Thermo-Mechanics and Failure of Materials

The study of mechanical and/or thermo-mechanical behavior and the failure of standard engineering materials (metals, ceramic and polymeric materials) is vital for the aeronautics and aerospace industries, automotive industry, nuclear industry and many others. Furthermore, reliable quantification of the behavior of biological materials, soft tissue (skin, blood vessels) and hard tissue (bones) is crucial for the biomechanics industry, which is developing artificial implants, stents and other mechanical elements that interface with the human body.

The mechanical behavior of material defines the relationship between shape and volume changes (deformation) which the material undergoes and the internal forces (stresses) in the material. The thermo-mechanical behavior of material defines this relationship between deformation and stress under changing temperature conditions. These are complex problems because the thermal and the deformation fields are coupled.

Failure of materials is defined as inability of the material to continue to withstand existing stresses (through a cracking, tearing or collapse mechanism).

The Center for Thermo-Mechanics and Failure of Material was established in order to study the mechanical and thermo-mechanical behavior of engineering and biological material, up to and including failure of the material. The Center utilizes advanced numerical tools (low and high-order finite element methods) and tailored experiments in the aim of developing mathematical models that can be applied using computational software. Use of the computational tools enables deformation prediction of engineering or biological material under varying load and temperature conditions, as well as the study of the mechanical fields (stress, intercalations and temperature) created in the process. The Center also places an emphasis on the relationship between the mechanical fields at the macro level and the structure of the material at the micro level (atomic size and texture in metals, and fiber orientation and the layered microstructure of biological materials).

The research center was established in 2018 and is headed by the researchers Dr. Elad Priel and Dr. Nir Trabelsi