Mike Ciavarella's blog

Call for PhD student grants and applications

Location: Polytechnic University of Bari, Department of Mechanics Mathematics and Management (DMMM), Via Orabona 4 - 70125 Bari – Italy

I am very pleased to inform you that Prof. Davide Bigoni, probably the leading scientist in solid mechanics in Italy, has won the most prestigious grant in Europe, of a value of nearly 2.5 MEuro.    This is his second Advanced Research Grant from ERC, and Prof. Bigoni is probably one of the few to have won 2 Advanced ERC in Italy.

My warmest congratulation to Davide for his well deserved achievement.

The title of his project is

"Beyond hyperelasticity: a virgin land of extreme materials"

Dear Imechanica friends

     in Italy traditionally we were quite unwelcoming to foreigners / italian abroad applying to the Italian positions of Associate or Full Professor, but now things are improving.

I am trying here to describe the system:  

1) there are positions open as phd students, or post-doc, in various sites of the Universities, and there may be also sites collecting these calls, like https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs where also jobs as associate or full professor should be posted.

dear Colleagues

In writing a review of models on fretting fatigue, I am looking at the effect of friction coefficient.   Obviously, if friction is zero there is no fretting fatigue!   This goes without saying.

dear collegues, I may be interested to share your views on an "asperity theory" modified Persson's rubber friction contact mechanics theory which I find not clearly motivated and seems to lead to erroneous conclusions ---- but I am also unable to reproduce the results claimed by the authors. The preprint is here, and the original paper attached: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359392510

Dear colleagues

in attach you find a call for invited professors from Ukraine at the Politecnico di BARI in Italy for 3 months with full expenses and salary covered.  

DEADLINE IS 15th of MARCH!

Greetings, Michele Ciavarella

PS I think it is useful to report the initiative on researchgate, which has a link in which over 1000 researchers from all over the world have listed available positions such as phd or post-doc or other

dear colleague 

M. Ciavarella (2021) Improved Muller approximate solution of the pull-off of a sphere from a viscoelastic substrate, Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1080/01694243.2021.1882766

See also in attach the PDF.

dear collegues 

Crack propagation at the interface between viscoelastic and elastic materials

M.Ciavarella, R.McMeeking

dear Colleagues

I attach a preprint of a note on the elegant and interesting and simple theory by Afferrante and Carbone on ultratough peeling of an elastic tape from a viscoelastic substrate.   Any comment is most welcome.   Regards, MC

dear Collegues

Just submitted a paper on electroadhesion of rough surfaces, greatly simplifying the recent theory of the great Bo Persson , with hot application to touch screens :  see here. 

Comments welcome.

A criterion for the mean stress effect correction in the shift factor approach for variable amplitude life prediction is presented for both smooth and notched specimens. The criterion is applied to the simple idea proposed by the authors in a previous note that Gaßner curves can be interpreted as shifted Wöhler curves. The mean stress correction used has been proposed by Smith, Watson and Topper and, more in general, by Walker.