Announcing the 2nd Sandia Fracture Challenge [click for more info]

UPDATE:  The 2nd Sandia Fracture Challenge is now LIVE!  See attached information packet.

The next Sandia Fracture Challenge is right around the corner - expected release date May 30, 2014! In 2012, we issued the 1st Sandia Fracture Challenge to the computational solid mechanics community. 51 participants self-assembled into 14 teams representing 23 different institutions to predict the mechanical deformation and ductile tearing of a novel geometry under quasi-static loading. Their blind predictions were compared against experiments only after they had reported their predictions, precluding the possibility to ‘tune' the predictions. The predictions and their comparison to experimental outcomes culminated in an invited ASME symposium, a Sandia-funded workshop, and ultimately a Special Issue of the International Journal of Fracture (vol. 186, published online January 2014). The Special Issue included a lead article (hyperlinks below) summarizing the outcome of the challenge with co-authorship from all the participants, and in addition several teams chose to publish their own detailed peer-reviewed full-length article.

This next challenge will build off of the experiences from the past challenge to explore deformation and failure of a moderate-ductility commercially-available structural alloy at quasistatic and intermediate strain rates ~1/s. The challenge will provide material property data, details of the geometry/boundary conditions for the unknown ‘toy' problem. This is a great opportunity to engage the broader solid mechanics community in an evaluation of different approaches to solving problems in deformation and failure of structural materials. We expect to release this challenge, posted on imechanica and e-mailed to pre-registered participants on May 30, 2014, with an expected ‘due' date of September 1st (3 months). If you would like to pre-register, please e-mail Brad Boyce at blboyce@sandia.gov . This will help ensure that you are kept abreast of the challenge, and it does not obligate you to participate. Please pass this invitation along to any other computational mechanicians who may be interested in participating.

Hyperlink to the Lead Article: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10704-013-9904-6
Hyperlink to the entire Special Issue: http://link.springer.com/journal/10704/186/1/page/1