Oscar Lopez-Pamies's blog

1. Introduction

Because of its overwhelming pervasiveness and high-stakes impact on the mechanical performance of structures made of inorganic and live matter alike (bridges, airplanes, bones, ligaments,...), fracture has attracted the attention of humans, researchers and laymen the same, for centuries.

Despite being commonly credited with initiating the field of cavitation in elastomers, the famed poker-chip experiments of Gent and Lindley (1959) have yet to be fully explained. One likely reason for their elusiveness is that it had long been presumed that cavitation in elastomers was a phenomenon that could be explained solely on the basis of the elasticity of the elastomer at hand.

Twenty years in since their introduction, it is now plain that the regularized formulations dubbed as phase-field of the variational theory of brittle fracture of Francfort and Marigo (1998) provide a powerful macroscopic theory to describe and predict the propagation of cracks in linear elastic brittle materials under arbitrary quasistatic loading conditions. Over the past ten years, the ability of the phase-field approach to also possibly describe and predict crack nucleation has been under intense investigation.

Dear Colleagues,

Dear Colleagues, we cordially invite you to participate in PACAM XV.The Pan-American Congress of Applied Mechanics XV will be held in Champaign, IL from May 18 to May 21, 2015, under the auspices of the American Academy of Mechanics and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The conference will feature plenary lectures by Prof.

The XV Pan-American Congress of Applied Mechanics (PACAM) will be held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on May 18-21, 2015. The conference will feature 4 prestigious plenary lectures, several keynote presentations, and mini-symposia in all areas of mechanics, including Atomistics, Defects in Solids, Nanocomposites, Plasticity, Electro- and Magneto-active Materials, Fracture, Instabilities in Solids and Structures, and Fluid Mechanics.

IMPORTANT DATES & DEADLINES