An acceleration transducer elicits an output voltage proportional to the deformation of the piezo crystal, in accordance with the twitch responses of the applied fingers. The reliability of such a transducer was evaluated by comparing induced twitch responses with those from a force transducer applied on the contralateral arm of an individual during neuromuscular block with vecuronium. The results obtained from twitch responses with the acceleration transducer during neuromuscular block were almost identical to those obtained with the force transducer. Also, the twitch heights due to acceleration of the examined thumb correlated extremely well with the twitch height due to twitch tension with the force transducer. It is concluded that the acceleration transducer may be a useful and reliable device for monitoring neuromuscular block, although responses during tetanic stimulation such as tetanic fade cannot be determined by the transducer.
The strength of plastic greatly varies with temperature; that is, the strength increases as the temperature decreases. Therefore, the lifetime of a plastic gear can be increased by reducing the meshing-teeth temperature of the gear. The meshing-teeth temperature can be reduced by changing the material of the mating gear from plastic to metal considering that a metal gear will have high thermal conductivity. In this study, we investigated the load-carrying characteristics of an unlubricated crossed helical gear consisting of a plastic gear meshed with a metal gear. We performed gear lifetime experiments and meshing-teeth temperature survey experiments. The results showed that the failure mode of the plastic crossed helical gear was caused by the breakage of the tooth and the rim. Then, we confirmed that the stress ratio could be an index for the lifetime evaluation of the plastic crossed helical gear that could fail by tooth breakage. Additionally, by testing gear pairs with several dimensions, we confirmed that the mean flash temperature could be an index for the meshing-teeth temperature evaluation of the plastic crossed helical gear. Furthermore, we proposed a lifetime estimation method for the plastic crossed helical gear that could fail by tooth breakage and verified the validity of the proposed method based on the experimental results.
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