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Plastic Deformation Recovery in Freestanding Nanocrystalline Aluminum and Gold Thin Films

Submitted by Taher A Saif on



Science 30 March 2007:
Vol. 315. no. 5820, pp. 1831 - 1834
DOI: 10.1126/science.1137580

Jagannathan Rajagopalan, Jong H. Han, M. Taher A. Saif*

In nanocrystalline metals, lack of intragranular dislocation sources leads to plastic deformation mechanisms that substantially differ from those in coarse-grained metals. However, irrespective of grain size, plastic deformation is considered irrecoverable. We show experimentally that plastically deformed nanocrystalline aluminum and gold films with grain sizes of 65 nanometers and 50 nanometers, respectively, recovered a substantial fraction (50 to 100%) of plastic strain after unloading. This recoverywas time dependent and was expedited at higher temperatures. Furthermore, the stress-strain characteristics during the next loading remained almost unchanged when strain recovery was complete.These observations in two dissimilar face-centered cubic metals suggest that strain recovery might be characteristic of other metals with similar grain sizes and crystalline packing.

Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

Self-healing polymers - an introduction

Submitted by Jinglei Yang on

I'm now working on the preparation and characterization of self-healing polymers, a promising branch in materials science. The following is a general conception of this kind of materials system. (Pasted from our group website http://www.autonomic.uiuc.edu.) I may introduce some of my current work later.

Characterization of myocardial viscoelastic behavior based on ventricular harmonic motion

Submitted by Arash_Kheradvar on

Our current ability to accurately measure ventricular global contractile behavior remains unsatisfactory due to the lack of quantitative diagnostic indexes that can assess the mechanical properties of myocardial tissue.

A posteriori error estimation (indication) for extended finite element methods (XFEM)

Submitted by Stephane Bordas on
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Extended finite element methods (XFEM) have been employed in computational fracture mechanics contexts since their inception in 1999. Although some work has been performed, leading to the first adaptive strategies for the generalised finite element method (GFEM), little or no work has been published on error estimation and adaptive approximations for XFEM. A first attempt at this challenging problem is published here: 

A book on mechanics that would pique your curiosity

Submitted by Ajit R. Jadhav on

I am happy to recommend the following book for your general reading.

Ranganath, G.S., ``Mysterious Motions and other Intriguing Phenomena in Physics," Hyderabad, India: Universities Press (2001)

Thickness dependent critical strain in Cu films adherent to polymer substrate

Submitted by Rongmei niu on

For the polymer-supported metal thin films that are finding increasing applications, the critical strain to nucleate microcracks ( εc ) should be more meaningful than the generally measured rupture strain. In this paper, we develop both electrical resistance method and microcrack analyzing method to determine εc of polymer-supported Cu films simply but precisely. Significant thickness dependence has been clearly revealed for εc of the polymer-supported Cu films, i.e., thinner is the film lower is εc . This dependence is suggested to cause by the constraint effect of refining grain size on the dislocation movability.

Innovation and Integration in the Changing Global Higher Education Landscape

Submitted by SHIH Choon Fong on

I’m delighted that mechanicians now have this platform to discuss our work as well as share ideas and perspectives. While we advance knowledge in our field and come up with innovative solutions for engineering and materials problems, I believe that we also have a responsibility to speak on issues of global significance, especially where the power of science and technology can be harnessed to address challenges and issues impacting the world.

Self-assembled structures in a viscoelastic liquid

Submitted by Zhigang Suo on
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About a year ago, Zak Stone introduced me to YouTube with this video titled amazing liquid. I wonder how much of this behavior is understood. There must be a lot of fantastic videos of mechanical phenomena on YouTube. Perhaps we can embed them in iMechanica, and comment on them. Teng Li has provided an instruction of how to embed videos. You can check out a few other interesting videos in iMechanica video channel.