Multiscale and Computational Methods in Failure Mechanics

The aim of this minisymposium is to provide a forum for discussing the recent developments in multiscale and computational methods applied to fracture and failure analysis of structures. This minisymposium seeks to bring together researchers working on numerical methods for predicting failure at a single or at multiple scales, characterizations of failure mechanisms and modeling of fracture within complex mechanical systems.

Under this theme, topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Novel discretization techniques for modeling cracks and discontinuities (e.g., XFEM/GFEM, meshless and particle methods, peridynamics, etc.)
- Reliable formulations in damage mechanics (e.g., nonlocal methods, gradient methods, phase field methods and other regularization techniques).
- Cohesive cracks and special types of boundary conditions related to material degradation
- Multiscale approaches to characterize fracture and failure in heterogeneous materials
- Computational modeling of static and fatigue failure of composites
- Characterization of fracture and instabilities criteria
- Modeling of failure and degradation of multiphysics phenomena (e.g., thermo-mechanical coupling due to impact and blast, environment induced material degradation and others).
- Role of plasticity and large deformation kinematics on failure analysis
- Multigrid, domain decomposition and other advancements in solvers for efficient solution of large-scale failure-type problems
- High-performance computing related to multi-scale and multi-physics challenges