Introduction to Solid mechanics

Solid mechanics is a field that deals with understanding the way in which engineering materials respond to the process of loading to improve the safety and the efficiency of structures. Solid mechanics undertakes industrially motivated research to study the behavior of materials when they are subject to mechanical and thermal loads. It deals with both metallic and non-metallic materials and makes use of analytical methods that are validated by testing them experimentally. Some of the interesting areas of solid mechanics are composite materials, residual stress, fracture, adhesive joints, fatigue, non-destructive testing and tribology.

Some of the elementary topics studied by solid mechanics include:

• The mathematical basis for analyzing stress
• Models to demonstrate behavior of materials
• The finite element method and the application of this method
• Methods to model failure in deformable solids
• Select exact solutions for boundary and initial value problems that involve deformable solids

Some of the advanced topics covered by solid mechanics are:

• Introduction to interface problems that characterizes their general properties and their specific attributes.
• Fluid structure interaction: Free boundaries, solid domains, added-mass effects, variationally consistent load evaluation are included.
• Crack Propagation and Partition of the Unity Method: This encompasses the mechanics of cracks and fractures, cohesive zone models, theory of unity partition and its implementation aspects
• Interface phenomena in biomechanical systems:  Ionized interfaces, swelling and double surfaces are a part of this. It deals with crack propagation in fluid- solid mixtures and multi-scale models of multiporosity in line with blood perfusion.
• Phase-field models: these models introduce the Cahn-Hilliard equation, energy principles, steady solutions, spinodal decomposition, long-time behavior of materials, numerical aspects of the models.

Questions:

• What is solid mechanics?
• What kind of materials does solid mechanics deal with and what methods does it use to analyze them?