within the framework of the European funded project “SuSy” (Surfacing System for Ship Recovery). Part of the work involved material evaluation and testing as well as simulations of the structural response. This paper first describes an orthotropic hyperelastic constitutive model for a candidate material also used in the fabrication of prototype inflatable devices. A strain energy density function is proposed that is further used to derive the stress and elasticity tensors required for the numerical implementation of the model in the user-defined subroutine (UMAT) of abaqus/standard. The second part of the paper presents the finite element simulation of the latter stages of inflation of two salvage devices inside an actual double bottom structure. The numerical results are in good agreement with tests conducted in dry land and under water, with the structure raised following the inflation of the devices. The evolving stress state in both the devices and the double bottom structure under increased contact interaction leads to useful conclusions for future use in the development of this salvage system.
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