iMechanica

The Department of Mechanical Engineering seeks an outstanding
individual at the rank of Assistant Professor or Associate Professor
without tenure, in the area of Computational Mechanics.

I am pleased to announce that Volume 1, Number 1 (January 2008) of the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials is published in both print and online on ScienceDirect. This first issue contains three excellent review articles on bone and dentin, human enamel, and biocompatability of Ti-alloys as well as eight research papers.

A technique for setting up generalized continuum theories based on a balance law and nonlocal thermodynamics is suggested. The methodology does not require the introduction of gradients of the internal variable in the free energy. Elements of a generalized damage model with porosity as the internal variable are developed as an example.

A field theory of dislocation mechanics and plasticity is illustrated through new results at the nano, meso, and macro scales. Specifically, dislocation nucleation, the occurrence of wave-type response in quasi-static plasticity, and a jump condition at material interfaces and its implications for analysis of deformation localization are discussed.

I just remembered another video that I had seen some time ago.  Many of you have probably seen it but here it is for those who have not. (The original page where I found it is http://www.maniacworld.com/Laminar-Reverse-Flow.html.)

Prof. Pat McMurtry's explanation is:

The governor of Virginia has asked President Bush to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to  Professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who died trying to save his students during the mass killings at Virginia Tech.  Read more.

via Ken P. Chong, National Science Foundation 

The Kavli Prize – three international awards for outstanding contributions to the fields of nanoscience, neuroscience and astrophysics – will be awarded for the first time in 2008. The Kavli Foundation has established these international awards to recognize seminal advances in scientific research. Each prize will consist of a scroll, a medal and a cash award of USD 1 million.

The Prizes will be awarded at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, Fred Kavli’s native country, every two years, beginning in 2008.  http://www.kavliprize.no/

When a strained film is grown on a vicinal substrate, the steps advance like a train when the deposited atoms have sufficient mobility to reach the step edges. However, as the steps advance, the strain-induced force monopoles associated with the steps cause the steps to attract to each other (J. Tersoff, PRL 74, 4962, (1995)), resulting in a thermodynamic instability of the steps in the form of step bunching (J. Tersoff, et al., PRL 75, 2730 (1995)).

The following video is a nice depiction of how the eigenmodes of a plate change with increasing forcing frequency.

The 20th Annual Melosh Competition for the Best Student Paper on Finite Element Analysis will be held at Duke University on April 25, 2008.  The competition has become one of the premier graduate student events in the broad area of mechanics.   We have held the competition at a variety of locations over the past several years, and this year we are returning to Durham.   

Ad No Ref: A078244

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer (2 continuing positions)

Department of Materials Engineering

Faculty of Engineering

Monash University, Australia

Dear fellows,

A short note to let you know that I have now three Ph.D. positions available to fill between now and March 2008 (sonner=better) (Students from the EU only -- fully funded). 

A link for the paper: http://www.seas.harvard.edu/suo/papers/201.pdf

I just read Teng Li's entry regarding the launch of SEAS at Harvard.  Thanks for posting this interesting information!  

On this occasion, I'd also like express my congratulations to Harvard
University in launching the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
(SEAS) last week!  It is terrific that the engineering science community in the Boston area is thriving and developing.  Best of luck, and looking forward to fruitful interactions in the future!  

Markus Buehler of MIT

I am attaching a pdf of "How to give successful oral and poster presentations" by J.W. Niemantsverdriet of the Eindhoven University of Technology which I had found on the internet some years ago. It has some very useful tips.

V. Hegadekatte

As stated by Richard Vinci and Oliver Kraft in the announcement of 2008 Gordon Research Conference on Thin Film and Small-Scale Mechanical Behavior, there is a compelling need to understand the critical roles of different deformation mechanisms in structures with small characteristic dimensions, like nanocrystals and thin films. We have recently studied deformation behaviors in nanostructured materials and thin films with deformation mechanisms including grain-boundary diffusion, grain-boundary sliding, and grain-interior plasticity. Some interesting mechanical phenomena associated with heterogeneous grain-boundary properties are found and summarized here.

How NOT to use Powerponit! Very instructive and memorable.

This is the file mentioned in my comment on Xuanhe Zhao's blog

   A large quantity of small molecules may migrate into a network of long polymers, causing the network to swell, forming an aggregate known as a polymeric gel.  This paper formulates a theory of the coupled mass transport and large deformation.

Following Andy's recommendation I have been reading Ellis Dill's Continuum Mechanics[1]. In page 75 of the book, we find the
well known result that the constitutive equation for an isotropic hypoelastic
material can be derived from a stored energy function only if