This issue of the journal club addresses a topic deemed classical by most mechanicians: the onset and evolution of fracture in brittle solids.  In the last ten years or so a community of mathematicians have been analyzing the formulation of fracture mechanics models.  Although still at a very early stage, there is already a substantial body of work, which either sets in a very rigorous settings some known results, or give rise to other perhaps more surprising ones. Some of the ideas may be deemed physically unfeasible, proposed out of mathematical convenience, but progress onto more accepted ones is slowly happening. The strong mathematical basis of the theory is also impacting the understanding and formulation of numerical methods for crack propagation.
 

The group of Mechanics &
Computation in the Mechanical Engineering department at Stanford University has
an opening for a postdoctoral position in the area of computational mechanics
as part of the new Army High-Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC),
under the direction of Adrian Lew. The appointment
is normally made for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second
year. The ideal candidate would have a strong background on
computational solid mechanics and have programming experience, ideally in C++.
A good background in mathematics, especially numerical analysis, will be