The mechanism of orientation of fibers or thin micro-particles in various flows involving the processing of composite materials has not been fully understood although it is much significant to obtain the knowledge of the processing operations of particle reinforced composites as well as to improve the properties of the advanced composites. The objective of this article is to introduce and well understand the evolution of the particle orientation in a suspension flow and flow kinematics induced by suspended particles by means of both literature review and the following our two research work: Numerical simulation of flow kinematics and fiber orientation for fiber suspension: Orientation of disk-like particles in a micro-composite processing.

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This study aims to obtain some guidelines for designing elastic tights that can reduce muscle load. Eight women were employed as test subjects. An investigation of the taping effect on the leg was conducted by analyzing electromyograms (EMG) of the rectus femoris muscle, vastus lateralis muscle and biceps femoris muscle, which were measured whilst making standing-up and sitting-down movements.
When legs were bare and when normal tights were worn, a taping method (S type taping), which taped up straight from the anterior thigh to the anterior shank through the patella, reduced the muscle load of the rectus femoris muscle and vastus lateralis muscle. The effect was more marked during standing-up than during sitting-down. The taping effect was slightly lower when the taping was made on tights than bare legs. It was suggested that the development and design of tights with stretch property that had similar effect to S type taping was useful because there was no skin disorder caused by adhesive tape.

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The purpose of this research is to analyze Japanese women's breast shape based on body surface data described by a three-dimensional (3-D) human body shape model with a bi-cubic B-spline structure and to classify them. The data used for analysis were forty-nine 3-D control points selected from the right breast area on the model surface for each of 556 Japanese women aged 19 through 63 years. We examined the covariance matrix of the data using the principal component analysis method after normalization of their 3-D coordinates with the bust width for reducing the size factor. As a result, we obtained four principal components, which described 77% of breast shape. Then Japanese women's breast shape was classified into five classes in the principal component space using the first, second, third and forth-principal component scores. They could cover 92% of Japanese women's breasts. Therefore, we tried to analyze breast shape by clustering in order to classify all the breasts. For the cluster analysis we prepared two kinds of data; (1) principal component scores and (2) the normalized scores (μ=0, σ=1) of (1). With the clustering (1) and (2) we obtained four classes and five classes, respectively. Properties and advantages of the three kinds of classifications were also discussed. The classification of the principal component space is based on standard deviations of principal component scores, and therefore the resultant classes do not have clear boundaries. The classification according to the cluster analysis (1) can reflect the actual distribution of breast shape. In contrast the clustering (2) gives classification reflecting more principal components and tending to generate more classes than the clustering (1).

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An equation of motion to describe the water penetration through a textile is derived on the basis of Darcy's law of fluid flow through general porous media. Experiments revealed that the process of fluid penetration seems to be composed of a few partial modes each of which this equation could describe, though not the whole process. As the authors reported earlier, a similar multimodality of process is found in the retardation-time spectrum; the spectrum is abstracted from the weight-time curve of absorbed water being led by the idea that the process may be assumed as a kind of retardation phenomenon such as the creep of a viscoelastic material put under a load. Identifying these two multimodalities with the aid of the equation of penetration gives a clue to clarify what kinds of flow paths play typical roles when a textile absorbs water.

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