Hi

 The main purpose of this paper is to complete the works presented by
Andrieux and Varé (2002) and El Arem et al. (2003) by taking into
account the effects of shearing in the constitutive equations of a beam
cracked section in bi-axial flexure. The paper describes the derivation
of a lumped cracked beam model from the three-dimensional formulation of
the general problem of elasticity with unilateral contact conditions on
the crack lips. Properties of the potential energy and convex analysis
are used to reduce the three-dimensional computations needed for the
model identification, and to derive the final form of the elastic energy
that determines the nonlinear constitutive equations of the cracked

2011 SCC Dates • May 17-19, 2011

Advanced Seminars • May 16, 2011

Hotel Fira Palace, Barcelona, Spain

 In countries with a moderate seismic hazard, the classical methods
developed for strong motion prone countries to estimate the seismic
behaviour and subsequent vulnerability of existing buildings are often
inadequate and not financially realistic. The main goals of this paper
are to show how the modal analysis can contribute to the understanding
of the seismic building response and the good relevancy of a modal model
based on ambient vibrations for estimating the structural deformation
under weak earthquakes. We describe the application of an enhanced modal
analysis technique (frequency domain decomposition) to process ambient
vibration recordings taken at the Grenoble City Hall building (France).

We have recently published a paper on measurements of the density of geometrically necessary dislocations (GND) associated with wedge indentation of a single face-centered cubic crystal. The deformation field is two-dimensional and there are three effective in-plane slip systems that contribute to the plastic slip. We determine the lower bound on the total GND density with a three micrometer spatial resolution. We also show that in certain regions of the domain, the lower bound on total GND density corresponds to the exact total GND density.

Dear All,

          What do you think is the difference in PhD in Europe, USA? My thesis supervisor used to say "In US it is a deep inspection of a subject, while European PhD is a grand problem solving" What is your opinion on this matter? Is there some basic difference between how a PhD is approached by students and supervisor in both these places? if indeed there is a difference, in your opinion which approach is preferable??

Atul Jain

 The main purpose of this work is to present a new parallel direct solver: Dissection solver. It is based on LU
factorization of the sparse matrix of the linear system and allows to
detect automatically and handle properly the zero-energy modes, which
are important when dealing with DDM. A performance evaluation and
comparisons with other direct solvers (MUMPS, DSCPACK) are also given
for both sequential and parallel computations. Results of numerical
experiments with a two-level parallelization of large-scale structural
analysis problems are also presented: FETI is used for the global
problem parallelization and Dissection for the local

Adhesion has long been an important issue for mechanics and many other disciplines. Its influence spans macro-, micro-, nano- and molecular scales. When size goes down, adhesion plays a more and more significant role. Many important technologies attribute to adhesion, such as transfer printing for advanced microfabrication,  super adhesives inspired by gecko foot hairs, and self-assembly. Adhesion also has strong implications on the behavior of nanomaterials (such as nanotubes and graphenes) and biological system (such as cells).