Fatigue fracture characterization by cyclic material forces in viscoelastic solids at small strain

The study at hand introduces a new approach to characterize fatigue crack growth in small strain linear viscoelastic solids by configurational mechanics. In this study, Prony series with n-Maxwell elements are used to describe the viscoelastic behavior. As a starting point in this work, the local balance of energy momentum is derived using the free energy density. Moreover, at cyclic loading, the cyclic free energy substitutes the free energy. Using the cyclic free energy, the balance of cyclic energy momentum is obtained. The newly derived balance law at cyclic loading is appropriate for each cycle. In the finite element framework, nodal material forces and cyclic nodal material forces are obtained using the weak and discretized forms of the balance of energy momentum and cyclic energy momentum, respectively. The crack driving force and the cyclic crack driving force are determined by the nodal material forces and the cyclic nodal material forces, respectively. Finally, numerical examples are shown to illustrate path-independence of the domain integrals using material forces and cyclic material forces. The existence of the balance of energy momentum and cyclic energy momentum are also illustrated by numerical examples.

Fine Wrinkling on Coarsely Meshed Thin Shells

We propose a new model and algorithm to capture the high-definition statics of thin shells via coarse meshes. This model predicts global, fine-scale wrinkling at frequencies much higher than the resolution of the coarse mesh; moreover, it is grounded in the geometric analysis of elasticity, and does not require manual guidance, a corpus of training examples, nor tuning of ad hoc parameters. We first approximate the coarse shape of the shell using tension field theory, in which material forces do not resist compression. We then augment this base mesh with wrinkles, parameterized by an amplitude and phase field that we solve for over the base mesh, which together characterize the geometry of the wrinkles. We validate our approach against both physical experiments and numerical simulations, and we show that our algorithm produces wrinkles qualitatively similar to those predicted by traditional shell solvers requiring orders of magnitude more degrees of freedom.

Radical Intangibles: Materializing the Ephemeral

New materialism considers that the world and its histories are produced by a range of material forces that extend from the physical and the biological to the psychological, social and cultural. In recognizing that heritage is not held in objects alone, new materialism discourses echo definitions of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) enshrined in the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. While museums understand the weight of responsibility when engaging with communities of practice, many still restrict the representation of archived ICH material to oral histories, object biographies, video and audio recordings of songs and performing arts. The technical complexities of archiving the ‘live’ perpetuate nineteenth-century museum display conventions, such as fixed-point perspectives and linear approaches to representation. To address this gap, we introduce ‘computational museology’, which brings a systems thinking approach to 'whole of environment' encoding. Such a framework unites, for instance, artificial intelligence with data curation, and ontology with visualization, as well as embodied participation through immersive and interactive interfaces. The implications of such a framework has yet to be fully theorized but it is evident that a new paradigm of materiality comprising ‘radical intangibles’ is taking shape in museums, which signals a break with both Western historiographic orthodoxies and hypothetical paradigms of tangible and intangible heritage. This article foregrounds the emergence of radical intangibles as crucial new digital materialities that are transforming reenacted and embodied practices, which we demonstrate in the discussion of two longitudinal curatorial projects based in China and Hong Kong: the first, 'Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive' (HKMALA) in collaboration with the International Goushou Association in Hong Kong, and the second, ‘Remaking Confucian Rites’ (RCR), undertaken in conjunction with Tsinghua University in Beijing. Both of these projects are significant for having taken up ‘technologies of corporeality’ – digital paradigms at the forefront of computer graphics, spatial and temporal modelling, and virtual reality. The powerful tools being developed across the two instances have begun to revolutionize ICH as a practice, a mode of transmission, and an object of study.

Material parametrization of natural rubber based compound and characterization of crack propagation under consideration of dissipative effects

Most concepts to characterize crack propagation were developed for elastic materials. When applying these methods to elastomers, the question is how the inherent energy dissipation of the material affects the cracking behavior. This contribution presents a numerical analysis of crack growth in natural rubber taking energy dissipation due to the visco-elastic material behavior into account. For this purpose, experimental tests were first carried out under different load conditions to parameterize a Prony series as well as a Bergström–Boyce model with the results. The parameterized Prony series was then used to perform numerical investigations with respect to the cracking behavior. Using the FE-software system ANSYS and the concept of material forces, the influence and proportion of the dissipative components were discussed.

