Dear colleagues,

For people interesting in the simulation of solids mechanics with impact contact and friction, we are pleased to announce a new release of the Siconos software. The software is open-source, under GPL Licence and can be found at http://siconos.gforge.inria.fr/
It contains several time--stepping integrators for the nonsmooth dynamics and a large of solvers of the frictional contact problems that can be used separately. The numerical methods are mainly based on the book:  Numerical methods for nonsmooth dynamical systems: Appications in Mechanics and Electronics. Acary, V. and Brogliato, B. Springer Verlag. 2008

Dear iMechanica commmunity,

we are looking for 3 PhD students at Oxford, starting from the 1st of October 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter. The closing date for the application is the 26th of July. The 3 students are required for two different research projects, namely:

1) Underwater blast on composite structures - open only to EU nationals; 2 PhD students are required. The studentships are advertised here

http://www.eng.ox.ac.uk/jobs/job.html?job=255

please have a look for further details.

Lecture note for the course (28 Sept - 2 Oct, 2009) at the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences (CISM), Udine, Italy.

Welcome to the forum! Discussion topics were suggested initially as follow:

Metal foams, cell deformation (bending, buckling, plasticity and fracture), constitutive stress-strain behaviour of cellular materials, energy absorption, hypervelocity impact, shock wave behaviour, 1D shock modelling, shock attenuation, shock enhancement, Material Point Method (MPM) simulation and microscopic tomography experimental observation;

As the title suggests, there are two focuses of this discussion theme: impact and cellular materials.

Impact protection can be very practical problems in safety, fires and explosions, oil and gas industry, subsea structures, car manufacturing, nuclear industry, rocket space engineering, etc.

Cellular materials are interesting as materials with visualable small structures. Shock wave propagation and interaction; gas, fluid and cell wall interactions; together with catastrophic collapse can be fancy problems to study theoretically and experimentally. In this area, continuum mechanics seems still have many challenging problems unsolved, and is useful.

The Computational Physics group in the Atmospheric, Earth, and Energy Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is solicitating applications for three postdoctoral appointments in the following areas. To access the full description and application instructions, please visit http://jobs.llnl.gov and search for the job numbers below:

008351: geomechanics of fluid-induced fault activation

008374: dynamic impacts into granular materials

008375: mechanics of dynamic impact and penetration into ceramics

Hello,

I'm doing some research in aircraft protection against impact, mainly refering to UAV's protection of the payload (avionics,etc..) during crash.

Does anyone knows where I can get some info about related topics (impact in composites, collision protection, reinforcement of structures, etc..)?

Thanks, Ivo Pires

I am looking for material model of Kevlar composite for Ballistic impact simulation. Presently i am using ANSYS. Can any body suggest material model for kevlar composite for fracture and penetration phenomina.

Industrial Placement (2007/2008)
Supervisor: Henry Tan
School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering
The University of Manchester

Material Point Method for impact, fracture, fragmentation and explosion
Mr. Jayveer Thakoor

Industrial Placement: Optimising superplastic form die shape for next generation aero engine production, a design project from Rolls-Royce plc.
Mr. Waqas Ahmad

Individual Projects (2007/2008)
Supervisor: Henry Tan
School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering
The University of Manchester

The mechanical properties of materials are ascertained by performing carefully designed laboratory experiments that replicate, as nearly as practical, the service conditions.

Factors to be considered include the nature of the applied load(s), its’ duration and the applicable environmental conditions. It is possible for the load to be tensile, compressive, or shear, and its magnitude may be constant with time, or it may fluctuate continuously. Application time may be for only a fraction of a second, or it may extend over a period of many years. Service temperature can also be an important factor.Mechanical properties are of concern to a variety of parties (e.g., producers and material consumers, research organizations and government agencies) that have differing interests.

Recent results on fluid-structure interaction for plates subject to high intensity air shocks are employed to assess the performance of all-metal sandwich plates compared to monolithic solid plates of the same material and mass per area. For a planar shock wave striking the plate, the new results enable the structural analysis to be decoupled from an analysis of shock propagation in the air. The study complements prior work on the role of fluid-structure interaction in the design and assessment of sandwich plates subject to water shocks. Square honeycomb and folded plate core topologies are considered. Fluid-structure interaction enhances the performance of sandwich plates relative to solid plates under intense air shocks, but not as significantly as for water blasts. The paper investigates two methods for applying the loading to the sandwich plate-responses are contrasted for loads applied as a time-dependent pressure history versus imposition of an initial velocity. Click here for the full paper.

The aim of the “Computational Methods in Impact Engineering” mini-symposium is to recognize the increasing role of the computation methods in Impact Engineering. It is now established that computational tools are indispensable to augment experimental techniques for the analysis of complex systems under dynamic loading. Many new computational techniques are currently being developed and new applications in the fields of impact and shock loadings are emerging. This mini-symposium will bring together engineers and scientists working in the area of Computational Impact Engineering.

Topics of interest include (but are not restricted to) the following: