Abstract: Podocytes, highly specialized epithelial cells, build the outer part of the kidney filtration barrier and withstand high mechanical forces through a complex network of cellular protrusions. Here, we show that Arp2/3-dependent actin polymerization controls actomyosin contractility and focal adhesion maturation of podocyte protrusions and thereby regulates formation, maintenance, and capacity to adapt to mechanical requirements of the filtration barrier. We find that N-WASP-Arp2/3 define the development of complex arborized podocyte protrusions in vitro and in vivo. Loss of dendritic actin networks results in a pronounced activation of the actomyosin cytoskeleton and the generation of over-maturated but less efficient adhesion, leading to detachment of podocytes. Our data provide a model to explain podocyte protrusion morphology and their mechanical stability based on a tripartite relationship between actin polymerization, contractility, and adhesion

The thesis presents work across three different subjects of investigations into the modelling of spray development and its interaction with non-reactive and reactive flow. The first part of this research is aimed to create a new and robust family of convective scheme to capture the interface between the dispersed and the carrier phases without the need to build up the interface boundary. The selection of Weighted Average Flux (WAF) scheme is due to this scheme being designed to deal with random flux scheme which is second-order accurate in space and time. The convective flux in each cell face utilizes the WAF scheme blended with Switching Technique for Advection and Capturing of Surfaces (STACS) scheme for high resolution flux limiters. However in the next step, the high resolution scheme is blended with the scheme to provide the sharpness and boundedness of the interface by using switching strategy. The proposed scheme is tested on capturing the spray edges in modelling hollow cone type sprays without need to reconstruct two-phase interface. A test comparison between TVD scheme and WAF scheme using the same flux limiter on convective flow on hollow cone spray is presented. Results show that the WAF scheme gives better prediction than the TVD scheme. The only way to check the accuracy of the presented models are evaluations according to physical droplets behaviour and its interaction with air. In the second part, due to the effect of evaporation the temperature profile in the released fuel vapour has been proposed. The underlying equation utilizes transported vapour mass fraction. It can be used along with the solution of heat transfer inside a sphere. After applying boundary conditions, the equation can provide a solution of existing conditions at liquid-gas interface undergoing evaporation and it is put in a form similar to well-known one-third rule equation. The resulting equation is quadratic type that gives an accurate prediction for the thermo-physical properties due to the non-linear relation between measured properties and temperature. Comparisons are made with one-third rule where both equations are implemented in simulating hollow cone spray under evaporation conditions. The results show the presumed equation performs better than one-third rule in all comparisons. The third part of this research is about a conceptual model for turbulent spray combustion for two combustion regimes that has been proposed and tested for n-heptane solid cone spray type injected into a high-pressure, high-temperature open reactor by comparing to the available experimental data and to results obtained using two well known combustion models named the Combined Combustion Model (CCM) and the unsteady two-dimensional conditional moment closure (CMC) model. A single-zone intermittent beta-two equation turbulent model is suggested to characterise the Lumped zone. This model can handle both unburned and burned zones. Intermittency theory is used to account for the spatially non-uniform distribution of viscous dissipation. The model suggests that the Lumped zone can be identified by using the concept of Tennekes and Kuo-Corrsion of isotropic turbulence that suggests that dissipative eddies are most probably formed as vortex tubes with a diameter of the order of Kolmogorov length scale and a space of the order of Taylor length scale. Due to the complexity of mixture motion in the combustion chamber, there exist coherent turbulent small scale structures containing highly dissipative vortices. The small size eddies play an important role in extinguishing a diffusion spray flame and have an effect on the combustion reaction at molecular scale because small scales turbulence increase heat transfer due to the dissipation. A common hypothesis in constructing part of the model is if the Kolmogorov length scale is larger than the turbulent flame thickness. The Lumped strategy benefits from capturing small reactive scales information provided by numerics to improve the modelling and understand the exact implementation of the underlying chemical hypothesis. The Lumped rate is estimated from the ratio of the turbulent diffusion to reaction flame thickness. Three different initial gas temperature test cases are implemented in simulations. Lumped spray combustion model shows a very good agreement with available experimental data concerning auto-ignition delay points.

In the case of the Fe-18Cr-xNi (x = 8, 12, and 20) system, the current investigation showed that the phase constitution depended significantly on the Ni content in the powder blend. Whereas mostly the martensite or the ferrite and austenite phase mixture was present at lower Ni contents, a completely homogeneous austenite phase was present in the alloy with 20% Ni.

Ambient wind conditions within citrus groves were significantly different from those outside the groves. Wind reduced the velocity of a simulated air-jet by about 20% and deflected its direction by about 12 cm, measured at 85 cm from the outlet, and hence reduced the overall deposition average by 34%. Under field conditions, the deposition downwind was twice as much as the one collected upwind. Also, the ambient wind significantly reduced the overall deposition collected on both sprayer sides. Thus, spraying under windy conditions will result in a non-uniform deposition between the two sides of the sprayer and between the two directions of the sprayer travel.