"I can't understand how people are still working on growth. That stuff's all done." This was the beginning of the first lunch conversation at a recent Banff workshop on Mathematical Foundations on Mechanical Biology... somewhat frustrating for someone who is excited about growth. Fortunately, most of the presentations and discussions still focused on growth. Although "that stuff's all done".

Would anybody claim that plasticity was all done when Richard von Mises published his milestone work in 1913? Or was it all done when Geoffrey Ingram Taylor contributed his famous monograph on crystal plasticity in 1938? Or was it all done when Ekkehard Kröner introduced the concept of dislocations to explain the mechanistic origin of plastic slip in 1958? Or was it only all done when Juan Simo made it computationally manageable in 1985?

In a way, growth is like plasticity. It has its von Mises in Julius Wolff and D'Arcy Thompson, its Kröners in Steven Cowin and Dennis Carter, and its Simos in Rik Huiskes, Anne Hoger, Larry Taber, and Jay Humphrey. But... does that mean that "that stuff's all done"?

 Call for Abstracts (Deadline: November 30, 2011)

 As a part of WCCM 2012 (10th World Congress on Computational Mechanics)

 Submit Your Abstract (Choose mini-symposium MS-149)

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) possess extraordinary electrical and mechanical properties, with many possible applications in electronics and materials science. Dense, horizonally aligned arrays of linearly configured SWNTs represent perhaps the most attractive and scalable way to implement this class of nanomaterial in practical systems. Recent work shows that templated growth of tubes on certain crystalline substrates (e.g. quartz) yields arrays with the necessary levels of perfection, as demonstrated by the formation of devices and full systems on quartz. To study the alignment (orientation preference) of SWNTs on quartz substrate, we established a mechanics model for the van der Waals interaction between SWNTs and quartz substrate.

hello all,

i have a problem with ansys, how can i simulate the crack propagation using ansys.

please help me

Hi,

I have been watching some small seeds germinate on different media.

The root pops out first, from a split in one end of the seed, navigates down to the substrate, then inserts itself into the substrate if it can (e.g. when placed on sand or soil). Otherwise it grows along the surface horizontally (on filter paper). The vertical growing plant also puts out a horizontal set of very fine root hairs, at the ground surface, and then stands up, lifting the seed into the air with the first leaves still stuck inside the seed.