(Carbon) Nanotubes have attracted considerable attention from the mechanics community; probably second to none when it comes to nanotechnologies. Although I personally have done very little in this particular topic, I have enjoyed reading about the many developments made by mechanicians in terms of modeling the behavior of nanotubes and the applicability of standard continuum mechanics notions. A post on this subject on iMechanica, which received a fair amount of attention from many mechanicians involved in this topic, may be found here .

Dear All,

the solution of an elastic half space subjected to any generalized load may be seen as the solution of another elastic problem, that is elastic space with an infinite length hole when the hole radius goes to infinite.

Is there a "general" solution for that elastic problem? For general I mean a solution that can be used e.g. like a kernel in a convolution operation.

To enhance its leadership position and focus for the future, UNL CoE is now deploying a new strategic approach in biomaterials, focusing on novel experiments and ground-breaking research. UNL external research funding has tripled in the last decade. The investment of these funds enables the university to support innovative research projects, hire top faculty and provide them with equipment and facilities to achieve their goals. 

University of Houston

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Cullen College of Engineering

Faculty Position-Nano Mechanics, Nano Materials

I am working on the problem of interacting cracks in piezoelectric materials. Due to the interaction of cracks, I found a non-intuitive phenomenon that the electric displacement intensity factor of the crack for some interacting profiles may be negative under some loading conditions (a tensile stress and an applied electric displacement). However, under the same loading conditions, the electric displacement intensity factor can never be negative for a single crack problem.

Abstracts are now being accepted for the 2008 Society of Engineering Science Annual Technical Meeting, to be held October 12th-15th, 2008 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  The conference will feature more than 30 technical symposia in Applied Mathematics, Bioengineering, Dynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Imaging, Multiscale and Nanomechanics of Solids, Mechanics of Materials, etc., as well as special symposia in honor of the 2008 SES Medalists, listed at the conference website: http://ses2008.mechse.uiuc.edu .

The April issue of the IEEE Spectrum featured t

Hi,all

I'm looking for ideas-ways to model the above mentioned thema and solutions to overcome some obstacles. Here are some observations of mine:

1) Above the neutral axis of a bended beam the stress field is negative.Furthermore the traditional type of K factors estimation in Ansys is insufficient.The reason as i believe is that we haven't relative despacements of the crack nodes along  y(normal) axis.In contradiction we have shear desplacements.So i retrieve Ki nearly zero and Kii some noticable results.(using contact elements)