conference

The Eighth International Conference on Fundamentals of Fracture (ICFF VIII) is the successor of the previous seven held at NBS, Gaithersburg (USA, 1983), Gatlinburg (USA, 1985), Irsee (Germany, 1989), Urabandai (Japan, 1993), NIST, Gaithersburg (USA, 1997), Cirencester (UK, 2001), and Nancy (France, 2005). You are warmly invited to participate in ICFF VIII which will be held 3-7 January 2008 in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, and in Guangzhou, China. As the previous conferences, ICFF VIII provides an international forum for presentation and discussion of the latest scientific and technological development in fundamentals of fracture. The general theme of ICFF VIII is to cover all aspects of fracture at a fundamental level, including contributions from those working in the disciplines of Continuum Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry, Bioscience, Metallurgy, Ceramics, Polymer Science, etc. You are cordially invited to submit an abstract to join in this memorable event.

Symposium DD at the upcoming Materials Research Society Annual Meeting (Nov. 26-Dec. 1, Boston, MA) will be the latest in a series of MRS symposia on the mechanics of biological materials and materials designed following natural principles ("biomimetic" or "bio-inspired").   The full program is available at the MRS website (www.mrs.org).  This topic was also the subject of the August, 2006 focus issue of the Journal of Materials Research, which contained over 30 articles on the subject.

Introduction:

This is the Fifteenth Conference in Mechanical Engineering series that started in 1992. The conference is concerned with the latest in theoretical, mathematical and scientific developments in Mechanical Engineering as well as application of established techniques to new domains. Following tradition of conference, ISME 2007 will provide an international technical forum for experts and researches from both the academia and industry to meet and exchange new ideas and present their findings of ongoing research in various Mechanical engineering disciplines.

Although nanostructures, such as nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanowires, nanobelts, and nanometer thick films, nanostructured materials and nanocomposites have been synthesized and fabricated by various techniques, their mechanical properties have not been well explored. These nanostructures are being used as structural and functional building blocks to construct micro/nanodevices. Some nanostructured materials exhibit the breakdown of Hall-Petch behavior. The failure of conventional reinforcing models has been found in nanocomposites. The extremely small dimensions of nanomaterials and micro/nanodevices impose tremendous challenges to many existing experimental techniques and modeling tools. An in-depth understanding of mechanics at the nanoscale is greatly needed. Development of mechanical testing, and manipulation instruments and techniques, is also a technological necessity. This symposium will focus on research on mechanical properties of nanostructures, nanostructured materials and nanocomposites, and reliability testing of micro/nanodevices.

Rui Huang's post early today reminded me of writing to all of you who are going to ASME meeting in Chicago, 5-10 November 2006, a short 10 days from today.

As I wrote in September, much of the initial planning for the next year's Congress will happen at the committee meetings this year. These meetings will formulate possible topics for symposiums in the next Congress. Surely you would like to see your favorite topics get picked.

Meetings of all Technical Committees are open to all. Please find the meeting times of the Technical Committees that interest you. You may also want to know who are the Chairs of the 17 Technical Committees in the Applied Mechanics Division.

In response to a proposal by Zhigang Suo in November 2005, the Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division (AMD) of ASME has created a new Technical Committee on Integrated Structures. The main purpose is to provide a home at AMD for those who are working in the interdisciplinary areas involving applied mechanics and integrated materials/structures such as microelectronics and biomedical technologies. Read more here.

To forge the link between academia and industries, the committee will be co-chaired by industrial and academic members. For the first year, Jun He of Intel and Rui Huang (myself) have served as the co-chairs. As the 2006 ASME Congress (November 5-10) coming around the corner, we would like to draw your attention to our first activities at the congress.

Dear Fellow ASME Micro & Nano Professionals :

There still is time to participate in the "Micro & Nano Society-Wide Forum" which will be held on Wednesday, November 8th, 5-8 pm, Williford Room C at the Chicago Hilton and Towers during ASME's Congress 2006.

The intention of this program is to stimulate cross-disciplinary knowledge-exchange, networking and synergy among ASME Members and other professionals interested in the development of nanotechnology. We extended the submission due date to Oct. 25th. (Previous one was a too short notice.)

A complimentary light dinner along with beverages will be provided during the program. All you need is your poster which will be tacked onto a poster board that is 96 inches by 48 inches (2.4 m by 1.2 m).

The SES 2007 Conference, Oct. 21-24, 2007, Texas A&M University campus in College Station, Texas, home to the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

Call for abstract

Advances in the research of the theory of Piezoelectricity and Acoustic Waves have provided essential foundation and new opportunities to device technology and have been fostering academic exchanges and interaction in the piezoelectric device industry.With the increased research activities in piezoelectricity and acoustic waves and recent fast growth in piezoelectric devices, we are also facing many technological challenges from real engineering applications and product design and manufacturing.Following the successful SPAWDA 2004 in Ningbo, Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, IEEE UFFC and the Acoustical Society of China have decided, also with industrial support, to hold the SPAWDA 2006 at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China from December 14-17.The conference topics include, but not limited to,

Ninth U.S. National Congress on computational mechanics
July 22 -26, 2007. San Francisco, California

