This grant provides partial travel support for an international symposium on Liquid and Solid Foams, to be held at the University of Texas at Austin, May 8-13, 2011. This symposium will bring together researchers from mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering who work in fluid mechanics, rheology, solid mechanics, and impact mechanics of foams. This diversity of participant backgrounds is unique and should stimulate thinking along new directions. Foams and more generally cellular materials have unique characteristics that are derived from their microstructure of interconnected networks of cells. This microstructure imparts to solid foams high stiffness- and strength-to-weight ratios, in addition to excellent energy absorption characteristics and exceptional thermal insulation and acoustical properties. Since many solid foams originate in a liquid state with the formation and deformation of gas bubbles, and gradually solidify, the foaming process influences the microstructure and the properties of the produced solid foams.
Invited attendees include graduate students, post-docs, young researchers and industrial researchers who should benefit from their exposure to the best researchers in foam mechanics in the world. Young US participants will be given priority for travel support. The lectures will be video-taped and will be made available for viewing at a dedicated website. For wider dissemination, full length papers based on the presentations will be published as two special volumes in high impact international journals.
This small grant was used for partial support of an international symposium entitled "Mechanics of Liquid and Solid Foams." It was run under the auspices of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and was co-sponsored by the US National Committee of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. It took place at the University of Texas at Austin during the period of May 8-13, 2011. It was attended by approximately 50 researchers from 15 different countries. The symposium brought together researchers from both the liquid and solid foams and their applications communities. It included chemical engineers, physicists, mathematicians, solid mechanicians and mechanical engineers. This breadth of disciplines and backgrounds provided a unique opportunity for cross-fertilization of ideas, techniques and approaches to the mechanics problems involved. The 36 lectures are available on the conference website. Detailed articles were also prepared by most participants and were published in the following international peer-reviewed forums. Sixteen articles dealing with "solid" foams and, more generally, cellular materials appeared in the International Journal of Solids and Structures with S. Kyriakides acting as Guest Editor (Volume 49, Issues 19-20, 2012). Six articles dealing with "liquid" foams appeared in the Journal of Rheology with A.M. Kraynik as Guest Editor (Volume 56, Issue 3, 2012).
