Stephane Bordas, Marc Duflot and Pierre-Olivier Bouchard announce the WCCM8 mini-symposium Link to detailed pdf description
Submit your contribution here before Dec. 15th 2007
A couple of years ago a colleague who wanted to simulate high-speed machining asked me: " Which is the best phenomenological flow stress model for metals?" I wasn't able to give an answer right away and decided to look in the literature.
What I found was, every ten years or so, a new model appears in the literature that tries to solve some of the problems of older models. However, a clear ranking of models has not been established yet.
I taught a short course some time ago on the eXtended Finite Element Method, and thought many people would find the notes useful.
So I've posted them here, in .mov format (as exported with the Apple software keynote). The advantage of this format is that, when you click on one of the .mov files, it should open a separate browser. Clicking in the window will advance the slide. This way you see all the movies, etc, as well as the sequence as it appears when I gave the talk. There is a way to add audio to this format as well - something I may pursue in the future.
After the success of the course in 2005 (45 participants from 15 countries), the EPFL school of continuing education presents the second XFEM course.
I stumbled on this article in the NY Times "The Ultimate Distance Learning" (free registration required to view) about the establishment of University distance learning activities within the Second Life online community.
We mechanicians like to argue over a whiteboard, but we are often too far apart. Skype allows us to phone each other, and Google Doc allows us to write together. Both Skype and Google Doc work over long distance and free of charge. But still, we'd like to sketch a little figure and write a few equations. We miss our whiteboard.
If you would like a copy of my lecture notes (on matrix algebra, indicial notation, vectors, tensors, vector calculus, groups, curvilinear coordinates and calculus of variations) they are available at
Using concepts of hierarchical multi-scale modeling, we report development of a mesoscopic model for single wall carbon nanotubes with parameters completely derived from full atomistic simulations. The parameters in the mesoscopic model are fit to reproduce elastic, fracture and adhesion properties of carbon nanotubes, in this article demonstrated for (5,5) carbon nanotubes. The mesoscale model enables one to model the dynamics of systems with hundreds of ultra-long carbon nanotubes over time scales approaching microseconds.
1. Introductory
Recently, there has been some active discussion on topics like:
-- Open-source textbooks
-- Comparing lecture notes
-- Unification of mechanics
-- Wikipedia and Citizendium
Most visitors/users of iMehanica will be aware of Wikipedia. Well, there is a new project of this kind underway. To quote from its "mission statement":
The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a "citizens' compendium of everything," is an experimental new wiki project. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on that model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names.
