ES 240, Prob. 6

This entry is meant to summarize my personal information, and the reasons why I am taking this class.  Here are my responses to the bulleted topics:

 - I have taken three courses relating to solid mechanics prior to ES 240.  These were undergraduate classes taken at the Univ. of Delaware and they include:  (1)  Mechanics of Solids, (2) Material Science and Engineering,  (3) Design of Machinery

- My undergraduate major was Mechanical Engineering

- My strengths in this course are that I have a fairly broad background in solid mechanics from my undergraduate coursework which included coverage of linear elasticity, structural mechanics, fracture mechanics, materials selection, and other general topics.  Also, from undergrad I have a decent background in engineering mathematics.  My weakness in this course is that my most recent class covering solid mechanics was three years ago, so I have probably forgotten a lot of what I learned.  So far though, I have recognized a lot of the material that has been covered in lecture.

- I work in the group of Raul Radovitzky at MIT --> http://web.mit.edu/aeroastro/people/radovitzky/index.html

- The general topic of my research with Prof. Radovitzky is dynamic fracture mechanics and fragmentation.  More specifically, we are using massively parallel FEM to simulate full 3D fracture and fragmentation in ductile and brittle materials.  Our unique approach utilizes cohesive elements for fracture and a Discontinous Galerkin (DG) formulation of the IBVP.  Previous efforts using cohesive elements with CG lead to problems with wave propagation in parallel implementations.  The use of DG resolves this problem allowing for parallel computation.  Hopefully we will use this new method to capture 3D fracture and fragmentation at a very high resolution of detail.  That is the idea at least.

- Since my research project concerns a topic which is itself a subset of solid mechanics, obviously solid mechanics will figure prominently in my research.   For instance, I must first understand in detail the equations governing stress, strain, and displacement in order to understand an FEM formulation whether it be continuous or discontinous.  Furthermore, one must have some physical, or practical understanding of how materials should deform under different loading conditions to have the ability to critically examine the results of any FEM simulation.  Specifically in my research, I must understand solid mechanics in order to understand how fracture is modeled by the various approaches available (cohesive elements, damage models, etc.).

- I think that my general education would be strengthened by taking any fundamental course in mechanics.  I say this because I have found that across the disciplines in mechanics, the forms of the governing equations and the methods for deriving them are very similar.  For instance, the concept of balancing a quantity over a differential volume element is essentially a univerisal technique for deriving governing equations.  Although a student may learn this procedure in a fluids class, they will be able to apply it in most disciplines of mechanics.  In this way, taking one mechanics course provides you with valuable tools of mathematics and reasoning that will be useful in many different settings.  For this reason, I think that solid mechanics will strengthen my general education because it will train me in the methods of mathematical physics which will be useful in other situations.

-Andrew Seagraves