research

Job description: We are seeking innovative and highly motivated PhD candidates to join the FROG lab in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Ottawa.

There is an increasing demand for flexible, skin-attachable, and wearable strain sensors due to their various potential applications. However, achieving strain sensors with both high
sensitivity and high stretchability is still a grand challenge. Here, we propose highly sensitive and stretchable strain sensors based on the reversible microcrack formation in composite thin
films. Controllable parallel microcracks are generated in graphite thin films coated on elastomer films. Sensors made of graphite thin films with short microcracks possess high

Self-shaping of curved structures, especially those involving flexible thin layers, is attracting increasing attention because of their broad potential applications in, e.g., nanoelectromechanical andmicroelectromechanical systems, sensors, artificial skins, stretchable electronics, robotics, and drug delivery.

In this review of particularly readworthy papers in EFM, I have selected a paper about the tearing of large ductile plates, namely:

”Cohesive zone modeling and calibration for mode I tearing of large ductile plates”  by P.B. Woelke, M.D. Shields, J.W. Hutchinson, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, 147 (2015) 293-305.

Deformation Mechanics of Granular Materials:

Local deformation of Polymer-bonded sugar at high strain rate loading

 Addis Kidane, Suraj Ravindran

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, 300 Main Street, Columbia, SC 29208

Introduction

Thanks to the efforts of the associate editors and reviewers, JAM continues to publish very fast.  Among ~800 submissions in 2015, there are only 19 papers that are still under review as of February 1, 2016.  In addition, the acceptance rate continues to decline, to ~16% in 2015.