Mechanics of Heterogeneous Materials and Structures

Many modern engineering structures are composed of brittle heterogeneous (a.k.a. quasibrittle) materials. These materials include concrete, composites, tough ceramics, rocks, asphalt binders and mixtures (at low temperatures), and many brittle materials at the micro-scale. The most salient feature of quasibrittle materials is that they generally exhibit a strain-softening constitutive behavior, which leads to many intricate fracture and failure mechanisms, such as distributed cracking, damage localization, scale effect, etc. 

The central theme of our research is to develop new analytical and numerical models for fracture and failure of heterogeneous materials and structures by intertwining fracture and damage mechanics, probabilistic methods and computational mechanics, with a specific aim of improving the structural safety and reliability. Research interests include fracture mechanics, reliability analysis, scaling, stochastic computation, localization limiters,  and stability, with applications to a variety of engineering structures including large-scale concrete infrastructure, laboratory-scale structural members made of concrete, composites, asphalts and rocks, as well as micro-scale MEMS devices. 

Contact: Dr. Jia-Liang Le, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering, University of Minnesota.

Address: 500 Pillsbury Drive S.E. Minneapolis, MN 55455-0116, Tel: 612-625-0752, Email: jle@umn.edu