Glasses, polycrystalline metals, porous media and jammed granular materials – their statics and dynamical behaviors span a wide range of length and time scales and have challenged theorists and experimentalists alike.  This conference will bring together mechanical engineers, materials scientists, and physicists to better understand the complex mechanical behavior of such disordered solids.  We will investigate the extent to which similar concepts can be used to describe the connection between the micro- and macroscale features in these materials and capture their nonlinear and intermittent response to external driving.  Particular themes of the conference will include acoustics of granular materials, mechanical response of glass-forming materials, glass-formability in bulk metallic glasses, failure of brittle materials, damage spreading and localization in micro-cracked solids, plasticity, and dislocation dynamics in metals. The conference will also focus on the application of new concepts emerging from the study of collective and nonlinear behavior of amorphous solids to the design of engineered microstructures and metamaterials.

Major conference themes:

1. Deformation of amorphous and glassy materials
2. Mechanical properties of jammed granular media: soft modes, rigidity, and acoustics
3. Multi-scale modeling of fracture in disordered materials: intermittency, roughening, and effective toughness
4. Damage spreading and localization in micro-cracked materials
5. Crystal plasticity at the microscale: fluctuations, size effects, and polycrystalline plasticity
6. Martensites: hysteretic behavior, microstructure organization, and shape memory alloys

Poster Session: There will be a poster session during the conference reception at 5:45pm on Tuesday, October 21st. Everyone is invited to bring a poster. If you are interested in displaying a poster please submit an abstract using the web form.  The deadline for abstract submissions is September 22nd.