L. Roy Xu's blog

World-renowned mechanician, Professor Freund at Brown University passed away on October 3, 2024. He was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences/Engineering and made significant contributions to mechanics research and the scientific community. Moreover, Prof. Fruend mentored many outstanding Ph.D. students including Prof. Yang Wei at Zhejiang University and my mentor Prof. Ares Rosakis at the  California Institute of Technology.  His famous works include two books: Dynamic Fracture Mechanics, Thin Film Materials co-authored with Subra Suresh.

I always feel puzzled that the cost of the F35 increases at “a supersonic speed”. Now based on our proposal review process, I might find some partial answers.  In 2017 and 2018, we (including a full professor at a leading research university in the US) submitted two research proposals to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). Our proposal in 2017 had 7 technical concerns, but our proposal in 2018 didn’t improve at all, and had more than 30 technical concerns..

interfacial crack initiated from a polymer notch (click here to view this YouTube video from our experiment),     read more below to submit your abstracts

Prof. Jun Xu, Dr. Scott Grutzik, and I organize one topic on “Dynamic failure of materials and structures” for 2019 ASME Congress. We invite you, your colleagues and group members to submit short abstracts before ASME’s deadline of Feb 25, 2019. More details below: 

Dear researchers----We spent more than two years to prepare a research proposal and it was submitted to a federal funding agency (not NSF).  Based on one reviewer’s comments,  the program manager rejected our proposal. Our title is “A Multi-Scale Approach of Combining Nano-indentation with Computational Mechanics to Predict Impact Behavior of Structural Composite Materials”. I only list these comments related to nano-indentation. Your frank opinion is really appreciated.

Thu, 2016-03-03 17:25 - L. Roy Xu

Dr. Jun Xu and I organize  one topic on “Dynamic failure of advanced materials (fatigue failure is included also)” for 2017 ASME Congress. Our keynote speakers include a senior program manager of US Office of Naval Research and a distinguished researcher of US Army Research Laboratory. We would invite you (also your colleagues  and group members)  to submit a short abstract before ASME’s deadline March 6. More details below: 

 
interfacial crack initiated from a polymer notch (click here to view this YouTube video from our experiment),     read more below to submit your abstracts

Why should we investigate fracture and failure mechanics? From this Boeing 737 accident (below) to recent fatigue cracks of new Airbus  A380,  we must use failure mechanics knowledge to save our lives. Therefore, Dr.H. Eliot Fang (Program Manager at the DOE Sandia National Labs), Dr.  Larry
C. Russell (program manager at the Army Research Office) and I would invite you to submit abstracts to our symposium

Even Jay Leno tried to understand fatigue cracks at his Yesterday’s Tonight Show, our research on fracture and failure mechanics is received great attention from the general public. Read more after this photo--

You are invited to present your research work on the mechanical behavior of nanocomposite materials (Nov. 13-19, 2009 in Florida, close to Disney World). This topic will be focused on systematic mechanics experiments, modeling and simulations to solve new challenging mechanics problems such the effect of nanofiller agglomeration on the stiffness and strength reduction; interfacial stress transferring and interface strength evaluation at the nanoscale.  Deadline for abstract submission is March 17, 2009.