Fracture and Failure Mechanics TC blog and activities

The Fracture and Failure Mechanics Technical Committee (FFMTC) would like to call your attention to some of our recent activities. In addition to our involvement in organizing sessions for the IMECE and summer meetings, we are developing a dynamic website or blog that will enable the greater community to share teaching experiences and resources. Please take a look at our blog; it is located at http://amd-ffmtc.blogspot.com and can also be reached through the Applied Mechanics Blogroll on the Applied Mechanics News blog.

Below are edited excerpts from our committee report in the Summer 2006 AMD Newsletter. We welcome your comments and involvement.

Regards,

John Lambros, Chair
Mark Walter, Vice-Chair
Jean-Francois Molinari, Secretary

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Blog-based web pages have several advantages over static web pages and in particular, the FFMTC’s site offers the following:

• Streamlined content management (i.e., announcements, membership listing, meeting minutes,etc.),
• Dynamic discussion of fracture mechanics teaching through on-line discussion of syllabi and relevant books/articles,
• Posting/commenting about useful fracture and failure mechanics resources, and
• Access to a community of peers for discussion of issues relating to fracture and failure mechanics.

The quality and relevance of our blog is directly proportional to member participation. Please consider becoming an active contributor. E-mail “walter.80_at_osu_dot_edu” to request to be a contributor. In addition, since the content is dynamic, you should consider using a news aggregator that will alert you when there are new postings.

he FFMTC continues to be very active in organizing IMECE sessions. Many of these sessions are co-sponsored with the Dynamic Response of Materials and the Experimental Mechanics Technical Committees. This cross-committee cooperation has allowed sessions of broad relevance to be organized, which consequently have been very well attended. IMECE 2005 symposia that were (co)sponsored by the Committee included three sessions on the “Failure phenomena of inhomogeneous materials” (organized by Toshio Nakamura and Raman Singh), and one session on “Dynamic Fragmentation of Brittle Materials” (organized by Jean-Francois Molinari and Philippe Geubelle). The Committee is currently (co)sponsoring seven sessions for the IMECE 2006

Last but not least, we would like to thank the many individuals who have volunteered their time and work to bring the Committee efforts to fruition. In particular, the entire committee wishes to express its greatest appreciation to the outgoing Chair, Jack Beuth, for all his efforts during the past six years that he has been involved in the committee administration. Membership in the Committee is open and we encourage anyone interested to participate in the IMECE 2006 FFMTC meeting or to contact Committee officials directly.