Abstract This paper investigates the numerical modeling of the flexural wave propagation in Euler-Bernoulli beams using the Hermite-type radial point interpolation method (HRPIM) under the damage quantification approach. HRPIM employs radial basis functions (RBFs) and their derivatives for shape function construction as a meshfree technique. The performance of Multiquadric(MQ) RBF to the assessment of the reflection ratio was evaluated. HRPIM signals were compared with the theoretical and finite element responses. Results represent that MQ is a suitable RBF for HRPIM and wave propagation. However, the range of the proper shape parameters is notable. The number of field nodes is the main parameter for accurate wave propagation modeling using HRPIM. The size of support domain should be less thanan upper bound in order to prevent high error. With regard to the number of quadrature points, providing the minimum numbers of points are adequate for the stable solution, but the existence of more points in damage region does not leads to necessarily the accurate responses. It is concluded that the pure HRPIM, without any polynomial terms, is acceptable but considering a few terms will improve the accuracy; even though more terms make the problem unstable and inaccurate.

This paper presents a study on the gap dependent bifurcation behavior of an electro statically-actuated nano-beam. The sizedependent behavior of the beam was taken into account by applying the couple stress theory. Two small and large gap distance regimes have been considered in which the intermolecular vdW and Casimir forces are dominant, respectively. It has been shown that changing the gap size can affect the fundamental frequency of the beam. The bifurcation diagrams for small gap distance revealed that by changing the gap size, the number and type of the fixed points can change. However, for large gap regime, where the Casimir force is the dominant intermolecular force, changing the gap size does not affect the quality of the bifurcation behavior.

Using scaling methods, a single solution of Richards' equation (RE) will suffice for numerous specific cases of water flow in unsaturated soils. In this study, a new method is developed to scale RE for the soil water redistribution process. Two similarity conditions are required: similarity in the shape of the soil water content profiles as well as of the water flux density curves. An advantage of this method is that it is not restricted to a specific soil hydraulic model - hence, all such models can be applied to RE. To evaluate the proposed method, various soil textures and initial conditions were considered. After the RE was solved numerically using the HYDRUS-1D model, the solutions were scaled. The scaled soil water content profiles were nearly invariant for medium- and fine-textured soils when the soil profile was not deeply wetted. The textural range of the soils in which the similarity conditions are held decreases as the initial conditions deal with a deeply wetted profile. Thus, the scaling performance was poor in such a condition. This limitation was more pronounced in the coarse-textured soils. Based on the scaling method, a procedure is suggested by which the solution of RE for a specific case can be used to approximate solutions for many other cases. Such a procedure reduces complicated numerical calculations and provides additional opportunities for solving the highly nonlinear RE as in the case of unsaturated water flow in soils.