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Fracture and contact mechanics for interface problems: a special issue of EFM

Submitted by marco.paggi on

A Special Issue of Engineering Fracture Mechanics

on

"Fracture and contact mechanics for interface problems", edited by Marco Paggi, Alberto Carpinteri and Peter Wriggers has just been published:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00137944/80

The selected articles were presented in a Minisymposium of the IV European Conference on Computational Mechanics, Paris, France, 2010.

 

Giant, voltage-actuated deformation of a dielectric elastomer under dead load

Submitted by Jiangshui Huang on

Far greater voltage-actuated deformation is achievable for a dielectric elastomer under equal-biaxial dead load than under rigid constraint usually employed. Areal strains of 488% are demonstrated. The dead load suppresses electric breakdown, enabling the elastomer to survive the snap-through electromechanical instability. The breakdown voltage is found to increase with the voltage ramp rate. A nonlinear model for viscoelastic dielectric elastomers is developed and shown to be consistent with the experimental observations. 

Published Online:

Frictional rolling contact model CONTACT version 12.1 released

Submitted by Edwin Vollebregt on

Dear all,

Herewith I want to announce the release of the frictional rolling contact model CONTACT version 12.1.

The main changes with respect to earlier versions of the program are as follows:

Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University: Finite Element Simulations of Active Biopolymer Networks

Submitted by Dibakar Datta on

A postdoctoral position with
primary focus on finite element simulations of active biopolymer
networks is available immediately at Shenoy Research Group @ Brown University . We are looking for a strongly
motivated candidate to work on the mechanics of active cytoskeletal
networks. The ideal candidate will have a background in solid
mechanics/computational physics with expertise in finite element simulations. Experience with Monte Carlo methods and stochastic simulations is desired but not essential.  This
individual will have the opportunity to be directly involved in

Call for Abstracts: Asia-Pacific Conference on Engineering Plasticity and Its Application (AEPA 2012), Singapore, 5-7 Dec. 2012

Submitted by Fan Zhihua on

THE 11th ASIA-PACIFIC CONFERENCE ON ENGINEERING PLASTICITY AND ITS APPLICATIONS (AEPA2012) 

(5 - 7 December 2012, Singapore)

    We are pleased to announce that the Eleventh Asia-Pacific Conference on Engineering Plasticity and Its Applications, AEPA2012, will be held in Singapore, in December 2012, following the previous successful symposia in Hong Kong (1992), Beijing (1994), Hiroshima (1996), Seoul (1998), Hong Kong (2000), Sydney (2002), Shanghai (2004), Nagoya (2006), Daejeon (2008) and Wuhan (2010).

A website wholly devoted to buckled shells

Submitted by Zhigang Suo on

John Hutchinson has just pointed out to me the website, shellbuckling.com.  The site is devoted to the mechanics of buckled shells, with downloadable photos, slides, papers, and computer codes.  The site also has a section on buckling people.  The site is created by a veteran buckling person, Dr. David Bushnell, formerly of Lockheed Martin.  Check the site out, and enjoy. 

Experimental study on the dielectric properties of polyacrylate dielectric elastomer

Submitted by Bo Li on

The dielectric constant of elastomeric dielectric material is an
essential physical parameter, whose value may affect the
electromechanical deformation of a dielectric elastomer actuator. Since
the dielectric constant is influenced by several external factors as
reported before, and no certain value has been confirmed to our
knowledge, in the present paper, on the basis of systematical comparison
of recent past literature, we conducted extensive works on the
measurement of dielectric properties of VHB films, involving five
influencing factors: prestretch (both equal and unequal biaxial),
electrical frequency, electrode material, stress relaxation time and
temperature. Experimental results directly show that the dielectric

PhD position on tissue engineering of cartilage and mechanical evaluation of the generated tissue

Submitted by azadpoor on

A vacant four-years PhD position is available. This PhD project will be done in Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam, NL) in collaboration with Delft University of Technology (Delft, NL) and is a part of a larger Dutch project on regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. The aim of the project is to generate cartilage from bone marrow derived stem cells in culture and evaluate them with molecular assays (Rotterdam) and mechanical assays (Delft). The culture protocol can be varied with oxygen level, tonicity, and active molecules.