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Scaling of fracture strength, fracture energy and toughness is an important issue when it comes to predicting the behaviour of large-scale structures on the basis of laboratory scale measurements. Historically the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Gallileo is well known, followed by the statistical weakest link theory derived by Weibull in 1939. Weibull scaling is a statistical approach assuming instantaneous failure when the weakest link in a material structure fails.

In honor of its two recent National Medal of Science recipients, Jan Achenbach and Tobin Marks, Northwestern University held a National Medal of Science Symposium on May 14.

In Singapore, I have seen students who lost their relatives in last earthquake. I am very sorry about this, but I think there should be lessons for us in such disasters.  Is'nt any cheap and easy way to reinforce building in the face of earthquakes? I hope such disasters make researchers concentrate on such important topics.

Hey all, I'm looking for a method of determining creep properties of polymer products that is faster than applying a stress to them for an extended period of time.  Is anyone aware of any relations between more quickly/easily attainable material properties and creep properties?  Or is there any way to simulate an extended life test in a shorter amount of time?

Thanks for you help,

wharju2 [at] uiuc.edu (wharju2[at]uiuc[dot]edu)

I encounter a big challenge now.

I wanna use mohr-coulomb criterion to simulate the indentation of BMGs in ABAQUS.However, there are many parameters confusing me.

We know the  mohr-coulomb can be written as:

                            τ_c=k₀-ασ_n