A mini-symposium on

COMPUTATIONAL METHODS FOR MICRO AND NANO SYSTEMS

Call for Papers
Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems have recently attracted much attention from the industry and from the scientific community. MEMS are nowadays routinely met in various fields like in the automotive, aerospace and large consumer applications.
It can be said that for various micro systems the pioneering phase has been substituted by a phase of industrial applications. Hence, new challenges concerning reliability, optimization and increasing miniaturizations must be tackled by the designers. All these issues need a multi-disciplinary approach and must be supported by multi-physics numerical and experimental analyses able to contribute to the definition of a unified design and analysis methodology of MEMS and NEMS.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 2007 ASME Applied Mechanics and Materials Conference (McMat 2007)
Austin, Texas, June 3-7, 2007

http://www.ae.utexas.edu/MCMAT07/

Symposium on

Dear Colleagues:

The 13th International Conference on Experimental Mechanics (ICEM13, http://www.icem13.gr) will be held on July 1-6, 2007 in Alexandroupolis, Greece. It is our pleasure to announce that the Conference will include a special symposium organized by us entitled, “Plasticity, Fracture and Fatigue at the Micro and Nano Scales,” which will focus on recent developments in this area within the larger scope of assessing research needs in a variety of applications of interest.

The Fourth China-Japan-Korea Joint Symposium on Optimization of Structural and Mechanical Systems will be held in Kunming, China, November 6–9, 2006.

http://sail.dlut.edu.cn/cjkosm4/Home/Index.htm

Recent advances of computer technology have given powerful practical tools to structural and mechanical designs. Optimal design is one of such area where various theories and methodologies are well developed. It is, however, lacking general interests among field designers and engineers. Innovative optimal design techniques and new applications are yet to be developed. Following the successful first CJK-OSM1 in Xian, China in 1999, second (CJK-OSM2) in Busan, Korea in 2002 and the third (CJK-OSM3) in Kanazawa, Japan in 2004, as agreed among participants in the symposium, the fourth CJK-OSM symposium will be held in Kunming, China during Nov. 6th -Nov. 9th, 2006. As before this will be a forum for exchange of recent research ideas and fostering new developments and new applications. Reflecting current interests from various fields, several new topics are included. The scope is, however, not limited to those listed.

This symposium will be part of the 2007 ASME Applied Mechanics and Materials Conference, to be held in the University of Texas in Austin, in June 3-6, 2007.

The 9th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics will feature a student presentation competition. This competition continues in the format pursued at the recent World Congress in Los Angeles. It is open to students who have an abstract accepted for presentation at the Congress.

The McMat 2007 conference, organized by the University of Texas on behalf of the Applied Mechanics and the Materials Divisions of the ASME, will be held in Austin, June 3-7, 2007.

We are now accepting proposals for symposia and abstracts of papers.

USNCCM IX, July 22 - 26, 2007
Pre- & Post-Congress Short Courses, July 22 & 26, 2007
Hyatt Regency San Francisco
San Francisco, California

BACKGROUND AND SCOPE
From their inception in 1991, the biennial congresses of the United States Association for Computational Mechanics have become major scientific events, drawing computational engineers and scientists worldwide from government, academia, and industry. The Ninth U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM IX), hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, will feature the latest developments in all aspects of computational mechanics, and will broaden the definition of the discipline to include many other computation-oriented areas in engineering and sciences. From applications in nanotechnology and bioengineering, to recent advances in numerical methods and high-performance computing, the technical program will reflect the Congress theme of "Interdisciplinary Computation''. In addition to plenary lectures and minisymposia that highlight the latest trends in computational mechanics, pre- and post-conference short courses addressing advances in multiscale and multiphysics methods, as well as other topics, will be held. Numerous vendor exhibits from Bay Area and national companies and organizations are also planned. Detailed information on USNCCM IX can be found at:
http://me.berkeley.edu/compmat/USACM/main.html

Here is the website for the 2006 ASME Congress. For the applied mechanics program, click "Program Overview", then choose "Applied Mechanics" from the list of topics.

You are cordially invited to participate in the Symposium on the Mechanics of Electromagnetic Materials and Structures, the 5th International Conference on Nonlinear Mechanics (ICNM-V), to be held in Shanghai, China, June 11-14, 2007.  You may find more information at the website of the conference.

The symposium topics include piezoelectricity, ferroelectricity, magnetoelasticity, electromagnetic fluids and various applications in engineering and technology, but are not limited to the above. Experimental, theoretical, and computational studies are all welcome.

Please e-mail your one-page abstract(s) to any of us listed below. We look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at

Professor Ji Wang, Ningbo University, wangji@nbu.edu.cn

Professor Yuantai Hu, Central South University, hudeng@263.net

Professor Jiashi Yang, University of Nebraska, jyang1@unl.edu

Professor Daining Fang, Tsinghua University, fangdn@tsinghua.edu.cn

Submission of abstract: as soon as possible.

Notification of acceptance: Nov. 1, 2006

Submission of final paper(s) for the conference proceedings: Jan. 1, 2007

The ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) will be held in 11-16 November 2007, in Seattle, Washington. As the 2007 Program Chair of the Applied Mechanics Division (AMD), I hope to get you involved in planning activities at the Congress.

IMECE is a place where you can meet people and attend talks in Applied Mechanics, as well as in other fields, such as Materials, Electronic Packaging, Tribology, and Heat Transfer. For many mechanicians, a highlight of the Congress is the Applied Mechanics Annual Dinner, where old acquaintances are resumed, new friends made, awards announced, and the Timoshenko lectures delivered.