News

In the upcoming summer semester 2025, the Continuum Mechanics Group will again offer the two special lectures Analytical Mechanics and Introduction to Special Relativity in English. Lecturer of the courses is our former institute member Dr. Dimitrios Makridis.

The Golden Pen of the summer semester 2024 was awarded by the Civil and Environmental Engineering student council to Mara Lena Koch and Prof. Dominik Schillinger for Technical Mechanics III. This highly coveted prize at Department 13 of TU Darmstadt is awarded every semester to the fastest exam correction in relation to the number of participants. Congratulations!

In our latest publication, Jonathan Stollberg in collaboration with our former postdoc Tarun Gangwar (IIT Roorkee) and Prof. Oliver Weeger (Cyber-Physical Simulation) presents a novel optimization algorithm for functionally graded and additively manufacturable lattice structures. Among other things, the method is based on a parameterized material model, which was implemented as a neural network. Basic physical conditions for the model are already fulfilled by the architecture of the neural network. The article is available as open access in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering: Stollberg, J., Gangwar, D., Weeger, O., Schillinger, D. Multiscale topology optimization of functionally graded lattice structures based on physics-augmented neural network material models. Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. 438, 117808 (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.cma.2025.117808

The edge strength of cut glass sheets depends heavily on the cutting process. The most common method is to use a cutting wheel to create a crack system in the flat glass, at which the glass is then broken. The investigation of this process with numerical simulation and experiments is the subject of the new DFG-funded project “CrackCut”. Dr.-Ing. Aris Tsakmakis (Division Material Mechanics), Dr.-Ing. Matthias Seel (Institute of Structural Mechanics and Design/Glass Competence Center) and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ralf Müller (Institute for Mechanics) are involved in the joint project.

As part of a cooperation with the “Nonmetallic Inorganic Materials” group at the Department of Materials and Earth Sciences, a publication on stress-induced precipitate selection in ferroelectric materials and its influence on the electrical properties of piezoceramics has been published in the journal Nature Communications. The publication is now available as Open Access: Zhao, C., Benčan, A., Bohnen, M. et al. Impact of stress-induced precipitate variant selection on anisotropic electrical properties of piezoceramics. Nat Commun 15, 10327 (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-54230-0 We would like to thank Prof. Jürgen Rödel and his group for the excellent cooperation.

On November 24, a film crew visited the Institute of Mechanics to attend the lecture on the mechanics of glaciers and ice sheets and gain an insight into the work of the institute. The footage is to be included in a documentary presenting women who were pioneers in polar research.

From August 21 to 23, 2023, the Ice Modeler Workshop took place at the Institute of Mechanics. Around 20 participants discussed icy topics such as modeling, numerics and HPC on Monday and Tuesday. The workshop ended on August 23 with a visit to the GSI (Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung).