iMechanica - Experimental Nanomechanics - Comments

How to interpret the nanoindentation data for composites

Rohit Khanna — Sat, 12 May 2007 11:58:50 -0400

Hi all,

I wish to discuss on interpreting the nanoindentation data for
viscoelastic-plastic composite materials say polymer based composites.
I have experienced that if the microsructure is not homogeneous, it is
very difficult to meangingful data and normally, spread in elastic
modulus is very large depending on the load.

Second point for discussion is that does modulus mapping technique holds good for viscoelastic-elastic composites?

Can anybody comment on this?

Regards,

Rohit Khanna

Julia, please nominate a paper of interest

Xiaodong Li — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:24:36 -0400

Thanks, Julia. Can you please nominate a paper about micro/nano pillar compression for May issue of J-Club? I think that pillar compression test has attracted much attention.

Experimental Nanomechanics is a VERY useful topic!

Julia R. Greer — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 13:40:17 -0400

As someone who is very interested in investigating plasticity at nano-scale by pillar compression (and otherwise), of course it would be great to see more experimental nanomechanics topics. As most experiments at that scale are difficult to perform and there is a lot of controversy in modeling, it would be very helpful to start a discussion club.

Julia Rosolovsky Greer

Post your movie to iMechanica

Xiaodong Li — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 13:15:40 -0500

Thanks a lot for the encouragement. Sure! I will be very happy to be a developer. Hope we will soon have some videos on iMechanica. This will be fun for a lot of students as well who may show demos for discussion...

iMechanica videos

Zhigang Suo — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 07:33:59 -0500

Xiaodong: You are absolutely correct. Videos are powerful media to convey mechanical phenomena. A while back, a channel called "videos" was added to the header of iMechanica. Please click it and take a look. Also, take a look of the comments on Zak Stone's post. You will find some like-minded discussions.

The steps to add a video still seam too cumbersome for an average user, I think. However, this barrier should not prevent a few energetic users from posting videos, or at least posting links to videos. Teng has written a step-by-step instruction of how to post a video.

I do believe that the barrier to posting videos will be lowered as the developers of iMechanica master the back end of Drupal 5. Let me know if you'd like to be a developer.

Video - a "dynamic" platform

Xiaodong Li — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:54:55 -0500

Thanks a lot for the messages! The video capability provides a "dynamic" platform for educational purposes as well, like experimental mechanics demos. I think we need to promote such activities here. There may be some free software or free links that we can use. I will search around.

An upgraded iMechanica may allow users to upload videos

Zhigang Suo — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:29:14 -0500

Teng: you have been behind almost every software enhancement of iMechanica. You might want to take a look at this screencast of Drupal 5, which mentions that video can be uploaded on a Drupal site.

It is conceivable that when we upgrade iMechanica to Drupal 5 we can add the option to upload videos. I'll also have to talk to the IT office at Harvard about hardware requirement and the cost.

Publish video-based research results

Teng Li — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:16:15 -0500

Henry:

You're raising an important issue on publishing visualized (video-based) research results. As Xiaodong pointed out, more and more journals allow authors to publish videos, as supplemental materials. In the recently launched Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE), videos become the main body of the article, while text description, figures and tables serve as supplemental materials. Currently JOVE invites submissions in all areas of biological sciences. So far, however, I'm not aware of any video journal in physical sciences. But I'm positive on its emergence in the near future.

Henry and Xiaodong:

Now you can post video in iMechanica. In an earlier post and the comments there, we discussed the possibility of publishing video type contents in iMechanica by using web video platform, such as YouTube. I wrote a step-by-step instruction in the post on how to publish YouTube videos in iMechanica. Check out our video channel for more details. Honglai, if you want, you can upload your video to YouTube and then publish it in iMechanica.

-Teng

How about Nature Materials?

Xiaodong Li — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 20:58:25 -0500

Well, if it is at the microscale, I would like to suggest another journal - Nature Materials. That journal has an option for authors to place a support info file. It will be great if you can use your movie to demonstrate your new findings. I think that our community is also facing the same issue how to publish a movie file in this forum.

appreciate the help

Henry Tan — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 18:14:00 -0500

Thank you, Xiaodong. I appreciate the help.

It is a pity, however, that my results are not in Nanoscale, but in micrometer scales.

Nano Letters may allow to place a movie as a support info file

Xiaodong Li — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 15:38:20 -0500

I think you can try to publish the movie as a support info file in Nano Letters. If your subject is about nanoscale, I would like to say this is a good place to place your movie. In the paper, you may need to show the representative images from the movie. Hope this helps.

which journal can publish a movie?

Henry Tan — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:44:42 -0500

I have an experimental result that shows the evolution of a dynamic process. The result has to be presented in a movie format. Does anyone know any scientific journal (inmechanics of physics) that can publish movies? Thanks a lot.

Virginia: thanks for

Pradeep Sharma — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:25:47 -0500

Virginia: thanks for volunteering. I will put you down for August.

Journal Club - August?

VirginiaLFerguson — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 02:06:49 -0500

Dear Pradeep: I would love to host the journal club in August (or any month after that). Please let me know if this will work and I will happily immerse myself in the literature between now and then to find the most compelling articles to discuss. Best, Virginia

Dear Virginia,Please choose

Pradeep Sharma — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 08:24:30 -0500

Dear Virginia,

Please choose a month! If you look at the planned issues so far, we are booked until June. Anytime after that and before december would work.

Experimental Nanomechanics

Xiaodong Li — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 22:52:41 -0500

Colleagues and friends,

As 2007 is approaching, our community will have a new platform for information exchange and discussion – J-club (please see previous posts. I would like to propose a topic for upcoming issue (May issue? if possible) – “experimental nanomechanics.” The extremely small dimensions of nano building blocks such as nanotubes, nanowires and nanoparticles present challenges for existing instruments, methodologies and theories.Modeling and computational work is strongly dependent upon accurate (reliable) experimental results which are still lacking. I believe that this topic is timely and of great interest to both experimental and modeling parties.

This post is a call for suggestions for the proposed topic. Please contact me (lixiao@engr.sc.edu) or leave comments below.