As part of the 13th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics to be held in San Diego, CA, on July 26-30 2015, it is our pleasure to invite you to submit an abstract to the Symposium “Advances in Computational Methods for Heterogeneous Materials”.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering (www.dimec.uchile.cl) at University of Chile invites applications for three full time tenure-track faculty positions in Mechanical Engineering. Applicants must have deep interest in undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as the purpose to conduct long-term, externally funded research programs at international level. Candidates are also expected to maintain fruitful work relationships with industry in their respective areas through R&D initiatives.

     The Laboratory of Ocular Biomechanics at the University of Pittsburgh is seeking candidates for a postdoctoral fellow position on microstructure-based modeling of soft tissue biomechanics and remodeling. The project goal is to understand aging and vision loss. Specific duties will involve imaging, finite element modeling, analysis and interpretation of results, manuscript preparation and presentation in national and international meetings.

This paper computationally investigates the effect of martensitic variant strain accommodation on the formation of microstructural and topological patterning in zirconia. We used the phase-field technique to capture the temporal and spatial evolution of embryonic formation of the monoclinic phase in tetragonal single crystals. The three-dimensional simulations were able to capture the formation of all the possible monoclinic variants. We used the multivariant single embryo as an initial condition to mitigate the lack of nucleation criteria at the mesoscale.

Dear Colleagues:

As part of the USNCCM13, we are organizing a mini-symposium on “Peridynamics and its applications”.

This mini-symposium focuses on the recent developments of peridynamic mechanical and mathematical models and its applications on the solution of multiscale and multiphysics problems including damage and fracture as well as numerical solution methods.  Other non-local models are also welcome.

The department of Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is currently looking to fill a position at the Associate or higher level in the area of structures. The candidate should have an exemplary record of teaching and scholarly activities including externally funded research. The candidate should be able to teach our structures and fracture mechanics classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Two solids can adhere to each other in the presence of a liquid bridge between them, which is called wet adhesion. When the solid is soft, the liquid bridge can cause deformation in the material, and in turn, the deformation may have dramatic effects on the wet adhesion. To investigate the effect, in this article, we calculate the deformation in two soft layers with different separations and connected by a liquid bridge. We illustrate the effect of deformation in the soft layers on the adhesive force.

Cavitation can be often observed in soft materials. Most previous studies were focused on cavitation in an elastomer, which is under different mechanical loadings. In this paper, we investigate cavitation in a constrained hydrogel induced by drying. With taking account of surface tension and chemo-mechanics of gels, we calculate the free energy of the system as a function of cavity size. The free energy landscape shows double-well structure, analogous to first-order phase transition.  Above the critical humidity, a cavity inside the gel is tiny.

Dielectric elastomers (DEs) feature nonlinear dynamics resulting from an electromechanical coupling.

Under alternating voltage, the DE resonates with tunable performances. We present an

analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of a DE as electromechanical resonator (DEER) configured as a

pure shear actuator. A theoretical model is developed to characterize the complex performance

under different boundary conditions. Physical mechanisms are presented and discussed. Chaotic