I was recently presented with a problem concerning the migration of a salt formation in an area of Utah. After spending a little time looking at the given data, I decided it might be a problem that could be approached using fluid mechanics. The idea being that the salt formation, relatively speaking, is highly viscous and is free to respond to acting forces and deform appropriately. Essentially, I was hoping to treat the salt formation almost like the bladder of a water bed reacting to differential loading. 

Professor Ed Berger, Univeristy of Virginia Mechanical Engineering, is featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education for his use of web technologies and, in particular, "video solutions" for teaching undergraduate mechanics courses. See http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i34/era01301.htm.  Or contact Berger at berger@virginia.edu.  Ed hasn't used this approach for all undergraduate mechanics courses as yet, but the potential is there. 

Simpleware Ltd. and COMSOL Inc. announced at the COMSOL Users Conference 2007 in Grenoble a partnership agreement to provide an export interface from Simpleware's world-leading 3D image-based meshing software +ScanFE™ to COMSOL Multiphysics® 3.4, the industry's foremost multiphysics simulation environment. The +ScanFE interface enables COMSOL users to directly import high-quality meshes generated from MRI, CT, and MicroCT scan data into COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 for modelling and simulation without requiring re-meshing or pre-processing.

Hello students (and also others) at iMechanica,

Last weekend, while channel browsing on TV, I happened to notice a documentary on the Hoover dam (in the US). It showed a number of jets of water, huge ones, forcefully springing forth out of the rock faces just downstream of the dam. These were the water jets coming off the electricity generation plant of the dam, *after* their job of generating electricity was already over.

Watching these fascinating water streams reminded me of a brain teaser. Might as well share it here. (It might look like high-school physics, but you can use it to understand higher courses in engineering as well.)

Simpleware Ltd., the world leader in image-based meshing software, has signed a reseller agreement with Vangest Group, a provider of most advanced solutions in project, development and manufacturing.

Finite Difference Method (FDM) and the related techniques such as FVM, are often found put to great use in fluid mechanics. See any simulation showing not only streamlines but also vortex shedding, turbulent mixing, etc.

Yet, when it comes to solid mechanics, Finite Element Method (FEM) is most often the method of choice. Actually, FEM is probably the *only* computational method used in solid mechanics. Most books on solid mechanics and structural analysis do not even mention FDM. A few that do, restrict FDM only to the Laplace's equation and the bi-harmonic equations--not to the general stress analysis problem in 3D.

Why is this so?

Simpleware Ltd., the world leader in image-based meshing software, has signed an agreement with Gaitech International Ltd. to resell the Simpleware suite of software products in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao.

Modern Classical Physics Through the Work of G. I. Taylor

17 years ago, while a postdoc at IBM meant to be doing other things, I thought about the following. Then recently I visited Ali Argon at MIT, and we discussed conventional bubble rafts and how useful they had been in studies of some problems in mechanics...such as of defects and so on.

They filled a pool with a mix of cornstarch and water made on a concrete mixer truck. It becomes a non-newtonian fluid. When stress is applied to the liquid it exhibits properties of a solid. Video was recorded at Barcelona, Spain.

       Danel Bernoulli, the most successful of all the Bernoulli's was born in Groningen, The Netherlands on 8th February in 1700. His father Johann Bernoulli was working as professor of Mathematics at Groningen then.  Later they moved to Basel, Switzerland which was their native place.

      Daniel did his PhD in Medicine as Johann insisted him to do so. But, as Daniel was ver much interested in mathematics he was learning math while doing medicine. He also worked with another great mathematician Leohnard Euler (who was a student of Johann Bernoulli in Basel) in St. Petersburg. 

Carl Herakovich, the secretary of the US National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNC/TAM), has posted the following entry in the Applied Mechanics Google Group today:

The USNC/TAM has just released a report by a Subcommittee on Research Directions in Mechanics, entitled Research in Fluid Dynamics: Meeting National Needs