2006 Invited Seminar at the Institute for Shock Physics

These are the slides from the presentation that I gave as an invited speaker at the Institute for Shock Physics in 2006 (my first visit there). The purpose of my visit and seminar was to demonstrate that the methodology and approach that we were taking was a credible approach towards an atomistic strength model, which I will refer to as the "holy grail."

This presentation went for over 90 minutes, though it was only scheduled for 60 (45 + 15 Q/A) minutes. It was fun and very satisfying, having to go through the very robust back and forth debate and argumentation over the technical details and methodologies. We succeeded in establishing a very important (and hard to come by) collaboration with the Institute for Shock Physics. The work resulting from this collaboration is shown in later presentations.

The idea of this work was to connect atomistic data with "reality," which is a continuum world. The language and formalism of continuum mechanics which are the tools for analysis of experimental data must also apply to anything coming out of the discrete atomistic simulations. At the time, it was not known whether there was a bridge that could span these two regimes.

Only recently, after the collaboration with WSU, and with some ongoing work at Sandia National Laboratory, has this pathway become apparently possible.