Talks

During the last decade it has become increasingly evident that plastic deformation of crystalline solids is not a smooth flow-like process, but rather exhibits intermittent fluctuations spanning several orders of magnitude in size. This is particularly clear in micropillar compression experiments, where these fluctuations, or dislocation avalanches, are visible as steps in the stress-strain curves. […]

Fracture and fatigue are natural multiscale problems: while the engineering structure has dimensions on the order of meter, the atomic cleavage at nano-meter scale causes the loss of structural integrity. In the past, macroscopic design laws were guided by standardized experiments. However, these macroscopic experiments do not yield the mechanistic understanding required to guide future […]

In this talk I will highlight a range of applications of phase field models in materials science and focus on two examples. Grain growth and microstructure evolution in irradiated materials. In the first example I will discuss the development of phase field models for grain growths in porous ceramics, model parameter determination and application of […]

Surface geological events, like volcanos and earthquakes, are due to the internal dynamics of the Earth which tends to release its internal heat. Inside the Earth’s mantle, solid rocks are plastically strained under extreme conditions of pressure, temperature and strainrate. In spite of recent experimental progress, it is still impossible to reach such conditions of […]

Fracture events initiating and propagating under negative mode I stress intensity factor (SIF) have been observed on cellular foam glass. The material at the crack tip collapses almost instantly in the event of fracture, leaving behind an accumulation of debris packing denser than the intact material. The fracture behavior comes close to that of anticracks, […]

 During the last decade it has become increasingly evident that plastic deformation of crystalline solids is not a smooth flow-like process, but rather exhibits intermittent fluctuations spanning several orders of magnitude in size. This is particularly clear in micropillar compression experiments, where these fluctuations, or dislocation avalanches, are visible as steps in the stress-strain curves. […]