COVID Cough and Fukushima Novels

This essay introduces three works of post-Fukushima Japanese literature, by Hayashi Kyoko (1930–2017), Kimura Yusuke (1970–) and Kobayashi Erika (1978–), to offer an environmental humanities alternative to Giorgio Agamben's response to COVID-19. Politically, Hayashi is probably closest to Agamben in that her work has been embraced by antinuclear activists in Japan and upheld as evidence of the injustice of the state of exception into which victims of both Fukushima and Hiroshima/Nagasaki were thrust. The author focuses instead on how these three authors acknowledge the cruelties of biopolitics but nevertheless celebrate the fact that “life” is never bare. For them, ionizing radiation acts like the COVID cough did for many of us: not as an invitation to critique the state but as a material intrusion that forces an awareness of what Rocco Ronchi, in his response to Agamben, called “the destiny of the community of man with nature.” What are the material forces immanent to that destiny? What does it do to our mental health to engage them directly? The three works analyzed answer these questions in creative, powerful ways.

Material Practice and Morality in the Marxist Tradition

This chapter examines Marxist thought, which is primarily a sociological rather than an ethical framework. However, both Karl Marx and later Marxist thinkers developed theories with clear moral assumptions and goals, from their anthropology to visions of a revolutionized society. Marxist thought makes “human sensuous activities” central to everything, and that has to include its (implicit) ethical theory. Even though Marx showed little interest in moral theory, both meta-ethical and normative claims run throughout his work. This chapter reflects special interest in Marx’s emphases on the role of material forces in shaping ideas and on the creative tensions between individuals and structures. To explore these issues, the chapter engages the thought of Marx and some of his recent interpreters to understand the ways all ideas, including ideas about value, are grounded in material practices, experiences, and structures.

Romantic Upheavals, Modern Movements

This chapter discusses the relation of existentialist thinking to Romanticism and modernism. From the late eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries, some philosophers and writers devoted their efforts to subjective aspects of existence, embracing Enlightenment philosophy’s focus on individual freedom while rejecting its rationalist constraints. This chapter shows the relevance for existentialism of the rebellion by Romantic thinkers against the cult of reason and what they considered its modern disenchanted vision of a world seen through the prism of mathematics and wholly determined by material forces. Often in conflict with the dominant philosophical positions of their time, these thinkers privileged individual subjectivity and freedom, feeling, and imagination, along with an aesthetic program for philosophy. This chapter shows that the creative philosophies of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky emerged in critical contest with Romanticism, and would in turn feed the existentialist impulse of modernist literature in the following century.

Authentic Empathy and the Role of Victim Service Providers in (De)stigmatizing Male Sexual Victimization

Male victims of rape and sexual violence (SV) constitute a highly stigmatized group who doubly suffer the trauma of SV and hegemonic notions of real masculinity that punishes weakness and vulnerability in men. This double exposure produces a stigmatizing identity (i.e., male victim stigma) that is embedded in grand narratives about male SV. However, helping professionals have been implicated in this (de)stigmatizing process. Few studies describe the role victim service providers (VSPs) play as (de)stigmatizing agents. This study is among the first to explore VSP narratives on their stigma awareness and stigma management practices. Story-focused interview methods elicited responses from 11 VSPs (nine females and two males, age: 29–65 years) across the United States representing diverse victim-serving professions. Interviews were face-to-face or by phone, lasting between 45 and 90 minutes. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using power-sensitive Foucauldian discourse analysis (or FDA, suitable for analyzing language and meanings linked to power dynamics). Our analysis was guided by a meaning-forming social constructionist approach. With some narrative convergence and disconvergence, three strings of narratives with supporting excerpts were identified, namely (a) stigma awareness shaped by discursive and material forces, (b) labeling as a (de)stigmatizing tool, and (c) connecting through authentic empathy (AE). The concept of AE is recommended as a possible model of care and stigma management approach in therapeutic spaces. We define AE as an aptitude to credibly provide nonjudgmental, stigma-free care, based on personal histories with trauma, membership in a stigmatized group, or an earned involvement with members of the same group. Findings bear implications for stigma-informed practices and future research to address the unique unmet needs of stigmatized male victims.

After Practice? Material Semiotic Approaches to Consumption and Economy

The ‘turn’ to practice in social theory is proving influential in the sociological study of consumption (following Warde, 2005). This article joins current debates that appraise the contributions of this growing body of work, specifically its relationship with – and possible mode of succession to – cultural studies of consumption. It considers two claims about the impact and status of practice theoretic repertoires in consumption scholarship (Warde, 2014). First, that they invite greater attention than the cultural turn to objects and technologies as material forces. Second, that they have not yet found ways to locate consumption in the context of wider economic processes. My central argument is that theories of practice offer a partial reading of materiality, and that engagement with a greater range of material semiotic approaches can help in making better links between consumption and economy. This argument is illustrated through reference to market agencements, the social life of things, and ontological politics. I suggest these perspectives are compatible with practice theoretic approaches and that taken together, they represent some promising responses to a suite of fundamental challenges confronting consumption studies. I conclude that theories of practice – plural – have not yet run their course as an approach to consumption and economy. The parameters of consumption scholarship are also considered alongside the relationships between political economy and cultural analysis.