The simple extension tear test-piece also referred to as the trousers sample is widely used to study crack propagation in rubber. The corresponding energy release rate, called tearing energy for rubber materials, was first established by Rivlin and Thomas (Rupture of rubber. I. Characteristic energy for tearing. J. Polym. Sci., 10:291–318, 1953); a second derivation was proposed later by Eshelby (The calculation of energy release rates. In G. C. Sih, H. C. van Elst, and D. Broek, editors, Prospects of Fracture Mechanics, 69–84, Leyden, Noordhoff, 1975).

All metallic, hollow sandwich cylinders having ultralight two-dimensional prismatic cores are optimally designed for maximum thermo-mechanical performance at minimum mass. The heated cylinder is subjected to uniform internal pressure and actively cooled by forced air convection. The use of two different core topologies is exploited: square- and triangular-celled cores. The minimum mass design model is so defined that three failure modes are prevented: facesheet yielding, core member yielding, and core member buckling.

In response to a NSF call for proposal on Cyberinfrastructure Training, Education, Advancement, and Mentoring for Our 21st Century Workforce (CI-TEAM), in June 2006, several of us submitted a proposal entitled "iMechanica:  Leveraging Cyberinfrastructure to Evolve All Knowledge of Applied Mechanics"

Dr. Jun Lou and Dr. Junlan Wang are co-editing a special issue on Nanomechanics and Nanostructured Multifunctional Materials: Experiments, Theories, and Simulations for Journal of Nanomaterials, an open access journal. Papers on latest developments on all aspects of nanomechanics and nanostructured materials are welcome. Deadline for manuscript submission is September 01, 2007.

 

For more details, please check JNM website

Apply for NSF fellowships to attend 1-week long workshop on cell mechanics, July 31-Aug 3, 2007.

Check out www.ccm.uiuc.edu  

• The Institute of High
  Performance Computing (IHPC), a member of the Agency for Science,
  Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore, invites applications for
  eight available positions for research scientists in the field of
  theoretical and computational mechanics and materials science. These
  positions are in conjunction with the A*STAR-sponsored Visiting
  Investigatorship Program (VIP) led by Prof. Huajian Gao from Brown University who is the Principle Investigator.

Depolarization field and misfit strain are two important factors that may greatly influence the properties of ferroelectric thin films. The effect of depolarization field on polarization states of single-domain ferroelectric thin films with nonequally biaxial in-plane misfit strains are studied in the present work by numerically solving three coupled Euler-Lagrange equations, which are derived from the minimization of total free energy.