research

This themed issue on mechanical metamaterials invites contributions from different perspectives with the aim of highlighting the latest advances in the field.

The themed issue will focus on mechanical metamaterials in the general sense. This includes acoustic and elastic metamaterials as well as other types of metamaterials with unique mechanical and/or thermal properties at any length scale.

Topics of interest include the following:

Atul Jain, Jose M. Veas, Stefan Straesser, Wim Van Paepegem, Ignaas Verpoest, Stepan Lomov

To appear in a special issue of journal Composites Part A

Special Issue on 3D Assembly by Cutting, Bending and Folding in Extreme Mechanics Letters

When patterned with different materials, gradients or cut-outs, thin structures such as sheets and rods can bend or fold either spontaneously or by actuation in response to a force or stimulus to form a pre-designed three dimensional structure. This special issue addresses the design and mechanics of these structures with a special emphasis on programmability and non-linearity.  

Manuscript Submission:

Abstract: In this paper, we provide a retrospective examination of the developments and applications of the extended finite element method (X-FEM) in computational fracture mechanics. Our main attention is placed on the modeling of cracks (strong discontinuities) for quasistatic crack growth simulations in isotropic linear elastic continua.

Obtaining high accuracy with low computation requirements is a challenge in the modeling of the thermomechanical response of nanostructures. Although the field is important to capture size dependency at finite temperatures, it is mostly quasiharmonic and Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations that lead to reliable results. To formulate an engineering approach to this problem, Thermo-coupled Surface Cauchy-Born method was developed combining Surface Cauchy-Born and Engineering Molecular Mechanics.