iMechanica

Universal deformations of an elastic solid are deformations that can be achieved for all possible strain-energy density functions and suitable boundary conditions. They play a central role in nonlinear elasticity and their classification has been mostly accomplished for isotropic solids following Ericksen's seminal work. Here, we address the same problem for transversely isotropic, orthotropic, and monoclinic solids.

With funding from the Haythornthwaite Foundation, the Executive Committee (EC) of the Applied Mechanics Division (AMD) of ASME is pleased to announce the Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grant Program, targeting university faculty engaged in research in theoretical and applied mechanics that are at the beginning of their academic careers. Applicants must hold a tenure‐track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor at a US university on October 1, 2021, and must not be more than 5 years beyond receipt of their doctoral degree at the time the award

We are happy to announce the 2021 SES Meeting to be held in October. This year’s SES Meeting is an exciting departure from conventional virtual conferences. It will be organized as a Virtual Month (https://socengsci.org/ses-virtual-month/) spread over five days (October 1, 5, 15, 19, and 29). Each day will be a theme, which includes a fishbowl event, presentation, and poster session. A fishbowl is similar to a panel discussion, but with more interaction and informality.

Dear Colleagues,

We wanted to alert you for the call for nominations of the awards of the Applied Mechanics Division (AMD) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), which are due on September 15th, 2021.

EML Webinar (Season 2) on 16 July 2021 will be given by Dae-Hyeong Kim on Unconventional Bioelectronoics for Heart and Brain Diseases. Host: John A. Rogers, Northwestern University

We review some recent approaches to modeling failure and fracture of soft materials. By failure we mean the onset of damage via material instability. By fracture we mean further localization of damage into cracks with their subsequent propagation.

Computational Design of Compliant Mechanisms

Jessica McWilliams (jmcw@seas.upenn.edu), Wei-Hsi Chen (weicc@seas.upenn.edu), Cynthia Sung (crsung@seas.upenn.edu)

General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, USA

There is a PhD opening in the Mechanics of Soft Materials Lab (https://www.msm.seas.ucla.edu/) in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. The opening is to be filled in 2021 fall, 2022 winter or 2022 fall quarter. The successful candidate is expected to work on modeling, simulations, and experiments of soft materials.

Dear Members of the Mechanics and Materials Communities,

You may have known about the efforts of the Mechanics of Materials and Structures (MoMS) program of the National Science Foundation on revitalizing the practice of verification and validation (V&V) of computational models as a rigorous and indispensable step in the scientific investigative process.

Professor Yonggang Huang from Northwestern University is elected as an Honorary Member (2021) of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).  Each year ASME elects no more than 5 honorary members.  Since 2000 the mechanicians elected to the honorary members include: 

• Alan Needleman (2018);
• Romesh Batra (2015);
• Pol Spanos (2014);
• Ted Belytschko (2013);
• Zdenek Bazant (2012);
• JN Reddy (2011);
• Sia Nemat-Nasser (2005);
• Tinsley Oden (2004);
• Jan Achenbach (2002).

Research Fellow in High Resolution Microscopy of Engineering Alloys 

Applications are invited for a Research Fellow in High Resolution Microscopy of Engineering Alloys. 

Post Doctoral Researcher in Computational Solid Mechanics 

Applications are invited for a post doctoral researcher in computational solid mechanics. 

How can shear loading rate affect the soft adhesive contact area? A new blog post in tribonet.org discusses the problem following the paper "Papangelo, Antonio. (2021). On the Effect of Shear Loading Rate on Contact Area Shrinking in Adhesive Soft Contacts. Tribology Letters. 69." just published in Tribology Letters.

We are seeking strongly motivated candidates to fill two Research Fellow positions in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. The successful candidate will work on experimental studies in the area of cell mechanics, bioprinting, and bio-hybrid soft robotics. We are particularly interested in candidates with research experience in bioengineering, soft materials, mechanobiology and applied mechanics.  

In this work, superelastic and shape memory properties of single crystalline and polycrystalline yttria stabilized tetragonal zirconia (YSTZ) nanoparticles are studied by atomistic simulations. N. Zhang and M. Asle Zaeem. Superelasticity and shape memory effect in zirconia nanoparticles. Extreme Mechanics Letters 46 (2021) 101301 (8 pages).

                                         June 25, 2021, 5:00 - 7:00 PM CET 

                       WANG TILES FOR MODULAR (META)MATERIALS

                      Prof. Jan Zeman, Czech Technical University, Prague

On June 11, 2021, in the framework of the PRIN2015 METAMATERIALS WEBINARS series, prof. Federico Bosia from Politecnico di Torino has held the webinar 

ELASTIC METAMATERIALS FOR MULTISCALE APPLICATIONS, FROM SEISMIC SHIELDS TO NON-DESTRUCTIVE TESTING. The registration of the webinar is available here. 

Dear iMechanicians,

We have contributed to the Special Issue organised by the Royal Society on occasion of the centenary of Griffith's seminal paper with a paper revisiting phase field fracture methods and their connection with conventional fracture mechanics theory. I hope that you find it of interest. (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2021.0021)

- Reference persons: Marco Broccardo (UNITN/DICAM), Oreste S. Bursi (UNITN/DICAM) (marco.broccardo@unitn.it - oreste.bursi@unitn.it)

C8 - scholarship on reserved topics

https://www.unitn.it/en/ateneo/1954/announcement-of-selection

- Reference persons: Oreste S. Bursi (UNITN/DICAM), Gabriele Zanon (UNITN/DICAM) (oreste.bursi@unitn.it - gabriele.zanon@unitn.it)

C1 - scholarship on reserved topics

https://www.unitn.it/en/ateneo/1954/announcement-of-selection

It was reported both in experiments and computations using some classical plate theories that wrinkles can appear in a uniaxially stretched rectangular hyperelastic film with clamped-clamped boundaries and can be suppressed upon further tension. Here, based on a recently-available consistent finite-strain plate theory, we investigate this complex instability problem with isola-center bifurcation (the nontrivial solution curve begins and ends at two distinct points on the trivial line) in more depth and present an efficient numerical algorithm.

Esteemed Colleagues,

The Mechanics & Computation lab in the Mechanical Engineering Dept at IISc Bangalore has multiple openings for project assistants:

Post #1: Design & analysis of 3D printed lattices

Essential requirements:

• Expertise in Abaqus (standard + explicit)
• Good grasp of basic strength of materials
• Hands-on experience with 3D printing of plastics

Post #2: Experimental mechanics

One or two positions are available for a student to undertake a fully funded Ph.D. in Engineering at Louisiana Tech University understanding the detailed structure of the complicated heterogeneous materials in lithium ion batteries. Expected start date is Sept. or Nov. of 2021.

Requirements:

• B.S. in Engineering (Chemistry or Physics backgrounds are also suitable).
• Meet graduate school TOEFL/IELTS scores
• Competitive GRE
• An interest in multi-disciplinary research in materials

A postdoctoral fellow research position is availabe immediately in the Advanced Digital & Additive Manufacturing (ADAM) center at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates. Applicants should demonstrate research capabilities in computational modeling and experimentation in the area of additive manufacturing (3D printing).