iMechanica

Looking back at episodes of our lives, we reflect on how people meet and how such meetings change lives.  Information technology, broadly interpreted as means of communication among people, is always part of these narratives.  But central to such narratives are nearly always people themselves and the content of their communication, rather than the means of their communication. 

Hi, everyone

I am a student. I am  dealing with a failure problem of brittle spheres. These have a lot of flaws inside.I did some compression tests. Single spheres are crushed by a pair of parallel plates. I got the crush load distribution (in terms of critical contact force). 

My question is:

is there a failure criterion/model which relates to load(critical contact force), Youngs moduli and Poisson ratios of shpere and plates, radius and friction coefficient?

For my graduation work (student at the Delft university of Technology, The Netherlands), I am trying to model the aeroelastic behavior of a wind turbine rotor. For this end I use an Abaqus model of a wind turbine blade (which is a composite structure with different fiber layers and corresponding orientation). The aerodynamic force is calculated by a BEM code (Blade Element Momentum theory), which is a simplified engineering aerodynamic code: fast but still quite good. Using CFD to calculate the loads is out of the question since it requires far too much time to calculate.

The ability to control the domain patterns in ferroelectric nanostructures holds promise as a method to tailor physical properties for specific applications. We proposed a new way to control the domain patterns in ferroelectric nanostructures. Desirable domain patterns can be obtained through different surface charges. The surface charges can be supplied by the atomic and molecular adsorbates on the surfaces of ferroelectric nanostructures.

The deadline for abstracts for the 21st Annual Melosh Competition has been extended until January 30.  All interested graduate students are encouraged to apply.

 This competition for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis will be held at Duke University on Friday, April 24, 2009.  The competition has become one of the premier graduate student events in the broad area of computational mechanics.  

a recent pre-print about the mechanics of plectonemic DNA in extension-rotation experiments (under submission Biophysical Journal)

http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.1840

Journal version: http://www.cell.com/biophysj/abstract/S0006-3495(09)00564-5

Authors: N. Clauvelin, B. Audoly,  S. Neukirch

Abstract:

a recent pre-print concerning the elasticity of a knotted rod (submitted to Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids)

http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.2881

Authors:  N. Clauvelin, B. Audoly, S. Neukirch

Abstract:

Invitation to Concrete 09

The Concrete Institute of Australia has pleasure in inviting you to the 24th Biennial Conference in Sydney where you can join fellow concrete professionals and users in exploring the opportunities to add value to the services and products we provide in the changing climates in which we work.

PhD STUDENTSHIPS: Fluid structure interactions in marine engineering and IN bioinspired design 

Name            Olgierd Zienkiewicz
Nationality     British
Birth date      18 May 1921
Birth place     Caterham, UK
Date of death   2 January 2009
Place of death  Swansea, UK

PhD positions are available starting Fall 2009.

Michigan State University, Department of Mechanical Engineering

If you have strong interest in Solid Mechanics and Nature, write to me after applying to MSU Graduate School for admission.

Desirable qualities: Innovative, strongly motivated and interested in understanding how nature works and applying the same for mechanics based problems

The research will focus on biomimetic design of composite materials. 

My contact email is tsarjun@egr.msu.edu

The Department of Mechanical Engineering seeks candidates for a tenure-track faculty position in the field of Solid Mechanics to begin July 1, 2009 or thereafter.  Appointment would be at the assistant or untenured associate professor level. In special cases, a senior faculty appointment may be possible.  Candidates should have a strong foundation in Solid Mechanics,  and should hold an earned Ph.D.

A new journal in Materials Engineering, with emphasis on mechanical properties, will be launched this year.

The home page is at:

 http://www.serialspublications.com/journals1.asp?jid=438

 Author instruction can be found at:

http://www.serialspublications.com/journals1.asp?jid=438&dtype=1&jtype=

Online submission at:

10th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics
July 16-19, 2009. Columbus, Ohio

Minisymposium 2.2.5  Ab Initio and Intermediate Atomistics in Computational Nanomechanics 

Organizers: 

Traian Dumitrica, University of Minnesota

Boris I. Yakobson, Rice University 

I would like to share the following information to all the iMechanica users interested in using TAUCS a library of sparse linear solvers. TAUCS is among the most used libraries of sparse linear solvers and, to my knowledge, its closest equivalent library is SuperLU. For your reference, TAUCS is used in the commercial software Mathematica by Wolfram Research. Its source code can be downloaded from

http://www.tau.ac.il/~stoledo/taucs

I have an opening for a post-doctoral position starting early next year (Jan 2009) in the broad area of multi-scale mechanics of nano-crystalline (nc) materials. The focus will be on microstructure mediated failure processes in nc materials primarily using continuum mechanics based approaches, but informed by materials science.

If you are interested, please send me (shailendra[at]nus[dot]edu[dot]sg) your CV and the names of at least two references.

Thanks,

~Shailendra