One Ph.D. position is now available starting October 2013 on magnetorheological elastomers in the Solid Mechanics Laboratory of Ecole Polytechnique, France. The potential student will work on the development of new experimental procedures and high fidelity numerical models for the understanding and constitutive description of microstructured magnetorheological solids. Students with strong interest in new coupled problems and strong background in engineering, physics or/and mechanics are encouraged to apply.

Please find more information and contact details in the attached pdf file or visit the following webpages:

Dear Colleagues,

The Thirteenth
Pan-American Congress of Applied Mechanics (PACAM XIII) will be held in
Houston, TX, USA. The conference dates are May 22-24th, 2013.

Dear all,
I am proud to present to i-mechanicians some recent work by my student Andreas Schiffer. We provide a new experimental technique and detailed analytical models to explore one-dimensional underwater blast problems in deep water.
  
Schiffer et al, 2012, The Response of Rigid Plates to Deep Water Blast: Analytical Models and Finite Element Predictions, J. App. Mech

http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.4006458

My co-organizers and I invite you to submit an abstract to the upcoming symposium “Multiscale Perspectives on Plasticity in Metals” at the ASME 2012 International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE), to be held November 9-15, 2012 in Houston, Texas. This symposium will explore the unique challenges to understanding plastic deformation in metals and formulating material models that can accurately predict thermo-mechanical deformation. Presentations will cover experimental and modeling investigations of the physical mechanisms that control plasticbehavior in metals, and insight gained on incorporating these mechanisms into high-fidelity models and simulations.

The dielectric constant of elastomeric dielectric material is an
essential physical parameter, whose value may affect the
electromechanical deformation of a dielectric elastomer actuator. Since
the dielectric constant is influenced by several external factors as
reported before, and no certain value has been confirmed to our
knowledge, in the present paper, on the basis of systematical comparison
of recent past literature, we conducted extensive works on the
measurement of dielectric properties of VHB films, involving five
influencing factors: prestretch (both equal and unequal biaxial),
electrical frequency, electrode material, stress relaxation time and
temperature. Experimental results directly show that the dielectric

This is a review on ductile fracture committed to the Advances in Applied Mechanics (Vol 44). Part of the review has an educational purpose and, as such, is intended for advanced undergraduates and starting graduate students. The other part is an account of recent research conducted in the field.

Though quite long, the review is by no means exhaustive. As noted in the discussion, many valuable contributions to this field have been left out. The focus was laid on micromechanics-based approaches to connect to microstructural aspects in engineering materials.

 I will try to post the electronic PDF once I get permission from Elsevier. 

Horacio Espinosa and I welcome the submission of new abstracts for a minisymposium on "Mechanics of Crystalline Nanostructures", to be held at the 2010 US National Congress on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNCTAM 2010), June 27-July 2 at Penn State University. 

A three-year
PhD studentship is available within the Glasgow Research Partnership in
Engineering (GRPE) as part of the Joint Research Institute in Mechanics of
Materials, Structures and Bioengineering at the University of Glasgow. 
The
specific goals of the PhD will be to manufacture MREs and determine the
influence of manufacture conditions on the micro-structure and magnetic-sensitivity
of the magnetorheological elastomers (smart material).