Large Liquid Rocket Engines for Aerospace applications usually need to be cooled regeneratively since they are characterized by high pressure levels and heat flux with the presence, in the inner structure, of very high thermal gradients—thus necessitating the adoption of elastic-plastic nonlinear material models to study the thermomechanical behavior of the chamber and its service life. Tackling such nonlinearity makes the finite element analyses computationally intensive, particularly so when dealing with three-dimensional models. In these instances, it is highly recommended to adopt optimized numerical approaches that can save computation time while maintaining high levels of accuracy. The aim of the present paper is to implement an iterative coupling technique between two finite element models, a Global linear model and a Local nonlinear one, in the framework of a Global/Local procedure, to improve the accuracy of the numerical simulations. Both conformal and non-conformal meshes at the interface between the Global and the Local models have been considered. The results show that, even with a very few iterations, significant accuracy improvements are achieved.

In patients with PAOD, the Glubran 2 Seal represents a simple, painless, and efficient vascular closure device, able to achieve hemostasis both in antegrade and retrograde accesses.

University students spend most of their time in a sitting position. Prolonged sitting on ill-fitted furniture and the resulting lousy posture is making students having different musculoskeletal disorders and is strictly related to students learning outcomes. This study aims to improve postural comfort of chairs placed inside the Science & Technology Library at the University of Salerno. A previous study about these library chairs showed that the lumbar area was the most suffering part while perceived (dis)comfort was dependent on time. Based on this, an ergonomic redesign and, consequently, manufacturing of the chair has been done. A perceived-comfort comparison between the library chair and the redesigned one has been performed. A statistical sample of 28 healthy students performed a 20-min experiment two times, alternatively on the library chair and the redesigned one. The 20-min experiment was divided into two 10-min tasks (“Reading & Writing” and “Laptop use”) to simulate a study day. The participants’ postures were acquired non-invasively using cameras and processed by Kinovea; questionnaires were used to rate the perceived subjective (dis)comfort. A procedure for improving an existing product through a comfort-driven redesign is proposed. Results showed the redesigned library chair lead on increasing postural comfort (particularly in the lumbar area) thanks to the new design and modifications.