A nanocomposite electrical generator composed of an array of zinc oxide nanowires is considered.
The electric potential distribution along zinc oxide nanowires is modeled using continuum
mechanics and Maxwell’s equations for the case of axial loading. A perturbation technique is used
for decoupling the constitutive equations. The governing differential equations are solved using a
finite difference method. It is shown that a gradient of electric potential exists along the axis of the
zinc oxide nanowires. Maximum and minimum values of electric potential exist at the extreme ends
along the nanowire length and have opposite signs. The positive and negative voltages are separated

Dielectric elastomer transducers are often subject to large tensile stretches and are susceptible to rupture. Here we carry out an experimental study of the rupture behavior of membranes of an acrylic dielectric elastomer (VHB 4905). Pure-shear test specimens are used to measure force-displacement curves, using samples with and without pre-cracks. We find that introducing a pre-crack into a membrane drastically reduces the stretch at rupture. Furthermore, we measure the stretch at rupture and fracture energy using samples of different heights at various stretch-rates. The stretch at rupture is found to decrease with sample height, and the fracture energy is found to increase with stretch-rate.
This paper has appeared in the Journal of Applied Physics and can be downloaded from:

Computational Biomechanics for Medicine VII: a MICCAI 2012 satellite

workshop (paper submission deadline extended till 22 June 2012)

_________________________________________________



         Call for papers



Computational Biomechanics for Medicine (http://school.mech.uwa.edu.au/CBM2012/,

Awards will be presented at the AMD Banquet, scheduled on Tuesday, 13 November 2012, during the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, to be held in Houston, Texas, 9-15 November 2012 at the Hilton Americas and the George R. Brown Convention Center.

 2012 Society Awards:

Hi, everyone!

Now I am starting the research on cardiac mechanical modelling. The user defined function "UMAT" was used to implement  the anisotropic hyperelastic Fung-type model . Now I come across some difficulties to write UMAT subroutine. Can someone recommend me some useful codes that can let me know how to write it.

Dr. Mukul Sharma, Professor in Dept. of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin is seeking to fill two Postdoctoral Positions.

A post-doctoral research position is available in my MIT research group for the Development of Finite Element Methods for

Nano-scale Structures. Experience in nonlinear finite element analysis and, ideally also, the analysis of multiphysics problems

is needed. Please contact me if you are interested,  Prof. KJ Bathe, kjb [at] mit.edu.

Two postdoctoral fellow positions at Northeastern University are available immediately. First position is focused on the analysis of the nonlinear behavior of soft matter using computational mechanics and the development and analysis of biomimetic materials and structural systems. Second position is focused on computational and solid mechanics. The research will be carried out at the High Performance Materials and Structures Laboratory (http://www.hpmsl.neu.edu/).