We anticipate the opening of four postdoctoral positions in 2012 to work on statistical aspects of fracture and plasticity,  and in particular on size effects in the fracture of  disordered media and in microplasticity.  The positions will be funded by the ERC Advanced Grant 2011, SIZEFFECTS.



We look for candidates with a strong background in one or more of the following areas:

- statistical mechanics (scaling, critical phenomena, disordered systems)

- numerical modeling fracture

- dislocation dynamics simulations

Post-doc at the University of Liège : Simulation of micro/nano-structured materials described by 3D tomography

The tasks involved in this position include geometrical analysis of the

3D images, generation of datasets which are suitable for the computations

(meshes, level-sets fields ...), computations using novel numerical techniques

(X-FEM and related)

More details & contact information at  http://www.cgeo.ulg.ac.be/post-doc.pdf

The University of Chile invites applications for three full time tenure-track faculty positions in Mechanical Engineering. Applicants must have deep interest in undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as the purpose to conduct long-term, externally funded research programs at international level. Candidates are also expected to maintain fruitful work relationships with industry in their respective areas. According to qualifications, they may be ranked at the Assistant or Associate Professor level.

Candidates are sought in three areas:

Strength of graphenes containing randomly dispersed vacancies

Once in a while I have to find the stiffness of a spring that I get from the local hardware shop.  I usually use a formula that can be found in some books on mechanics of materials.

But the assumptions bother me a bit because the springs that I used usually underwent large deformations and I wasn't sure whether the numbers I was using were correct or not.  

To check the formula I compared its predicted k to numbers from Abaqus simulations and found reasonably good results for many situations - but not for soft springs.

Attached is an intriguing commentary on the scientific method through an example, written by my good friend, Luc Tartar. The specific example is that of trying to understand what 'light' might be, especially from a mathematician's point of view. The mathematician in this case is an extremely talented one, who also happens to actually understand a whole lot of physics and mechanics.

For an interesting news article about the mechanics behind Lego Man's balloon voyage to space, read the Toronto Star article by Mary Ormsby. She writes, "A 1,200-gram weather balloon, the crucial role of gravity, quiver-reducing ropes, Styrofoam’s versatility, burst altitude, a University of Wyoming website and a free software program for shutterbugs were part of the formula Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, used to launch, film and land the patriotic, flag-bearing Lego Man..."

A Special Issue of Engineering Fracture Mechanics

on

"Fracture and contact mechanics for interface problems", edited by Marco Paggi, Alberto Carpinteri and Peter Wriggers has just been published:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00137944/80

The selected articles were presented in a Minisymposium of the IV European Conference on Computational Mechanics, Paris, France, 2010.

Far greater voltage-actuated deformation is achievable for a dielectric elastomer under equal-biaxial dead load than under rigid constraint usually employed. Areal strains of 488% are demonstrated. The dead load suppresses electric breakdown, enabling the elastomer to survive the snap-through electromechanical instability. The breakdown voltage is found to increase with the voltage ramp rate. A nonlinear model for viscoelastic dielectric elastomers is developed and shown to be consistent with the experimental observations. 

Published Online: