research

Well-known for its high yield strength, metallic glass often suffers from its low ductility and intrinsic brittleness, as discussed in a recent iMech jClub theme on plasticity and failure in metallic glasses led by Yanfei Gao.

We present a coupled mathematical model of growth and failure of the abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). The failure portion of the model is based on the constitutive theory of softening hyperelasticity where the classical hyperelastic law is enhanced with a new constant indicating the maximum energy that an infinitesimal material volume can accumulate without failure. The new constant controls material failure and it can be interpreted as the average energy of molecular bonds from the microstructural standpoint.

In MEMS fields, a need arises in engineering practice to predict accurately the nonlinear response of slender post-buckling beams, especially the nonlinear transverse stiffness. The bistability of the post-buckling beams is excellent in reducing power consumption of micro-devices or micro-systems. However, the major difficulty in analyzing the post-buckling and snap-through response is the intractability of the geometric nonlinear control equations of large deflection beams.