ECCM 2010 Minisymposium on Fracture and Contact Mechanics for Interface Problems - Paris, France, May 16-21 2010

Dear Colleague,
the IV European Conference on Computational Mechanics-ECCM 2010, Solids, Structures and Coupled Problems in Engineering, organized by ECCOMAS, will take place in Paris, France, May 16-21 2010 (see the Congress website http://www.eccm2010.org/  for more information).
During this conference, we are organizing a Minisymposium entitled: 

Fracture and Contact Mechanics for Interface Problems  

This Minisymposium will be held under the auspices of the Italian Group of Fracture.
Abstracts of perspective contributors should be submitted through the website of the Conference http://www.eccm2010.org/ . Please, note that the site will be open for abstract submission between September 30 and November 20, 2009. In the meanwhile, thank you to send us an email stating your intention to submit an abstract for this Minisymposium.
We look forward to meeting you there, 

Marco Paggi     -     Politecnico di Torino

Alberto Carpinteri     -     Politecnico di Torino     

Peter Wriggers     -     Leibniz University of Hannover 
 

ABSTRACT
Interface mechanical problems are of main concern in civil, mechanical and electronic engineering, as well as in biomechanics, geophysics and materials science. Interfaces in multi-material systems, such as layered materials, fibre-composites and hierarchical materials, must sustain mechanical and thermo-elastic stresses without failure. Consequently, they exert an important and sometimes controlling influence on the overall performance of the materials. In this context, analytical and numerical methods based on fracture mechanics and contact mechanics can be profitably applied to characterize the mechanical behaviour of interfaces over all the scales.
The aim of this Minisymposium is to bring together specialists in fracture mechanics and contact mechanics to discuss advances in mathematical formulations and computational models for interface mechanical problems. Interested researchers are invited to submit abstracts on topics which include, but are not limited to:

• Multiscale characterization of roughness of contact and fracture surfaces;
• Mathematical formulations for the structural analysis of multi-material systems;
• Computational methods for decohesion and contact problems at interfaces under monotonic or cyclic loading;
• Analysis of instability phenomena (snap-back and snap-through) at interfaces;
• Interface constitutive laws;
• Applications to advanced heterogeneous materials, such as hierarchical composites and functionally graded materials.

Contact person:
Dr. Ing. Marco Paggi, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Structural Mechanics
Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow 2010-2011
Member of the Executive Board of the Italian Group of Fracture 2009-2011
Department of Structural and Geotechnical Engineering
Politecnico di Torino
C.so Duca degli Abruzzi, 24
10129  - Torino (Italy)
tel: +39.011.564 4910
fax: +39.011.564 4899
e-mail: marco.paggi@polito.it
home page: http://staff.polito.it/marco.paggi/