research

Hello everyone,

It appears to me that there is more and more research done on discrete approaches to modelling fracture.

Especially for brittle or quasi-brittle materials these methods are undergoing a revival.

I am not sure why this is the case. I am also not in the position to judge if this revival is useful.

I just had recently a look at some of these models and I found these discrete models to be suitable

for description of fracture in heterogeneous materials, where cracks appear at many different positions.

Dear colleagues,

Experimental nanomechanics is a frequently discussed topic on imechanica, see e.g. the very active monthly topics by Xiaodong Li, Julia Greer and Wei Cai.

Continuing on this, I would like to draw your attention to a paper we recently published:

"In situ observation of dislocation nucleation and escape in a submicrometre aluminium single crystal" by Sang Ho Oh, Marc Legros, Daniel Kiener & Gerhard Dehm (http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v8/n2/abs/nmat2370.html).

Last fall, Elsevier launched SciTopics. It is a web site devoted to providing research summaries of current topics by experts, allowing for public interaction through comments.  Anyone can become a member and post comments, or request to author a page. 

 In many ways, it resembles iMechanica.  Authors pen SciTopic pages in their area of expertise.  SciTopics leverages Scirus , which is Elsevier's free, science-specific search engine.