You can now subscribe to RSS feeds of comments, as follows:

• For all new comments made on iMechanica, the feed is: crss
• For comments on a particular post, say post number 474, the feed is: crss/node/474

Fracture in bone is a complex process that depends on the volume fraction (the relative fraction of bone tissue vs. void space), the architecture (the geometrical arrangement of the tissue), the mechanical properties of the bone tissue itself, and the applied loads. Theoretical approaches to the fracture of porous materials have been developed but their application to bone may be limited as they assume homogeneity of both the structure and the underlying material. The adaptation of the mechanical properties of bone to its loading history results in substantial heterogeneity of mechanical properties primarily due to the wide range of loads applied in the skeleton. Furthermore, bone diseases as well as pharmaceutical treatments for bone diseases can also affect the heterogeneity of material properties. All the above effects are intricately linked with bone micro-structure which incorporates collagen and mineral at the nanoscale in widely varying topological manners. With a wide ranging heterogeneity in length-scales of bone fracture it becomes imperative that fracture and failure analyses of bones are carried out at multiple lengthscales using a combination of modeling and experimental approaches. In this mini-symposium computational, experimental, and theoretical presentation of research on analyzing fracture of cortical as well as cancellous bone architectures are solicited. Presentations on computational and theoretical method development, experimental behavior characterization, and forming a link between theory and experiments are all strongly encouraged.

The six finalists for the 19th Annual Robert J. Melosh Medal Competition for the Best Student Paper in Finite Element Analysis were announced last Friday. They are

Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, Cornell University

A free surface in a multi-layer can experience an undulation due to surface diffusion during fabrication or etching process. In order to analyze the undulation, the elasticity solution for the undulating film is needed. Considering the undulation as a perturbation of a flat surface, a boundary value problem for 2D elasticity is formulated. The solution procedure is straightforward, but very lengthy especially for a multi-layer.

Attached is the first announcement and call for papers for "nanomech 8", the 8th European Symposium on Nanomechanical Testing to be held in Huckelhoven, Germany, 3rd-5th September, 2007. Full details are also available at the conference website. The special focus for this year's meeting is "Across the scales: Size effects and scaling phenomena in micro- and nano-mechanics". Abstracts are due 5th May, 2007.

Update: February 2012

1) The lecture notes are on Wikiversity at  http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Waves_in_composites_and_metamaterials

2) The book on the topic can be bought from Amazon at  http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Metamaterials-Waves-Composites/dp/1439841578

3) Solutions and errata can be found at  node/9727

In this blog entry, I'll maintain a list of books, essays and websites that have influenced me in developing iMechanica. I'll also list my notes on them whenever available. Because iMechanica shares many common problems with other online communities, it is natural that we find solutions discovered by other online communities helpful. At the same time, iMechanica is unique in some respects, and has its own unique problems, so that we cannot adopt any methods or viewpoints without adjustment.