iMechanica

ASCE, ASME and SES will hold their Joint Conference on Mechanics and Materials on June 24-27, 2009 in Blacksburg, VA.  The conference will be chaired by Dr. Ishwar K. Puri, Department Head, Engineering Science and Mechanics, Virginia Tech. The conference web site provides details, including an invitation to submit symposium and organized session proposals, key dates, instructions for the submission of abstracts and registration information.

For those interested in a classical subject like contact mechanics, here are a couple of recent papers published in August.  One is an extension of the Greenwood Williamson theory of rough contact, and the other is a linear perturbation solution of the classical Carter rolling contact problem for a rolling cylinder, when the surface is corrugated and hence there are oscillations in both normal and tangential loads.

Richard D. James, Russell J. Penrose Professor, University of Minnesota

For pioneering the modern vision of phase transformations and materials instabilities in solids.

I am attaching a brief overview of electronic structure theories (ab-initio theories) with emphasis on the various approximations that form a basis for these theories. It also contains references that provide a comprehensive introduction to the field.

The Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), a member of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, invites applications for available position for Research Engineer / Research Officer in the field of Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI).

Ali Hasan Nayfeh, University Distinguished Professor, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

For seminal analytical and experimental contributions to nonlinear dynamics and structural mechanics

Thomas C.T. Ting, Professor Emeritus, the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Consulting Professor, Stanford University

For significant contributions to the development of the Stroh formalism of anisotropic elasticity, and to the analyses of several fundamental inelastic and wave propagation problems

Hello,

The 53rd Congress of the Indian Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (an International Meet) is slated to be held during last week of December 2008, in Hyderabad, India. The last date for sending in both the abstracts and the full-length papers is 30th September, 2008.

People from outside India are especially encouraged to participate. Hyderabad is well connected by flights. Usually, the ISTAM conferences are low on budget but high on enthusiasm. The ISTAM conferences typically cover a broad range of topics.

The Conference will be held in University  of Technical Education, Hochiminh City

1,  Vo Van Ngan, Thu Duc, Hochiminh City, Vietnam

November 27-30, 2008

There are two positions available for doctoral studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Michigan State University.  Two-year fundings are secured for those positions.  Research area is computational mechanics especially for meshless methods, wave propagation excited by piezo-material, interconnect reliability analysis under shock loading, and  structural response under extreme loadings.  Strong mathematical background with programming knowledge and experience with commercial FEA packages such as ADINA, ANSYS, LS-DYNA, etc. will be considered. 

Dear all,

         I am new to X-FEM, started reading papers a couple of weeks before. I understood, functions[heaviside,sign..] are used to enrich the nodes to simulate virtually the discontinuity and asymptotic functions are used to charecterize the crack tip,other than this regular FEM nodes are there. I have few questions. 

1.what is the role of the asymptotic functions and its unknown co-efficient 'b' in charecterizing the crack tip. What are the parameters do these functions exactly charecterize means wat are the details can we extract from these fns n co-effs?

The Adhesion Society will hold its 32nd Annual Meeting in Savannah, GA February 15-18, 2009; uniting chemists, physicists, mechanists, engineers, and biologists concerned with the design and characterization of materials interfaces and their associated property of adhesion.  Adhesion and interfacial constrol are key to the development of nano- and bio- based technologies as well structural and cosmetic applications that influence society in everyday life. 

Professor Chad M. Landis, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, The University of Texas at Austin

For outstanding contributions to the mechanics of active materials

I have been told about "Spin Softening" option for rotating cylinders in Ansys but did not really understand how/what/why. I have gone thru Ansys documentation and it appears that the centrifugal loads are applied to the deformed configuration if the Spin Softening option is selected. Does Abaqus have a similar option ?

Now what the "Spin Softening" is meant to do is apply a centrifugal force:

F(r) = density*(r+u)*speed^2

Post-Doctoral Fellowship: Looking for energetic researchers with strong background in constitutive modeling or multiscale material simulations. Specialty on fatigue and fracture of metals, polymer or short fiber composites is a plus.  The primary research will be focused on physics-based damage, fracture, and fatigue modeling and simulations at various scales.  If interested, please contact Dr. Yibin Xue via email or visit her website.

I post some (hand-written) notes on compatibility conditions for both small and finite strains that I have used for helping me in lecturing. These may be useful for our student friends on imechanica. I also post a paper on compatibility conditions for the Left Cauchy-Green field in three dimensions as well as the paper by Janet Blume on the same subject.

recommend more references about this topic: S. van der Zwaag Editor, Self Healing Materials-An Alternative Approach to 20 Centuries of Materials Science. Springer, 2007.  about half of this book talk self healing polymers.

For the 2009 solicitation, we will consider proposals that aim to investigate emerging frontiers in the following two specific research areas:

1. BioSensing & BioActuation: Interface of Living and Engineered Systems (BSBA)
2. Hydrocarbons from Biomass (HyBi)

Due dates

Highly motivated PhD or MS/PhD candidates are sought for
research in computational mechanics and inverse problems in the Department of
Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh.

We have six strain compatibility equations, which are obtained from strain-displacement relations by making an assumptions 'small strains'. Strain compatibility equations ensure a single valued and continuous displacemnet filed. These equations are used in stress based approach.

Now my queries are as following.

[1] Do we have strain compatibility equations for non-linear strain-displacement relations?

[2] Do we follow stress based approach in non-linear solid mechanics.

I am a third yr undergraduate student of Aerospace Engineering department, IIT Kharagpur. I have a very simple question in strucutral mechanics. Is there any analytical solution available for deflection of plate under distributed load? The governing equation is well known and has been attached as an image file. Only classical plate theory can be considered. The boundary conditions can be taken as classical boundary conditions. So that can be any combination of a) hinged b) clamped and c) free boundary conditions.

Can i have some notes on FEM & FDM?