Wei Cai and Bill Nix, of Stanford University, have just published a new textbook Imperfections in Crystalline Solids.  You can look at the first chapter at the website of the Cambridge University Press.  

A wide range of engineered and natural composites exhibit a layered architecture whereby individual building blocks are assembled layer by layer using cohesive interfaces. We present a novel mechanism for evolving acoustic band gap structure in a model system of these composites through patterning the microstructure in a way that triggers non-planar interfacial deformations between the layers as they are stretched.

This paper is dedicated to the memory of my friend Professor Bill Klug whose life was tragically cut short on June 1, 2016.

The Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics (AEM) at The University of Alabama invites applications for two tenure-track faculty positions in areas related to space/astronautics and unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The successful applicant for the space/astronautics position will contribute to the department’s emerging space technology research thrust. The successful applicant for the UAS position will contribute to a University-led effort to establish an airborne/spaceborne remote sensing center of excellence.

I highly recommend this paper to any mechanician who is familiar with the scientific efforst in the last 150 years to unify mechanics and thermodynamics. Sosnoskiy and Sherbakov and several others from the Russian Academy of Sciences listed in the Acknowledgemnsts have achieved it. Congratulations.

Sosnovskiy, L. Sherbakov, S.,”Mechanothermodynamic Entropy and Analysis of Damage State of Complex Systems”, Entropy, 2016, 18, 268.

This paper compares the variational iteration method (VIM), the Adomian decomposition method (ADM) and the Picard iteration method (PIM) for solving a system of first order nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs). A unification of the concepts underlying these three methods is attempted by considering a very general iterative algorithm for VIM. It is found that all the three methods can be regarded as special cases of using a very general matrix of Lagrange multipliers in the iterative algorithm of VIM.

We are looking for two postdoctoral researchers to work on the following topics at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.  

1. Modeling the welding process using finite element method.  

2. First-principles calculations of novel nanomaterials for energy harvesting applications.  

I have been looking at XFEM literature for a while and wondering why do we need 2 different heaviside enrichment functions in XFEM? In paper titled "A finite element method for crack growth without remeshing" by Nicolas Moes et al.(1999), they use the following function for heaviside enrichment:

 H(x,y)={1, for y>0

             -1,for y<0}

We are looking for candidates for doctoral positions in the areas of computational and experimental biomechanics. Candidates must have earned a M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering or in a related field from an accredited University. Candidates with strong background in numerical simulations (e.g. C++ and FORTRAN programming skills, finite element analysis, and high performance computing) and/or previous experience in experimental characterization of bioogical tissues are highly desirable.