Computational Contact Mechanics: Advances and Frontiers in Modeling Contact (14w5147)

The Banff International Research Station will host the "Computational Contact Mechanics: Advances and Frontiers in Modeling Contact" workshop from February 16th to February 21st, 2014.

If we can accurately capture the physics of contacting systems, then
we can gain important new insights into many open questions that
influence our understanding of the large-scale geophysics of
earthquakes and iceberg calving  (crucial to understanding the rapid
changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet), the small-scale dissipation in
high-frequency MEMS and NEMS devices, as well as prosaic domestic
phenomena such as the chattering of chalk on a board, and even the
excitation of violin strings. Contact is a dominant and often
unavoidable factor in mechanical systems and yet accurately simulating
contacting systems continues to stretch the limits of available
methods. In part this is due to the unique hurdles posed by contact
problems.

Advancing computational contact mechanics is a fundamentally
multidisciplinary effort.  Nevertheless, disparate research groups in
contact modeling have evolved independently with largely
complementary scientific skill sets. This workshop will bring active
researchers in contact mechanics together, many for the first time,
along with practitioners in the aligned areas of constrained
optimization and numerical analysis. Together, we will address current
challenges to the design and analysis of predictive and efficient
computational methods for contact simulation. By bridging communities
and bringing together highly recognized experts in the area, we expect
to forge new interdisciplinary links between mathematicians,
computational scientists, and mechanicians, enrich ongoing
collaborative efforts, and help advance significantly the state of the
art. We anticipate that these advances will lead to the accurate and
reliable computational tools currently demanded by today’s contact
intensive scientific and industrial applications.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT).