Project Overview

The overall aim of this proposed program is to establish an international network in the field of micromechanics of materials based on exchanges between institutions in the European Union, Eastern Europe and USA, in particular, to train early stage researchers, leading to a roadmap for establishing connection between mechanics and other branches of science – rock mechanics, biomechanics, materials science, design of materials with tailored properties etc. The following objectives are to be met:

General objectives:

• to implement complementary investigations through the exchange of researchers with specific expertise and related staff within a global research context
• to train early stage researchers in general and applied micromechanics using a specific program of exchanges of postgraduates and research fellows, so that they can benefit from broader knowledge, skills and tools provided by the network
• to achieve knowledge transfer between the European Union, Eastern Europe and USA on the latest results and developments in general and applied micromechanics
• to develop joint research infrastructure to allow flexibility in shearing experimental and computational resources between the local teams
• to create links among the relevant professional societies and networks across the two continents, leading to joint applications to various funding bodies for research funding
• to generate high-quality publications through fundamental research collaborations and results-sharing from the collaborative activities

Specific technical objectives:

• to develop and validate a methodology to express anisotropic effective properties – elastic, conductive, etc. - in terms of parameters of microstructure of real materials based on advanced modelling schemes (with account for shape diversity of constituents, their orientational scatter and mutual positions)
• to establish - where possible - cross-property relations for different pairs of physical properties
• to develop and validate the methodology of recovery of information on microstructure and damage from the overall material properties. The same methodology can be applied for design of new materials with tailored properties
• to develop multi-scale modelling tools for heterogeneous materials with hierarchical microstructure

The tasks of this project are motivated by a number of current problems in materials science related to the fact that real materials often have complex, "irregular” microstructures, comprising various sets of inhomogeneities of diverse shapes and orientations. These factors strongly affect material's overall performance, from the point of view of its mechanical, electric and thermal properties. The main output of the project will be a numerically verified and experimentally validated methodology for defining microstructure-property relations and cross-property connection that brings together the sources of information to provide a rapid, accurate and meaningful response to meet the requirements of applied science.