Why I am taking Fracture Mechanics...

My name is Jamilla Lutif. I am up to finish my Master in the Civil Engineering Department at UNL. My BS degree is also in Civil Engineering, and I got the BS degree at the Universidade federal do Ceara, in Brazil.

I have taken some solid mechanics course, such as Elasticity, Continuum Mechanics and Finite Element Methods. My strength would be that I already took some basic mechanics courses. Civil engineering students that do not have many solid mechanics background could really get in trouble having fracture mechanics as the first one! Also, I had contact with experiments related to fracture toughness, which maybe can help me to understand the physical mechanisms better. My weakness would be that I have not taken any plasticity course.

My research group works basically with viscoelastic materials, manly asphalt materials, under supervision of Dr Allen and Dr Kim. I intend to start my PhD in this summer, and I really want to go further in the prediction of asphalt pavements life, material selection, etc. So, for that, fracture mechanics is going to be an important course to understand one of the main distresses in asphalt pavements, fatigue cracking. Fracture mechanics will contribute for my education; since I have never studied this subject deeply, and I know that fracture mechanics have application in many, if not all, areas of the engineering.