The goal of the Entropy and the Quantum schools has been to introduce young researchers to some of the exciting current topics in mathematical physics. These topics often involve analytic techniques ...that can easily be understood with a dose of physical intuition. In March of 2010, four beautiful lectures were delivered on the campus of the University of Arizona. They included Isoperimetric Inequalities for Eigenvalues of the Laplacian by Rafael Benguria, Universality of Wigner Random Matrices by Laszlo Erdos, Kinetic Theory and the Kac Master Equation by Michael Loss, and Localization in Disordered Media by Gunter Stolz. Additionally, there were talks by other senior scientists and a number of interesting presentations by junior participants. The range of the subjects and the enthusiasm of the young speakers are testimony to the great vitality of this field, and the lecture notes in this volume reflect well the diversity of this school.
The authors study small disturbances to the periodic, plane Couette flow in the 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations at high Reynolds number Re. They prove that for sufficiently regular initial ...data of size $\epsilon \leq c_0\mathbf {Re}^-1$ for some universal $c_0 > 0$, the solution is global, remains within $O(c_0)$ of the Couette flow in $L^2$, and returns to the Couette flow as $t \rightarrow \infty $. For times $t \gtrsim \mathbf {Re}^1/3$, the streamwise dependence is damped by a mixing-enhanced dissipation effect and the solution is rapidly attracted to the class of "2.5 dimensional" streamwise-independent solutions referred to as streaks.
This open access book contains a structured collection of the complete solutions of all essential axisymmetric contact problems. Based on a systematic distinction regarding the type of contact, the ...regime of friction and the contact geometry, a multitude of technically relevant contact problems from mechanical engineering, the automotive industry and medical engineering are discussed. In addition to contact problems between isotropic elastic and viscoelastic media, contact problems between transversal-isotropic elastic materials and functionally graded materials are addressed, too. The optimization of the latter is a focus of current research especially in the fields of actuator technology and biomechanics. The book takes into account adhesive effects which allow access to contact-mechanical questions about micro- and nano-electromechanical systems. Solutions of the contact problems include both the relationships between the macroscopic force, displacement and contact length, as well as the stress and displacement fields at the surface and, if appropriate, within the half-space medium. Solutions are always obtained with the simplest available method - usually with the method of dimensionality reduction (MDR) or approaches which use the solution of the non-adhesive normal contact problem to solve the respective contact problem.
Emergent quantum mechanics explores the possibility of an ontology for quantum mechanics. The resurgence of interest in "deeper-level" theories for quantum phenomena challenges the standard, textbook ...interpretation. The book presents expert views that critically evaluate the significance—for 21st century physics—of ontological quantum mechanics, an approach that David Bohm helped pioneer. The possibility of a deterministic quantum theory was first introduced with the original de Broglie-Bohm theory, which has also been developed as Bohmian mechanics. The wide range of perspectives that were contributed to this book on the occasion of David Bohm’s centennial celebration provide ample evidence for the physical consistency of ontological quantum mechanics. The book addresses deeper-level questions such as the following: Is reality intrinsically random or fundamentally interconnected? Is the universe local or nonlocal? Might a radically new conception of reality include a form of quantum causality or quantum ontology? What is the role of the experimenter agent? As the book demonstrates, the advancement of ‘quantum ontology’—as a scientific concept—marks a clear break with classical reality. The search for quantum reality entails unconventional causal structures and non-classical ontology, which can be fully consistent with the known record of quantum observations in the laboratory.
The Mohr–Coulomb (M–C) fracture criterion is revisited with an objective of describing ductile fracture of isotropic crack-free solids. This criterion has been extensively used in rock and soil ...mechanics as it correctly accounts for the effects of hydrostatic pressure as well as the Lode angle parameter. It turns out that these two parameters, which are critical for characterizing fracture of geo-materials, also control fracture of ductile metals (Bai and Wierzbicki 2008; Xue 2007; Barsoum 2006; Wilkins et al. 1980). The local form of the M–C criterion is transformed/extended to the spherical coordinate system, where the axes are the equivalent strain to fracture
, the stress triaxiality η, and the normalized Lode angle parameter
. For a proportional loading, the fracture surface is shown to be an asymmetric function of
. A detailed parametric study is performed to demonstrate the effect of model parameters on the fracture locus. It was found that the M–C fracture locus predicts almost exactly the exponential decay of the material ductility with stress triaxiality, which is in accord with theoretical analysis of Rice and Tracey (1969) and the empirical equation of Hancock and Mackenzie (1976), Johnson and Cook (1985). The M–C criterion also predicts a form of Lode angle dependence which is close to parabolic. Test results of two materials, 2024-T351 aluminum alloy and TRIP RA-K40/70 (TRIP690) high strength steel sheets, are used to calibrate and validate the proposed M–C fracture model. Another advantage of the M–C fracture model is that it predicts uniquely the orientation of the fracture surface. It is shown that the direction cosines of the unit normal vector to the fracture surface are functions of the “friction” coefficient in the M–C criterion. The phenomenological and physical sound M–C criterion has a great potential to be used as an engineering tool for predicting ductile fracture.
