Can the mere crumpling of a paper produce electricity? An inhomogeneous strain can induce electrical response in all dielectrics and not just piezoelectric materials. This phenomenon of flexoelectricity is rather modest unless unusually large strain gradients are present. In this paper, we analyze the crumpling of thin elastic sheets and establish scaling laws for their electromechanical behavior to prove that an extremely strong flexoelectric response is achieved at submicron length scales.

Open PhD position at University Carlos III of Madrid (ERC Starting Grant)

Tittle: Multiple localization and fragmentation of thin-walled metallic tubes subjected to dynamic axial penetration

Supervisor: José A. Rodríguez-Martínez

By Kangjia Fu  Zhihua Zhao  Lihua Jin

The new book "Modeling and Simulation of Tribological Problems in Technology" (CISM book series, Springer) has been published: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-20377-1

Editors: Paggi, Marco (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy), Hills, David (University of Oxford)

There is a PhD opening in the Mechanics of Soft Materials Lab (https://www.msm.seas.ucla.edu/) in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. The opening is to be filled in 2019 fall or 2020 winter quarter. The successful candidate is expected to work on modeling, simulations, and experiments of soft materials.

Applications are invited for a PhD scholarship at the University of Oviedo (Spain). The work will be conducted in close collaboration with Imperial College London. The PhD studentship is part of the MICROROCK project, which aims at developing a new generation of micromechanics-based models for predicting rock fracture. A competitive salary is offered and the position is open to international candidates. Further details are provided below and in the attached PDF.

We have an opening for a postdoctoral researcher to perform original research on biomechanics and fluid dynamics, with particular emphasis on interstitial flow modeling. The successful candidate will develop numerical methods to model coupled processes on high-performance computing platforms. This position is in the Gomez Research Group (https://engineering.purdue.edu/gomez/) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue. This is a one-year postdoctoral appointment with the possibility of extension to a maximum of three years.

A. SYNTHETIC DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT AND RESEARCH OUTCOME:

We are pleased to invite applications for a PhD position in the new four-year EU-funded Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN programme “INSPIRE - INNOVATIVE GROUND INTERFACE CONCEPTS FOR STRUCTURE PROTECTION”. This network is led by National Technical University of Athens and consists of 7 European universities (Univ. of Trento, ETH, Univ. of Lille, Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Univ. of Mons, Univ of Bologna) 1 Research Institute (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) as well as 5 industrial partners (RINAC,FIP, ADT, IGF, GRSc).