The
annual meeting of FM 2005 will be organized by the Thermal Energy
Engineering, Research Center, Zhengzhou University, China. A part
of the meeting will be held as a seminar at the Department of
Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Lehigh University, USA,
August 15-16, 2005, where technical papers will be presented and
discussions will take place in the area of corrosion failure.
Since FM 2003 and FM
2004 that were held, respectively, in Shanghai and Huangshan,
the FMG (Fracture Mechanics Group) originated in Southern China
has broadened its interaction with International Engineering Societies
and prominent individual scholars and scientists. This action
was necessitated by the convergence of science and engineering
in the era of nanotechnology. To this end, a forum was established
where interviews with current scientists and engineers can be
made available to the fracture mechanics community, not just in
China but to the world at large. Seemingly unrelated disciplines
are no longer so when they are viewed at the smaller scales. To
be published in the FM 2005 Proceedings is the email-interview
of the Chinese leading nuclear physicist and Academician Dr. Cheng
Kaijia who studied under the Nobel laureate Max Born. As a graduate
student, he rubbed shoulders with giants such as Schrödinger,
Heisenberg Pauli. Quoting from his interview: “I argued
on the two ideas that only electronic interaction prevails (by
Heisenberg) and the other as I maintained that both electronic
and lattice interaction would prevail. ----Hence, Heisenberg and
I became involved in the heated controversy of superconductivity.”
For the past decade, Dr. Cheng turned to a material scientist
and made use of the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac method in nuclear physics
for the fabrication of light weight and ductile materials nanometer
in size. Dr. Cheng had the courage to turn from physics to engineer.
There is no reason why engineers cannot turn to physicists or
chemists. The FMG has also made extensive efforts to interact
with International Societies by interviewing the current Presidents
and attending Conferences. They include:
The International Society
of Mesomechanics
The European Structural Integrity Society
The 16th European Conference of Fracture in 2006
The dissemination of
current knowledge in science and technology is more important
than ever before. It can be the difference between success or
failure in making decisions related to research work. Less compartmentalization
of subject matters should be the rule since all disciplines in
principle rest on a common ground, as the scale is made smaller
and smaller. Richard Feynman’s 1959 at the annual meeting
of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of
Technology has provided the main trust for the development of
nanotechnology. More than four decades have been elapsed. Still
there may be others who are not aware of this fact. It is this
kind of cutting edge knowledge that FMG will focus on and disseminate
to the scientific and engineering communities via the mechanisms
of email interview, annual meetings and publications.
The study of failure
initiation at the lower scale levels has suggested that environment
can have a large influence on the material integrity of structural
components used in large structures such as nuclear reactor vessels,
bridge cables, aircraft and automobile parts, etc. Chemical instability
at the nanoscale can be a cause of concern, especially when the
service temperature is high. Intergranular Stress Corrosion Cracking
(IGSCC) for example is particularly vulnerable to components used
in the PWR and BWR nuclear power generation systems. Stress Corrosion
Cracking (SCC) of bridge cables is also a critical issue as these
structural components age in aggressive environments. The same
applies to aging aircrafts that are too costly to be retired.
