I am Nitin Sharma, enrolled as M.S. student in Mechanical Engg. at UNL. I did my B.Tech in Mechanical Engg. in India. Worked as an Application Engineer in CAE, for some years, before deciding to take sabbatical and head back to school. Other courses that I have taken in solid mechanics include Mechanics of Materials and Mechanics of Composite Materials (currently enrolled). I feel that my experience with Finite Element codes would help me simulate crack propogation numerically. However, coming back to school after a long time makes me little out of touch with some mathematical concepts.
I am working for Midwest Roadside Safety Facility (http://mwrsf.unl.edu/), a research group involved in design for safety. We design, simulate, test and correlate roadside safety devices. I am working on design of a safety device for race car applications. It is definitely an exciting work for a F1 fan. This course would help me in applying crack propogation concepts in design and would also prove useful in validating the simulations from fracture mechanics stand point. In general, fracture mechanics would help me understand crack behavior, post crack intiation and I hope, I would be able to do more realistic life estimation of my design.