A post-doc position is available now for one who has recently obtained (or about to get) his/her PhD on computational
geomechanics or computational mechanics. The successful candidate is expected to have strong background of mechanics
and extensive experience on computer programming (e.g., coding in FEM and/or DEM), and is able to work independently.
He/she who has previously worked on multi-scale modeling of material behavior will be particularly welcome to apply. The
initial contract is one year and is extendable to multiple years subject to his/her performance and availability of funding.

The geometric factor for mode I stress intensity factor for a finite strip under pure tensile loading is reported in Tada handbook as F(a/h) = 1.122 - 0.231(a/h) + 10.55*(a/h)^2 - 21.71*(a/h)^3 + 30.382*(a/h)^4 , but in the existing literature, I could not find such geometric factor for mode II stress intensity factor for a finite strip under under pure shear loading. Does anyone know such geometric factor for mode II stress intensity factor for a finite strip under under pure shear loading, if it is reported in the existing literature? or, if it is available in any unpublished sources?

On Aug 10, 2009, Semiconductor International (SI) Newsbreak published a report on my work in AMD about 3D fracture study of underfill delamination as the top story in that issue.  I have never imagined that. Except the pleasure I received from this good news, I wonder if this work is also interesting to iMechanica community.  For that reason, I attach here the SI news report and the original paper published on ITherm2008 Proceedings. Welcome any comments and thoughts.

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Applications are invited for graduate studies within the Micro and Nano Mechanics Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University.  The successful candidate will join a vibrant interdisciplinary research group and be involved in projects addressing atomic scale experimentation and modeling of advanced materials.  We seek motivated, talented and independent individuals interested in pursuing a PhD in one of the following areas:

•    Mechanics of Graphene and applications

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Applications are invited for a research assistant position within the Micro and Nano Mechanics Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University.  The successful candidate will join a vibrant interdisciplinary research group and be involved in projects addressing multiscale experimentation and modeling of advanced materials.  We seek a motivated, talented and independent individual interested in conducting research on the characterization of material instabilities and failure.

Many engineering devices and natural phenomena involve gels that swell under the constraint of hard materials. The constraint causes a field of stress in a gel, and often makes the swelling inhomogeneous even when the gel reaches a state of equilibrium. To analyze inhomogeneous swelling of a pH-sensitive gel, we implement a finite element method in the commercial software ABAQUS.  The program is attached here.  Contact Shenqiang Cai (shqcai [at] gmail.com) for a description of the program.

I think a non-zero entry in the stiffness matrix doesn't necessarily imply dependence of ith DOF on the jth DOF. This is the case also for standard FEM (without any enrichments). For example for a quadrilateral 2D element the x component of displacement has interaction with y component at each node, but as we know, two independent values of translation in x and y directions can