Laure Ballu's blog

Will home owners get that sinking feeling this summer?



Are we in for a summer of cracked buildings? It all depends on the weather. Research from the British Geological Survey (BGS) has highlighted the importance of rainfall and temperature on the incidence of clay shrink-swell, a precursor to subsidence, in the UK. For many, the cool, wet conditions we have experienced so far this summer may be just what is needed to keep their house in order.

Neil Stephen, Professor of Structural Mechanics at the University of Southampton and editorial board member of the International Journal of Solids and Structures has received the first Doak Prize for an outstanding journal paper On Energy Harvesting from Ambient Vibration (JSV, 293,1/2, pp 409-425).

Full programme now available from the website: http://www.icefaconference.com/conference-programme.html

Attendance at this meeting will enable you to:

Register today to book your place at this prestigious conference, which has attracted over 290 abstracts. This is a significant opportunity for you to join leading researchers to exchange and discuss new ideas and findings. http://www.fatiguedamageconference.com/conference-register.html

Program now available – go to http://www.fatiguedamageconference.com/conference-program.html

Watch the 3-part video seminar where Sia Nemat-Nasser discusses certain basic issues regarding systematic homogenization techniques to extract the frequency‐dependent dynamic properties of microstructurally periodic composites, illustrating the results in terms of measureable and experimentally verifiable quantities.  To watch the videos, go to http://tinyurl.com/caudkwp

Edited by Pieter de Wilde and David Coley, this special issue of Building and Environment deals with the implications of a changing climate for buildings. Climate change is considered to be one of the main challenges facing humankind in the 21st century, with serious and global consequences for the environment, human health, and the economy. 

The result of two workshops on ‘Space - the Final Frontier - What Potential for European Space Policy?’, this special issue of Space Policy gathers a range of papers, many by young researchers, which examines the contribution space policy can make to the European integration process.

To access the Space Issue, go to http://www.journals.elsevier.com/space-policy/journal-news/new-horizons-for-europe/

Dominik Schillinger, doctoral candidate of IGSSE project team MAC B7 (High-End Toolbox for Simulation and Optimisation of Multi-Physics PDE Models) won the sixth John Argyris Award for the best paper by a young researcher in the field of Computational Mechanics! His paper An Isogeometric Design-through-analysis Methodology based on Adaptive Hierarchical Refinement of NURBS, Immersed Boundary Methods, and T-spline CAD Surfaces has been published in the journal Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering.

To read more about Dr Colette, from the University of University of Michigan, go to the Ocean Engineering homepage: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ocean-engineering/journal-news/deputy-chief-editor-appointed/

A report published in Procedia Engineering suggests that the 'phenomenon of swing bowling, in which a cricket ball veers sideways during flight, is not influenced by humidity'...

To read the full BBC article, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18262145

To read the Procedia report, go to http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705812016463