Mechanics of Micro- and Nano-Structured Materials

Dear Colleagues,

With a continuous trend towards miniaturization, micro- and nano-structural features are gaining importance in the analysis of the effective behavior of the materials constituting the building blocks of everyday life devices. Continuum approaches for polycrystalline or composite materials have been typically centered around a phenomenological description of the processes taking place at small length-scales; in this way, tuning parameters (with a limited physical meaning) have to be quantified through sometimes expensive experimental tests and, if possible, post-mortem analyses. The main risk of these approaches is a loss of generalization or a reduced capability to match the actual materials’ response under different loading conditions, in case different mechanisms are triggered at the micro-scale.

The goal of the present Special Issue is to collect contributions regarding microstructure-informed approaches, able to account (even in a simplified way) for the possible phenomena taking place at length-scales comparable, or even smaller than the microstructural one. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Continuum thermodynamics of materials with internal length-scale(s);
• Generalized continuum descriptions of multi-phase (composite) materials, including, e.g., gradient, Cosserat, micromorphic, couple stress, and nonlocal ones;
• High-order homogenization procedures, inducing or allowing for a length-scale in the effective behavior of structured or architectured materials;
• Multi-physics of materials with a microstructure;
• Bio-inspired materials architectures, and possible emergence of hierarchies of length-scales;
• Effects of manufacturing processes, including 3D printing, on the effective response of materials at all length-scales;
• Statistical analysis of uncertainties at small length-scales, and interactions with materials architecture;
• Design and analysis of micro- and nano-devices either exploiting or exploring the opportunities offered by materials with a sub-mm architecture.

Prof. Dr. Stefano Mariani
Guest Editor

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