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Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is an extrusion-based manufacturing process using fused thermoplastics. Despite its low cost, the FFF is not extensively used in high-value industrial sectors mainly due to parts' anisotropy (related to the deposition strategy) and residual stresses (caused by successive heating cycles). Thus, this study aims to investigate the process improvement and the optimization of the printed parts.

In this work, a meshless technique – the Radial Point Interpolation Method (RPIM) – is used to numerically simulate the viscoplastic extrusion process – the initial phase of the FFF. Unlike the FEM, in meshless methods, there is no pre-established relationship between the nodes so the nodal mesh will not face mesh distortions and the discretization can easily be modified by adding or removing nodes from the initial nodal mesh. The accuracy of the obtained results highlights the importance of using meshless techniques in this field.

Meshless methods show particular relevance in this topic since the nodes can be distributed to match the layer-by-layer growing condition of the printing process.

Using the flow formulation combined with the heat transfer formulation presented here for the first time within an in-house RPIM code, an algorithm is proposed, implemented and validated for benchmark examples.

Recent studies have proposed the application of local fatigue approaches based on fracture mechanics or on strain-life material relations for the fatigue analysis of metallic structures. However, only few studies in the literature apply local approaches in the riveted bridges analysis; although these approaches can be applied to any type of connections, requiring a detailed stress analysis of joints and, consequently, considerable computational resources costs. The approach based on S-N curves, formulated in nominal or net stresses, is more usual in the fatigue analysis of riveted bridges. Due to economic factors, riveted bridges have had their operating life extended, while changes in the transport system over the years have subjected such structures to overloads different from those originally planned. These bridges, most of them centenary, were not originally designed accounting for fatigue damage; they represent an important group of structures that are very likely subjected to significant fatigue damage indexes. These factors make necessary detailed residual fatigue life studies to substantiate the decisions of extend (or not) the operational period of these bridges. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The present paper presents a methodology aiming at applying the local approaches in the fatigue analysis of riveted joints of metallic bridges, through the use of sub-modeling techniques and procedures automation. The use of such techniques made such an application viable by keeping the computational costs involved at a moderate level. The proposed procedures were demonstrated using the Trezói Railway Bridge, located on the Beira Alta line, Portugal, built shortly after the Second World War. The proposed set of procedures allowed, through finite elements analysis, to obtain the relevant stresses to perform local fatigue damage analysis. A global structural model was constructed, using beam elements, and local models of a critical node were built with solid finite elements. The structure is analyzed under the passage of regulatory trains. The details of the modeling performed and the computation of the principal stresses in the vicinity of a node and the tangential/circumferential stresses at the holes of two critical riveted connections of that node are analyzed and a fatigue damage analysis is carried out.

In the proposed submodelling approach, disassembling the complex riveted nodes into riveted subassemblies allowed the evaluation of the local stresses at riveted holes at an affordable computational cost.

A methodology is proposed to allow the application of local fatigue analysis in real complex riveted joints, mitigating the computational costs that would result from a full model of the node with all rivets.

Brazilian sportswomen have arrived in the twenty-first century burdened with a heavy inheritance, which has been called the gendered twentieth century sporting legacy. In relation to football, this heritage includes not only gender and sexuality discrimination but all multifaceted obstacles to playing the sport, such as no access to facilities, equipment and funding. This chapter analyses the careers of three Brazilian women who played in a major tournament organised by the São Paulo Football Federation (FPF), the Paulistana, where orthodox-gendered practices and concepts prevailed to control the bodies of the players. This analysis considers aspects of socialisation and sporting elements in the lives of the participants, derived from informal conversations as well as structured interviews which were inductively framed. As such, the data were analysed by understanding the social division of the professional and corporal practices in society and the representations that permeate Brazilian society regarding the role of women in that society at that time, in the late 1990s. The chapter uses the micro-context of these players' biographies to show how women's football is embedded in macro-contexts of oppressive gender structures in Brazil and South America. The findings show that whilst conceived to be a tournament to promote women's football in Brazil, the 2001 championship was an attack against women's footballers and their human rights. The orthodox rigid gendered rules, which prevented many women players participation, transformed the tournament into a ‘circus’ that received criticism across the whole country, including in the National Parliament.