Blog posts

Dear Friends,

I am looking for a postdoctoral candidate who wishes to apply for a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) fellowship.

This fellowship is a highly competitive scheme and includes a generous monthly salary (at the current exchange rate, around 3000 Euro or 3300 $) plus airfare (round-trip ticket to Japan).

I will support the application as a host and will help writing the proposal.
Applicants are allowed to suggest their own project, but preference will be given to candidates with experience and interest in two topics:

Hi all, 

Just wanted to share that the first issue of Matter was released last week. Matter is a new materials science journal from Cell Press. Our goal is to be a high impact offering, on par with Nature Materials. Check out our first issue here:

https://www.cell.com/matter/issue?pii=S2590-2385(19)X0002-8

URV 2019 PhD STUDENTSHIPS @ LIFE group, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona (http://lifeurv.wordpress.com/)

Grant reference: 2019PMF-PIPF-75  - Dept. Mechanical Engineering

The Executive Committee of the ASME Applied Mechanics Division would like to congratulate the recipients of the following 2019 ASME Awards

- 2019 Robert H. Thurston Lecture Award: Yonggang Huang, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

I attach a Letter I sent to the Editor of a tribology journal, concerning adhesion of rough surfaces. 

I contend that some "criteria" that have been proposed based on extrapolation of numerical results are due to the limitations in present numerical sophisticated rough contact simulations, which only span at most 3 orders of magnitude of wavelengths, so typically people simulate from nanometer to micrometer scale.

This paper demonstrates the potential use of toy-bricks as the building block of a mechanical tensile testing instrument for the mechanical characterisation of natural fibres. A table-top tensile testing instrument was developed using LEGO parts (Mindstorms EV3 and Technics) and a 2 kg capacity load cell, whereas deformation modes were programmed in an open source programming language. Experimental work was conducted on oil palm fibres under different tensile modes (i.e.

Large structural elements forming structures such as bridges, retaining walls and tunnel linings may contain hidden defects that limit their longevity, with major safety and cost implications. Also, when a structure is subjected to intense loading, internal damage may occur which is not visible on the surface.

Modern digital design and fabrication methods in architecture, engineering and construction, provide enhanced freedom in the sculpting, optimisation, fabrication and construction of building geometries, be they free-form structural shells, cladding elements or performance optimised lightweight structural components.

Ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibers have a complex hierarchical structure that at the micron-scale is composed of oriented chain crystals, lamellar crystals, and amorphous domains organized into macrofibrils. We developed a computational micromechanical modeling study of the effects of the morphological structure and constituent material properties on the deformation mechanisms, stiffness and strength of the UHMWPE macrofibrils.