iMechanica

Fully funded PhD positions in the area of meta-materials, computational mechanics and wave propagation available in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Kansas State University. Research will be in topics related to the mechanics of metamaterials and the mechanics of amorphous or granular media.  

Students often have a tough time understanding the crack driving force in an elementary course on fracture mechanics.

A recent free access article has been published on a fluid analogy to the crack driving force and the Riabouchinsky free streamline problem for ideal fluid flow around two plates.  Hopefully this analogy can aid in the visualization.

The Materials Theory Group at the School of Materials Engineering of Purdue University has a post-doctoral opening in the area of modeling of thermal transport in crystalline solids. The postdoc will use Boltzmann Transport Equation approach to investigate the phonon and electron thermal transport in crystalline solids with defects. Applicants with closely related theory background in physics, materials science, mechanical engineering, or other majors are encouraged to apply. The ideal candidate is one who is strongly interested in the fundamental concepts of thermal transport and related computational modeling, and must have excellent programming skills. To apply, please send a curriculum vita with list of publications and the names and contact information of two references to Professor Anter El-Azab (aelazab@purdue.edu). The cover letter should explain the relevance of the applicant background to the postdoc research topic above. This position is part of the DOE funded Energy Frontiers Research Center for Thermal Energy Transport under Irradiation (TETI), and the postdoc is expected to collaborate with a large team of theorists and experimentalists. The position is available now and will remain open until filled.

I attach the slides of my talks at last week’s MRS meeting in Boston on two topics:

• Fatigue-resistant stretchable materials

• Integrated soft materials

The Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division is pleased to announce and congratulate Professor Pol D. Spanos, Lewis B. Ryon Professor in Mechanical & Civil Engineering, Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Rice University, as the recipient of the 2020 Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award.

The Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division is pleased to announce and congratulate Professor Narayana R. Aluru, Richard W. Kritzer Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as recipient of the 2020 Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Division Award.

The Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division is pleased to announce and congratulate Professor Xuanhe Zhao, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as the recipient of the 2020 Thomas J. R.

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to cordially invite you to the Computational Geomechanics mini-symposium at the ASCE EMI 2020 Conference, which will take place on May 26–29, 2020 at Columbia University in NYC. The abstract submission is now open until January 15, 2020 (Link: https://submissions.emi2020.org). The mini-symposium description is given below:

Position description: Four postdoctoral research fellows and two PhD positions are now open for ERC Starting Grant wth focus on nano energy harvester. The project is financially supported by ERC Starting Grant from Horizon2020.

Topic

Machine learning-based approaches for modeling and numerical simulation of advanced materials.

Preferred background

Recently, there has been a growing interest in investigating the multi-functional properties of novel types of metamaterials, metastructures, and metacomposites based on triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS). TPMS have been discovered more than 160 years ago and thanks to additive manufacturing (3D printing) they become reality only recently and opend the doors for several applications.

How to provide a structure with a force lying on a fixed line?
We provide the answer to this question in our paper: Bigoni and Misseroni (2019) Structures loaded with a force acting along a fixed straight line, or the “Reut’s column problem”.
Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids.
Enjoy watching our video below (would you have trouble playing video on YouTube, click here to watch it).

A PhD student is sought to perform research on systems engineering theory relying on the mathematics of probability theory, decision theory, game theory and social choice theory.  The student will be supported under an NSF grant in the Mechanical Engineering department of George Mason University and work with Dr. George Hazelrigg.  If interested, please contact Dr. Hazelrigg at ghazelri@gmu.edu.

https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/21/12/1188

How a mass falls when attached to a flexible element with varying length?
We provide the answer to this question in our paper: Armanini, Dal Corso, Misseroni, Bigoni (2019) Configurational forces and nonlinear structural dynamics.
Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids.
Enjoy watching our video below (would you have trouble playing video on YouTube, click here to watch it).

May a catastrophe machine be realized through an elastic continuous element?
We provide a positive answer to this question in our paper: Cazzolli, Misseroni, Dal Corso. Elastica catastrophe machine: theory, design and experiments. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids.

Enjoy watching our videos below (would you have trouble playing videos on YouTube, click here to watch them).

Mechanical mismatches between implanted electronics and biological tissues can lead to inaccurate readings and long-term tissue damage. Here, we show that functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes twisted into helical fibre bundles that mimic the hierarchical structure of muscle can monitor multiple disease biomarkers in vivo. The flexible fibre bundles are injectable, have a low bending stiffness and display ultralow stress under compression.

The HetSys team are recruiting its second cohort of enthusiastic students from across the physical sciences who enjoy using their mathematical skills and thinking flexibly to solve complex problems to join our new EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Modelling of Heterogeneous Systems at the University of Warwick, UK. Our exciting range of PhD projects can be found on our webpage.

We are looking for an Academic Associate to join the Department of Engineering.  This post is part-time and in addition you will be required to register for a PhD part-time for the duration of the 5-year post. Part-time PhD fees will be paid by the Department for 5 years and the PhD will be in the area of 3D printing of Smart Shape Memory Materials for Advanced Sensors and Actuators.

PhD Title: 3D printing of Smart Shape Memory Materials for Advanced Sensors and Actuators

Measuring forming limit diagrams (FLDs) is a time consuming and expensive process. Machine learning (ML) methods are a promising route to predict FLD of aluminium alloys. In the present work, we developed a machine learning (ML) based tool to establish the relationships between alloy composition / thermomechanical processing route to the material's FLD.

Shock attenuation is of prime concerns when bodily organs are involved, such as traumatic brain injury. Most armor systems nowadays are aimed at defeating the threat, such as breaking a projectile using hard ceramic armor. Yet, such solutions do not mitigate the initial acceleration (elastic) wave that is responsible for internal organ damage, although no penetration occurred.

Dear iMechanicians,

Please find below a paper, co-authored with Ivan Cuesta and Norman Fleck, on the mode II fracture of elastic-plastic sandwich layers. The paper is part of the special issue in the Journal of Applied Mechanics dedicated to John Hutchinson's 80th anniversary and the Century Fracture Mechanics Summit.