Biomechanics and Damage Mechanics of Composite Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Composite materials are widely used for structural applications in Industrial, Civil, Automotive, Naval, and Aerospace Engineering.

Nowadays, many researchers are also adopting composite materials in the field of Biomechanical Engineering, including for cardiovascular, dentistry, oral and maxillofacial surgery, tissue engineering, and orthopedic applications.

Depending on the loading conditions and geometry, different failure modes may occur in composite and hybrid structures. Over the last few decades, many researchers have adopted a damage mechanics approach to predicting the static and dynamic responses of composite structures to damage. Moreover, several experimental setups have been proposed for the experimental evaluation of composite materials’ micromechanical behavior.

Another critical aspect of research on composite materials is the long-term performance requirements of biomedical composites (e.g., dimensional stability, polymerization shrinkage, and wear resistance).

Within this context, further studies are needed on the damage mechanics of composite structures and their deferred behavior in order to achieve general and reliable models, especially for biomedical applications and innovative materials.

The focus of this Special Issue of Materials is the computational modeling of composite materials and the experimental investigation of their behavior. This Special Issue will also present recent advances in this field.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• new models of the damage mechanics of composite structures;
• novel approaches to the evaluation of statistical and dynamical failure of composite or hybrid structures;
• new approaches to the evaluation of the reliability over time of composite structures;
• novel experimental setups for biomechanical problems;
• constitutive models of biomedical materials; and
• new methods for optimizing the design of composite materials.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• finite element method
• boundary element method
• experimental mechanics
• composite material
• damage mechanics
• bonded joints
• hybrid materials
• fatigue
• fracture mechanics
• biomaterial
• biocompatibility
• medical device
• prosthesis
• implant