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Sporting goods such as snowboards have to resist enormous loads while using them. Especially freestyle snowboards are extremely stressed during the landing of high jumps or while sliding sideways on a rail. During such a board slide the steel edge of a snowboard tends to cut into the handrail and the motion of the athlete can be interrupted abruptly. This fact leads to crashes and can cause severe injuries. Catching the edge is nearly eliminated by using an all-new anisotropic layer design (ALD)-snowboard which has been developed, simulated and tested by the Professorship of Lightweight Structures and Polymer Technology (SLK) in cooperation with the Professorship of Sports Equipment and Sports Technology (SGT). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to some problems in their stability of existent building structures, the general software ANSYS is adopted to establish the finite element solid models of circular reinforced concrete long columns confined with CFRP sheets under small eccentric compression and used to analyze the influence of CFRP sheets to these structural buckling loads. Height of columns, layers of CFRP sheets, concrete grade, longitudinal rebar diameter, stirrup diameter, stirrup spacing and eccentric distance are some factors considered. Based on the nonlinear finite element buckling analysis of these columns, some major conclusions are summarized as follows: (1) The enhanced level of buckling load is descending with the increasing columns' height and increasing with the increasing layers and eccentric distance; (2) The buckling load increment is independent of concrete grade, longitudinal rebar diameter, stirrup diameter and stirrup spacing; (3) The improvement is comparatively obvious to use CFRP sheets to strengthen the structure when its stability is poor. Influences of CFRP sheets to circular reinforced concrete long columns can be found by analyzing the stability of these columns, and the analysis results are available for the strengthening of some concrete structures in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses various issues related to Ken-materials, with specific reference to Ken Materials Research Consortium. In February 1994 a group of manufacturing companies gathered to form a research consortium for research and development (R&D) on intelligent materials. This article describes the objectives of the consortium and gives some typical results of R&D that the consortium has sponsored. "Ken" stems from the pronunciation of some Chinese characters meaning wisdom, sensing, reliability, integration, simplicity, soundness, and ecology. Examples of Ken-materials are the carbon-fiber and glass-fiber reinforced plastics with improve mechanical performances and capabilities of self-monitoring of damage.