Skip to main content

Blog posts

What can mechanicians do in fusion research?

Submitted by Yixiang Gan on

More than fifty years ago, people realized that we can use fusion for energy, but the problem remains where and how to keep a plasma of 100 million degrees centigrade.

For TOKAMAK, one of the approaches to use the fusion power, now comes the news: "On 21 November, Ministers from the seven ITER Parties came together to sign the agreement to establish the international Organization that will implement ITER."

EM 397 Thin Film Mechanics Term Paper

Submitted by Rui Huang on

Each student completes a term paper of selected topics that (a) addresses a phenomenon in thin film materials, and (b) involves analyses using mechanics. The project contributes 25% of the grade, distributed as follows:

  • 5%: November 30 (Thursday). Post your title and abstract in iMechanica, formated as below
  1. Title (EM 397 Term Paper: e.g., Dislocations in Epitaxial Thin Films).
  2. Tags (EM 397, Fall 2006, University of Texas at Austin, thin films, term paper)
  3. Body: (i) Describe the phenomenon. (ii) Explain how mechanics is relevant. (iii) Cite at least 1 journal article.
  • 10%: December 12 Tuesday (2:00-4:00 pm). 30 minute presentation. Use power point slides.
  • 10%: December 18 Monday.

The Future of Cell Phone?

Submitted by Teng Li on

Here is one answer from Nokia.


Nokia 888 communicator, a concept design which recently won the Nokia's Benelux Design Award. It uses liquid battery, flexible touch display, speech recognition, touch sensitive body cover which lets it understand and adjust to the environment. It has a simple programmable body mechanism so that it changes forms in different situations. Don't forget to enjoy a video demo of this cell phone of future.
Yet one more future application of flexible electronics, it's clear there're great mechanics and materials challenges in making electronic devices flexible. It will be great mechanicians can help accelerate the advance of this emerging technology.

The 2nd International Conference on Heterogeneous Material Mechanics (ICHMM-2008)

Submitted by Changguo Xue on

ICHMM 2008 seeks dissemination of recent, leading edge research results as well as in-depth discussions of future directions in the challenging subject of heterogeneous material mechanics. Sessions in the Huangshan International Hotel will focus on recent original research developments, while invited panel discussins in the subsequent Huangshan Mountain retreat aim to stimulate future research directions.

Co-Chairs

J. Fan, Alfred University, USA and Chongqing University

The topics of interest are:

Elastic model for proteins (polymers)

Submitted by Kilho Eom on

There has been a lot of attention on the study of mechanics of proteins and/or single molecules. Such study was typically implemented by using classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. In spite of ability to describe the dynamics of biological macromolecules (e.g. proteins), MD simulation exhibits the computational restriction in the spatial and temporal scale. In order to overcome such computational limitation, the coarse-grained model has recently been taken into account. In this review, I would take a look at a couple of coarse-grained models of protein molecules.

Meshfree Methods: Frequently Asked Questions

Submitted by John E. Dolbow on

Questions about meshfree methods are now addressed in the forum, under the Computational Mechanics subheading.

If you click on a question below, you will be redirected to the forum. I will update this post as more questions are added. Other experts are encouraged to augment my response there.

1. If I have meshfree shape functions that satisfy Kronecker-Delta, can I satisfy essential boundary conditions?

2. Is a mesh required in meshfree methods?