Mogadalai Gururajan's blog

Quantitative studies on diffusional growth of an isolated
precipitate in a supersaturated matrix date back to the classic work of
C Zener (1949) and F C Frank
(1950); while Zener-Frank (ZF) theory is for precipitates that are
non-misfitting, misfitting precipitates have been studied by Laraia,
Johnson and Voorhees (1988) (hereafter, LJV). Both ZF and LJV are sharp
interface models (and are mostly analytical); further, the assumptions
made in these theories make it difficult to verify their results by

Here is a video which might be helpful for those writing grant proposals (Hat tip to Dr. Aparna Bhatnagar, Director, Postdoctoral Affairs, Northwestern University for the email alert ):

Here is an e-book on Engineering Fracture Mechanics ; you can also download a demo version, the preface, and other related stuff from the page. The idea of the book (as described in the page) sounds interesting:

Update: An Open Source Review page has been created. Please feel free to leave links, codes and comments on the page. 

Dear Mechanicians,

I have seen that there is lot of code sharing among the mechanicians at iMechanica; a search for the word "code" for example produces nearly fifty entries, of which, I believe, at least half of the posts are pointers to codes and their sharing.

Recently, the Royal Society Science book prize shortlist was announced; though the shortlisted books cover psychology, evolution, biodiversity, medicine and neurobiology, none in the area of materials or mechanics made it to the list. Or, pick any Best American Science writing volume--there are hardly any articles about materials or mechanics that make it to these anthologies.

Introduction

The blogosphere is abuzz with the latest report of the generalisation of the von Neumann-Mullins grain growth relation to 3 (and N) dimensions by MacPherson and Srolovitz (As an interesting aside, almost all the reports say mathematical structure of beer foam structure resolved, or words to that effect --hence, I also decided to join the bandwagon on that one). I heard Prof. Srolovitz describe the work in a seminar nearly six months ago. Based on my notes of the talk, I would like the explain their work in this post. Curvature in the following refers to mean curvature (and not Gaussian).

JOM is a monthly publication of TMS--The minerals, metals, and materials society. It covers a wide range of materials topics. I expecially like the overview articles, which, in four or five pages pack lots of information. Further, the historical articles about metallurgy and materials in ancient civilizations will interest those of you who like to read about history in general, and science history, in particular.

In an inaugural article in the latest issue of PNAS, George C Schatz writes on Using theory and computation to model nanoscale properties. Here is the abstract of the article:

In the recent issue of Science, researchers from UCLA (Chung et al) report on an ambient pressure synthesis (using arc melting) of a compound, namely, rhenium diboride, which is superhard. Apparently, the material leaves scratch marks on the surface of diamond. Here is the abstract of the paper:

Here is a video from the Seed magazine called Science in Silico. The video shows results from large scale simulations (and visualization) of fractals, microscopic dynamic processes in ribosomes, structure of viruses, bacterial flagellum, turbulence, explosions, and the modelling of cosmological events.

In a recent Progress Article in Nature Materials, David Taylor, Jan G Hazenberg, and T Clive Lee write about the damage that human bones sustain as a result of cyclic stresses under which they operate and the repair mechanisms that operate.

From this Modern Mechanix scan of a 4 page article from the 1924 issue of Popular mechanics, we learn about Lincoln, the inventor!

A typical two phase microstructure consists of a topologically continuous `matrix' phase in which islands of `precipitate' phase are embedded. Usually, the matrix phase is also the majority phase in terms of volume fraction. However, sometimes this relationship between the volume fraction and topology is reversed, and this reversal is known as phase inversion. Such a phase inversion can be driven by an elastic moduli mismatch in two-phase solid systems. In this paper (submitted to Philosophical magazine), we show phase inversion, and the effect of the elastic moduli mismatch and elastic anisotropy on such inversion.

During solid-solid phase transformations elastic stresses arise due to a difference in lattice parameters between the constituent phases. These stresses have a strong influence on the resultant microstructure and its evolution; more specifically, if there be externally applied stresses, the interaction between the applied and the transformation stresses can lead to rafting.

Resonance is a journal of science education published by the Indian Academy of Sciences for the past twenty years or so. As the introduction page states,

It is well known that the algebra associated with edge dislocations can be forbidding. As Prof. Frank (of the Frank-Read source fame) noted once,