Ultrasmall structures and multiscale materials are gaining lot of attention in the scientific community with the challenging purpose to design, model and characterize innovative systems and nano-devices. Non-conventional materials and small-scale structures are forefront topics in the field of Engineering and Material Science in which understanding of Solid and Structural Mechanics at different levels play a fundamental role to overcome the multiscale challenge and to explore potentialities of miniaturized and innovative systems. The Mini-symposium aims at providing new insights in modeling, analysis and design of small-scale systems, new-generation nanocomposites, multiscale materials and structures. Discovery and promotion of new knowledge about mechanical behaviours involving size effects as well as multiple characteristic scale lengths are highly encouraged. Recent achievements regarding unconventional responses of multiscale systems and nanostructures will be deeply investigated from theoretical, computational and experimental points of view.
The debate will focus on modeling and assessment of scale effects in nanostructures which is a ground breaking topic in Nanoscience and Nanoengineering with a wide range of applications concerning development of miniaturized electro-mechanical devices such as nano-sensors, nanoresonators, nano-actuators, nano-probes. Enriched and refined theories able to reproduce complex scale phenomena are required to capture size-dependent behaviours of such new generation systems. Time-dependent structural responses will be investigated by means of nonlocal theories of viscoelasticy involving fractional operators. Effects of random excitations on small-scale structures will be analysed thought stochastic approaches. Special attention will be devoted to the design and characterization of nanomaterials and to the assessment of effective constitutive properties of advanced composites. Modeling and design of unconventional materials and structures will be provided through the deepening of multiscale mechanics. Innovative systems ranging from multifunctional lattices to nanocomposites and their applications will be discussed.
Contributions related (but not limited) to the following topics are encouraged:
- nonlocal continua
- size- and time-dependent structural behaviours
- fractional calculus in nonlocal mechanics
- multiscale physic phenomena
- advanced nanocomposites
- micro- and nano-mechanics
- multiscale composites and metamaterials