The National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME) at Auburn University is announcing for two fully-funded PhD positions in the area of structural integrity of additive manufactured (AM) materials/parts. These students will work under direction of Dr. Shamsaei from Mechanical Engineering Department. These opportunities include;
1- One PhD student is expected to work on experimental and analytical mechanics, additive manufacturing, fatigue testing and modeling, failure analysis, microstructural characterization, and fracture mechanics.
2- The second PhD student will implement computational mechanics to investigate structural integrity of AM parts. The candidate for this position should have background on crystal plasticity and finite element analysis. This candidate is also expected to be familiar with a finite element software including writing subroutines.
For international applicants, you need to have your TOEFL and GRE scores ready to report by Oct. 15th. If interested, please send your resume and a cover letter, briefly explaining your relevant experience and publications to Dr Vaziri (mzv0045 [at] auburn.edu).

Virtual forming of electronic components made of copper alloys

I noted with interest the recent iMechanica blog entry regarding the fact that only a small minority of experimentalists are willing to share raw data. I was somewhat surprised. I instinctively felt that theoreticians and comptutational scientists would have a different attitude.

Experimental data availability is a cornerstone for reproducibility in experimental fracture mechanics. This is how the technical note begins, the recently published 

"Long term availability of raw experimental data in experimental fracture mechanics", by Patrick Diehl, Ilyass Tabiai, Felix W. Baumann, Daniel Therriault and Martin Levesque, in Engineering Fracture Mechanics, 197 (2018) 21–26.

We study the mechanical behavior of mycelium composites reinforced with biodegradable agro-waste particles. In the composite, the mycelium acts as a supportive matrix which binds reinforcing particles within its filamentous network structure. The compressive behavior of mycelium composites is investigated using an integrated experimental and computational approach. The experimental results indicate that the composite mimics the soft elastic response of pure mycelium at small strains and demonstrates marked stiffening at larger strains due to the densification of stiff particles.

Positions summary

The (tied) winners of the 2018 Robert J. Melosh Medal are A. Krischok
 (Stanford University) and A. Vidyasagar (Caltech).

A. Krischok
 presented the paper "The relevance of variational inequalities for the stability of mixed methods based on multi-field saddle point functionals" and A. Vidyasagar presented the paper "Predicting instability-induced pattern evolution through spectral quasiconvexification." Congratulations to both!

Seeking candidates for a postdoctoral position at Rutgers University in the area of granular materials including computational modeling and experimental testing, working under the supervision of Alberto Cuitino. Candidates with a strong background in computational mechanics of solids, interfacial mechanics, granular materials and computational methods are highly encouraged to apply. Please provide a resume including experience and qualifications and 3 names (with contact information) of potential references.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1615/IntJMultCompEng.2018026027

Abstract

We are looking for a postdoctoral research fellow who has experience and interest in developing and implementing computational methods and algorithms for simulation and optimization in structural and continuum mechanics.