Travel Support for the 4th International Workshop on the Mechanics of Jointed Structures; Dartington, United Kingdom

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

Jointed structures are pervasive throughout manufactured systems and their presence in high consequence applications (such as in aerospace, defense, and civil infrastructure) has been tied to high profile failures that have cost billions of dollars per year. Therefore, the prediction of the interfacial stiffness, dissipation and nonlinear response of a jointed connection is one of the greatest challenges in structural dynamics. Over the past several years, the efforts of researchers in this important area have been focused and coordinated through a series of triennial workshops. Significant advances have occurred during this period both in macro- and micro-scale modeling and experimentally characterizing joints, and these workshops have been especially valuable in coordinating the efforts across various disciplines and countries. The upcoming workshop of this series will be held in October 2015, in Dartington, UK. This award will help offset the costs of travel for researchers and graduate students from the United States. The workshop will bring together researchers from academia, major laboratories, and industry, as well as representatives from European funding agencies. Research funding in the United States on dynamics of jointed structures currently lags that in the European Union. This workshop will allow US researchers to be exposed to competing/complimentary methods in more depth than is possible in a conference setting and will stimulate collaboration. This will ensure that research focuses on the areas of broadest impact, and will enable the assessment of progress towards grand challenges. Specific topics that will be promoted by US researchers participating to the workshop include implementation/integration of prediction methods in finite element codes, formulation of a round robin/benchmark exercise for measurement and prediction of dissipation in standard joints , and the investigation of epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty modeling and measurements.