All-solid-state batteries have received enormous attention in recent years, and for good reason. Replacing a flammable liquid electrolyte with a solid one, especially when coupled with a lithium metal anode, promises higher energy density and improved safety. But, as is so often the case in materials science, the key issue comes down to the ubiquitous “interface”! Two solids must remain in intimate contact while lithium is removed, transported, redeposited, and mechanically constrained. This is not simply electrochemistry with a solid electrolyte added in.

Material strength is a classical concept that has recently found renewed applications in fracture mechanics, especially in models for crack nucleation in brittle solids. In this paper, we formulate material strength in the setting of finite elasticity and examine its geometric, constitutive, and symmetry-theoretic foundations. We show that spatial covariance requires a strength function to depend on both stress and the corresponding strain measure, so that strength is not controlled by stress alone, but by the pair (stress,strain).

The Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division is pleased to congratulate Professor Nancy R. Sottos, Maybelle Leland Swanlund Endowed Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, as the recipient of the 2026 Stephen P. Timoshenko Medal.

The Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division is pleased to congratulate Professor David Steigmann, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, as the recipient of the 2026 Warner T. Koiter Medal.

The Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division is pleased to congratulate Professor Yihui Zhang, Professor of Engineering Mechanics at Tsinghua University, as the recipient of the 2026 Daniel C. Drucker Medal. This award, which includes a medal, a certificate, and an honorarium, will be presented at the AMD Honors and Awards Banquet, during the 2026 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE 2026), to be held during November 8 – 12, 2026, at the Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division is pleased to congratulate Professor Sinan Keten, Jan and Marcia Achenbach Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, as the recipient of the 2026 Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal.

ISIE 2026 – Prague, Czech Republic (September 2–4, 2026)

We are pleased to invite the impact engineering community to the 12th International Symposium on Impact Engineering (ISIE 2026), which will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, from September 2 to 4, 2026.

The symposium will bring together researchers, engineers, and practitioners working in areas such as:

The research group Mechanics of Materials and Structures at Ghent University (UGent-MMS) has 7 vacancies for PhD and postdoc research in the field of mechanics of materials. The vacancies are linked to research on composite hydrogen tanks, mine counter-measure drones and snap fit joints in constructions. All positions have a duration of at least 3 years and are fully funded (projects already granted). All research will be conducted with leading companies in the field.

Ghent University is a top-100 university in Belgium, Europe.

More information can be found on 

by Xing Liu, Miguel Bessa, Lihua Jin, Vikas Srivastava, and myself.

Mechanics serves as a cornerstone for the development of cutting-edge technologies and for advancing resource efficiency. From new recycling technologies to bio-degradable plastics, and from eco-friendly manufacturing to space structures, the field of mechanics provides fundamental theoretical, computational, and experimental frameworks that enable or improve those emerging fields.

We invite contributions that use mechanics in the context of sustainability.