Blog posts

In the continuous theory of defects in nonlinear elastic solids, it is known that a distribution of disclinations leads, in general, to a non-trivial residual stress field. To study this problem we consider the particular case of determining the residual stress field of a cylindrically-symmetric distribution of parallel wedge disclinations. We first use the tools of differential geometry to construct a Riemaniann material manifold in which the body is stress-free. This manifold is metric compatible, has zero torsion, but has non-vanishing curvature.

I have a one-year vacant postdoc position. The work will be mostly related to development of FE models for modeling growth, differentiation, and adaptation of biological tissues. The postdoc needs to know a lot about nonlinear continuum mechanics and advanced material models and should be able to write FE codes and implement advanced material models in commercial FE programs.

This year the Annual ASME Applied Mechanics Division Honors and Awards Banquet was held on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 in Denver Colorado. I had the pleasure of presiding over the evening and distributing the AMD Division awards, AMD Student Paper Competition awards, and AMD-Haythornthwaite Foundation Travel Awards.  Below is a list of all the award recipients and I have attached a PDF with pictures of the awardees that evening. 

AMD Division Awards:

The Applied Mechanics Division encourages the involvement of graduate students in the activities of the AMD Division.  One of the ways is the sponsorship of the annual Student Paper Contest.  The recipients of this prize are chosen from the Haythornthwaite Student Travel contest award pool sponsored by the Haythornthwaite Foundation.  

 This year’s winners are: 

1^st Place prize: Baptiste Coudrillier - Johns Hopkins University

The Applied Mechanics Division, Executive Committee continues to seek ways to involve and encourage younger members and particularly graduate students in the activities of the AMD Division.  

I am co-organizing a mini-symposium on « Computational damage mechanics of composite materials »  in the World Congress on Computational Mechanics (WCCM 2012) with Dr. Gilles Lubineau at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and Dr. Glaucio H. Paulino at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.