Recent Advances in Solid Mechanics

Abstract

Solid mechanics is the oldest field of science and is still advancing rapidly in all areas of technology. The advancement of the methods of analysis of structures of various kinds over the years is indeed quite impressive. The emergence of digital high speed computers with their enormous computing speed and core memory capacity has changed the direction of solid mechanics to a great extent. Sophisticated high speed computers are available to solve large sized problems with complicated aspects. High Performance Computing (HPC) has become a fashion for the scientist involved in modeling of systems. Numerical methods are developed at a great speed in recent years. Many problems including complicated geometry, boundary conditions and non-uniform loading that could not be dreamed of yielding a solution can now be attempted conveniently. Difficult practical problems can be solved with ease with available tools.Plenty of software packages including ANSYS, ABACUS, ALGOR, NASTRAN, PLAXYS, SAP, STAAD Pro are available to solve different problems of industry. A sizeable development is noticed in the area of instrumentation used in experimental mechanics to study the real behavior of structures. Small scale model to full scale tests are being done around the globe to study the behavior of structures. The subject ‘Solid Mechanics’ has advanced quite far than could be anticipated two decades back. Examples of engineering structures vary from a building or a bridge to a power plant to a ship or aircraft subjected to a varieties of loading. The current trends of development of solid mechanics clearly moves towards emphasis on analyzing and experimenting the failure and damage of structures with preserve of structural integrity [1]. Some of the recent research developments are: