The proposal seeks financial support for the technical symposium "Coupled non-linear phenomena: Modeling and simulation for smart, ferroic and multiferroic materials" to be held at the MRS Spring Meeting 2005 in San Francisco.
The symposium addresses the field of multi-ferroic materials like, e.g., ferroelectrics, ferromagnetics, magnetostrictive materials, shape memory alloys, ferromagnetic shape memory alloys, which are increasingly being used as active materials actuators and sensors in structural systems across many scales from micro level (MEMS) to macro level (smart aero space and civil systems). The symposium has a strongly interdisciplinary focus, combining current modeling efforts with recent experimental results and applications, and is expected to cross-fertilize research activities in all three fields.
The organizers have strived to bring together well-known international experts in the field and the intent is to give an overview the current state-of-the-art of this important multi-disciplinary field. It is our vision to establish this symposium as a regular part of the MRS meeting, and we made an effort to attract high-quality researchers to help the symposium to a good start. Funds are intended to provide partial support for the invited speakers as well as for graduate students.
In terms of broader impact, papers from the symposium will be published as part of the MRS proceedings of this conference after a peer review process. Additionally, the best papers will be published as a special issue of the Springer journal Continuum Mechanics
