Atul Jain's blog

We are looking for an applicant with Master degree in Mechanical Engineering or allied fields with prior experience in finite element modelling and mechanical/damping characterization.  The position is for a period of up to 36 months, depending on the performance of the candidate. There might be possibility of registering for the MS (by research) or PhD program at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, if found suitable in the corresponding selection procedure of these programs.

Postdoc: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BUV917/research-associate

Recently, we have published a series of nine papers about modelling fatigue and damage in short fiber composites.  Together, they provide a complete description of modelling of such materials including wavy fiber composites; starting from appropriate homogenization method to component level fatigue simulation. Discussion and feedback on the papers is welcome.

Atul Jain, Jose M. Veas, Stefan Straesser, Wim Van Paepegem, Ignaas Verpoest, Stepan Lomov

To appear in a special issue of journal Composites Part A

Recently we published a paper in Composite Structures. It can be freely downloaded from the link

http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1RGr0x-7hNgCX

Abstract of the article is below:

Both effective properties of composite and the stresses in the individual inclusions and in the matrix are necessary for modelling damage in short fibre composites. Mean field theorems are usually used to calculate the effective properties of composite materials, most common among them is the Mori–Tanaka formulation. Owing to occasional mathematical and physical admissibility problems with the Mori–Tanaka formulation, a pseudo-grain discretized Mori–Tanaka formulation (PGMT) was proposed in literature.

Dear All,

          What do you think is the difference in PhD in Europe, USA? My thesis supervisor used to say "In US it is a deep inspection of a subject, while European PhD is a grand problem solving" What is your opinion on this matter? Is there some basic difference between how a PhD is approached by students and supervisor in both these places? if indeed there is a difference, in your opinion which approach is preferable??

Atul Jain

HI,

     I was just wondering how many S-N curves would i need to  define the fatigue properties of an anisotropic material. For an isotropic material we just use 1-curve. Would that also  be enough  for an anisotropic material? We need 21 elastic constants to define anisotropic material. Would the number of SN curves be similar or be somehow related to the number or would the number of S-N curves required would be probabilistic in nature. i.e. we find the S-N curves along several planes and get a some sort of probabilistic distibution. 

Atul Jain