vikastomar's blog

Using a new experimental setup have now proved that one could actually draw a thermal conductivity-strain relationship in the same way as stress-strain relation!

What remains to be seen is that whether this relationship is tensorial or not! Details are in the paper..

Correlating Microscale Thermal Conductivity of Heavily-Doped Silicon With Simultaneous Measurements of Stress," has been published online today, 20 October 2011, in Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology (Vol.133, Iss.4):

We all know most atomistic simulations in nanomechanics are performed on ideal materials that are not produced in laboratory and most experiments in nanomechanics are performed on materials that cannot be analyzed using atomistic simulations. Atomistic simulations indeed have a great capability in revealing a material's behavior with only constitutive law being used is that in the form of interatomic potential. The strain rate in atomistic simulations is of the order of 100000000 per sec which has not yet been achieved in any experiment or in a practical application.

Expected starting date: April 01, 2008 (if no issue with work VISA for international applicants) 

Salary: Negotiable

Duration: One year with a possibility of another year's extension subjected to availability of funds.

A post-doc position is available at the University of Notre Dame in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. The project focuses on nanocomposite deformation modeling and performing corresponding experiments using primarily atomic force microscope and X-ray diffractometer. Initial position is for one-year and is extensible for another year contingent upon continued funding. The position offers attractive collaborative opportunities with national labs and material synthesis groups across different universities. Salary is negotiable.

Fracture in bone is a complex process that depends on the volume fraction (the relative fraction of bone tissue vs. void space), the architecture (the geometrical arrangement of the tissue), the mechanical properties of the bone tissue itself, and the applied loads. Theoretical approaches to the fracture of porous materials have been developed but their application to bone may be limited as they assume homogeneity of both the structure and the underlying material. The adaptation of the mechanical properties of bone to its loading history results in substantial heterogeneity of mechanical properties primarily due to the wide range of loads applied in the skeleton. Furthermore, bone diseases as well as pharmaceutical treatments for bone diseases can also affect the heterogeneity of material properties. All the above effects are intricately linked with bone micro-structure which incorporates collagen and mineral at the nanoscale in widely varying topological manners. With a wide ranging heterogeneity in length-scales of bone fracture it becomes imperative that fracture and failure analyses of bones are carried out at multiple lengthscales using a combination of modeling and experimental approaches. In this mini-symposium computational, experimental, and theoretical presentation of research on analyzing fracture of cortical as well as cancellous bone architectures are solicited. Presentations on computational and theoretical method development, experimental behavior characterization, and forming a link between theory and experiments are all strongly encouraged.