Bruck Presents Nanotech Course at ASME Nanotech Bootcamp

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Hugh Bruck presented a course in the Mechanical Properties of Materials at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Nano Training Bootcamp held July 12-15 at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. It was also attended by Leila Jannesari and Gayatri Cuddalorepatta, graduate students of Professor Abhijit Dasgupta, who are actively engaged in research involving computational nanomechanics.

The ASME Nano Training Bootcamp was organized to offer a detailed and tutorial-based account of advances in fundamentals related to Nanoscience in a wide variety of fields, and prospects for translating these advances into useful Nanotechnologies. Participants were challenged with open-ended questions and opportunities in engineering nanosystems. Given by experts in academia and industry, the ASME Nano Training Bootcamp provided intense sessions on characterization, solids and devices, and fluids/synthesis/ devices.

Bruck's course focused on the mechanics of nanostructures, where boundary conditions, and methods to mechanically resonate (to fit modulus), or to tensile or compressively load (to obtain strengths, for example) were discussed. The atomic structures of several different nanostructures were presented to address the question: are the composition and structure uniform across the cross-section, and if not, what can be learned about mechanical constants from fits to experimental data? The challenges of theory/modeling prediction of nanostructure fracture strengths were also discussed.

Published July 15, 2005