Introduction: The present study proposes a new scientific project for the seat of a wheelchair, suggesting that, through the properties of a three plan mobile seat, the pelvis of individuals with neuromotor dysfunctions may position themselves adequately, allowing a chain effect, with innumerable benefits to the users, such as prevention of deformities, of muscle shortening, of pressure ulcers and improved functionality. In spite of innumerable wheelchair models available in market, none presents the ample properties resembling the articulated seat, allowing the pelvic alignment that is crucial for the adoption of an adequate posture. Methods:The articulated seat was set over a ball and socket articulation made of two components, one convex that is fixed in the chair's structure and the other concave, attached to a mobile platform. The property of the articulated seat, to change the pressure distribution in the gluteal region, was tested on 34 typical individuals, without neurological injury, through a measurement system composed by 27 sensors. Results: The significance of the statistic model proposed determined that the articulated seat was capable of altering the pressure distribution in the gluteal region in several positions on the frontal and sagittal planes, in healthy subjects. Conclusion: Despite the fact that this equipment is capable of redistributing the pressure in a seating position, future research to examine other parameters such as time of use, the use in subjects with neurological dysfunction, the angle of pelvic inclination, the criterions of indication and non-indication, inter alia, must be conducted to appropriately qualify this device.

AISI 1020 steel bars cooling have been investigated aiming to obtain their cooling rate during heat treatment. Hot steel bars just taken out of the furnace are piled over other ones that were taken out of the furnace earlier. A mathematical model has been created and implemented using the software EES, Engineering Equation Solver. An experiment was conducted to validate the mathematical model. The experiment consists in three loads of three bars each with a time interval of 5 minutes between them. The initial temperature of each bar was 150oC. The mathematical model can obtain the thermal profile of each bar and the average and maximum deviation when confronted with experimental data were about 8% and 20% respectively.

In this article, the pilling process of hot steel bars is analyzed. During the loading three bars are placed over a wood surface, after those other three are placed over the previous for two times with 5 minutes intervals between them.They are all subject to a slow cooling by thermal radiation and free convection.A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model to predict the temperature profile of them is developed. Comparison between the CFD simulation results and experimental data yielded an average difference in the bars temperature between -0.3oC and 3.5oC.