One (1) to Two(2) years post-doctoral positions are open in Ecuador (South America). The following are areas of interest:

• Robotics,

• Energy,

• Fracture,

• CFD,

• Nano-technology,

• Bio-mechanics,

• Mathematics (PDE-FEM)

The candidate should hold a PhD degree related to the area of application, and should have the motivation to do research and open new research lines. Teaching is also an important component.

Special Issue on Instantaneous Angular Speed (IAS) processing and angular applications
For more information, visit the journal homepage:  http://www.journals.elsevier.com/mechanical-systems-and-signal-processing/

Amit Das, Amit Acharya, Johannes Zimmer, Karsten Matthies

We anticipate the opening of four postdoctoral positions in 2012 to work on statistical aspects of fracture and plasticity,  and in particular on size effects in the fracture of  disordered media and in microplasticity.  The positions will be funded by the ERC Advanced Grant 2011, SIZEFFECTS.

We look for candidates with a strong background in one or more of the following areas:
- statistical mechanics (scaling, critical phenomena, disordered systems)
- numerical modeling fracture
- dislocation dynamics simulations
- molecular dynamics simulations of mechanical properties of solids.

Post-doc at the University of Liège : Simulation of micro/nano-structured materials described by 3D tomography

The tasks involved in this position include geometrical analysis of the
3D images, generation of datasets which are suitable for the computations
(meshes, level-sets fields ...), computations using novel numerical techniques
(X-FEM and related)

More details & contact information at  http://www.cgeo.ulg.ac.be/post-doc.pdf

The University of Chile invites applications for three full time tenure-track faculty positions in Mechanical Engineering. Applicants must have deep interest in undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as the purpose to conduct long-term, externally funded research programs at international level. Candidates are also expected to maintain fruitful work relationships with industry in their respective areas. According to qualifications, they may be ranked at the Assistant or Associate Professor level.

Candidates are sought in three areas:

Strength of graphenes containing randomly dispersed vacancies

Tserpes, K.I.

Deadline extended for NT2F12 congress which will be held in Transilvania University of BRASOV.

Brasov is one of the largest and most cherished cities of the country. Surrounded on three sides by mountains, it was a perfect place for a medieval settlement.

The old city, founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1211, is one of the best preserved cities in all of Europe. It was thotoughly restored to the delight of an increasing number of tourist. It is the capital city of Brasov Country, in central Romania, in Transylvania, at the foot of the  Carpathian Mountains. Brasov also makes a fabulous base for exploring the surrounding countryside where the air is clean and the people friendly.

Once in a while I have to find the stiffness of a spring that I get from the local hardware shop.  I usually use a formula that can be found in some books on mechanics of materials.

But the assumptions bother me a bit because the springs that I used usually underwent large deformations and I wasn't sure whether the numbers I was using were correct or not.  

To check the formula I compared its predicted k to numbers from Abaqus simulations and found reasonably good results for many situations - but not for soft springs.

I've attached a write-up on that that contains a python script to generate the geometry.  Let me know if you find it useful.

Attached is an intriguing commentary on the scientific method through an example, written by my good friend, Luc Tartar. The specific example is that of trying to understand what 'light' might be, especially from a mathematician's point of view. The mathematician in this case is an extremely talented one, who also happens to actually understand a whole lot of physics and mechanics.

I am posting it especially for our younger members on imechanica, since I think there are interesting things to learn here. If you are an engineer or a physicist, it will not necessarily be a comfortable read, both on matters technical and philosophical. But my personal point of view is that not everything worth learning has to be within one's comfort zone. Being open-minded about learning, and recognizing when there is something to be learnt, is one of the best habits we can develop. One does not have to agree with all that is said, but the greatest intellectual progress happens when a collection of sincere, talented people operate at the boundary of their individual comfort zones - not necessarily agreeing, but definitely learning from each other.

So, enjoy!

For an interesting news article about the mechanics behind Lego Man's balloon voyage to space, read the Toronto Star article by Mary Ormsby. She writes, "A 1,200-gram weather balloon, the crucial role of gravity, quiver-reducing ropes, Styrofoam’s versatility, burst altitude, a University of Wyoming website and a free software program for shutterbugs were part of the formula Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, used to launch, film and land the patriotic, flag-bearing Lego Man..."

A Special Issue of Engineering Fracture Mechanics

on

"Fracture and contact mechanics for interface problems", edited by Marco Paggi, Alberto Carpinteri and Peter Wriggers has just been published:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00137944/80

The selected articles were presented in a Minisymposium of the IV European Conference on Computational Mechanics, Paris, France, 2010.

List of contents

Far greater voltage-actuated deformation is achievable for a dielectric elastomer under equal-biaxial dead load than under rigid constraint usually employed. Areal strains of 488% are demonstrated. The dead load suppresses electric breakdown, enabling the elastomer to survive the snap-through electromechanical instability. The breakdown voltage is found to increase with the voltage ramp rate. A nonlinear model for viscoelastic dielectric elastomers is developed and shown to be consistent with the experimental observations. 

We seek for highly motivated
Ph.D. candidates in the field of 1) Acoustic metamaterials (e.g., phononic

Dear all,

Herewith I want to announce the release of the frictional rolling contact model CONTACT version 12.1.

The main changes with respect to earlier versions of the program are as follows:

• Achieved a 100-fold speedup for solving larger normal contact problems.
• Improved the documentation of the viscoelastic part of CONTACT and
  provided an example of its use.
• Distinguished free and premium features in the software, the latter
  requiring a valid license file.

For the full release-notes or more information on the program refer to the website www.kalkersoftware.org.

Regards, Edwin

A postdoctoral position with
primary focus on finite element simulations of active biopolymer
networks is available immediately at Shenoy Research Group @ Brown University . We are looking for a strongly
motivated candidate to work on the mechanics of active cytoskeletal
networks. The ideal candidate will have a background in solid
mechanics/computational physics with expertise in finite element simulations. Experience with Monte Carlo methods and stochastic simulations is desired but not essential.  This
individual will have the opportunity to be directly involved in