Objectives of the LIA Coss&Vita

The scientific objectives of the LIA are the following:

• Attract the attention of the mechanics community on the understanding and design of meta-materials. The long and acknowledged experience of the partners in the theory and engineering of composites and other heterogeneous materials (including metallic alloys, concrete…) is expected to allow for significant advances in this field largely dominated by the physics community. The experience of contributors in multiphysics (piezoelectricity, magnetoforming…) will promote applications combining physical and mechanical properties of such micro or macro–systems. A link will be established between the concept of materials by design elaborated in the mechanics and materials community, which lead to the rising interest in architectured materials, and the design of metamaterials. In that way, metamaterials will be regarded as tailored architectures exhibiting unprecedented or surprising static or dynamic mechanical properties. The design of such systems belongs to the targets of the project, typically by means of rapid prototyping methods and/or selective laser melting. These techniques are available in the experimental Paris platforms of the F2M.
• Apply and extend the present knowledge in the generalized mechanics of materials to model and simulate biomaterials. This includes homogenization techniques, stochastic mechanics and experimental field measurement techniques.
• Establish new results and links in the field of instabilities in materials and structures by means of generalized continua. The introduction of intrinsic lengths makes it possible to study post–bifurcation behaviour for instance after loss of ellipticity of the set of partial differential equations. Systematic methods should be developed to address strain localization phenomena in the case of nonlinear elasticity, elastoviscoplasticity for materials and structures.
• Contribute to overcome the main obstacles to efficient simulations of instabilities in solids, including strain localization and fracture. In previous approaches, theoretical and computational approaches have been too often developed without sufficient interaction. Bringing the Paris–Rome research communities together will be a strong asset for this endeavour.
• Promote connections between theoretical, computational and experimental mechanics. Both Paris and Rome regions, each in its way, combine these approaches in the development of mechanics of materials and structures, but, especially in the last ten years, in an overly compartmentalized way.
• Promote young French and Italian students and researchers grown up in the Paris and Rome Schools of Mechanics and Materials.