Purusattam Ray - Böcker

In this book, the authors bring together basic ideas from fracture mechanics and statistical physics, classical theories, simulation and experimental results to make the statistical physics aspects of fracture more accessible. They explain fracture-like phenomena, highlighting the role of disorder and heterogeneity from a statistical physical viewpoint. The role of defects is discussed in brittle and ductile fracture, ductile to brittle transition, fracture dynamics, failure processes with tension as well as compression: experiments, failure of electrical networks, self-organized critical models of earthquake and their extensions to capture the physics of earthquake dynamics. The text also includes a discussion of dynamical transitions in fracture propagation in theory and experiments, as well as an outline of analytical results in fiber bundle model dynamicsWith its wide scope, in addition to the statistical physics community, the material here is equally accessible to engineers, earth scientists, mechanical engineers, and material scientists. It also serves as a textbook for graduate students and researchers in physics.

The present book is an outcome of the SERC school on Computational Statistical Physics held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, in December 2008.Numerical experimentation has played an extremely important role in statistical physics in recent years. Lectures given at the School covered a large number of topics of current and continuing interest.Based on lectures by active researchers in the field- Bikas Chakrabarti, S Chaplot, Deepak Dhar, Sanjay Kumar, Prabal Maiti, Sanjay Puri, Purusattam Ray, Sitangshu Santra and Subir Sarkar- the nine chapters comprising the book deal with topics that range from the fundamentals of the field, to problems and questions that are at the very forefront of current research.This book aims to expose the graduate student to the basic as well as advanced techniques in computational statistical physics. Following a general introduction to statistical mechanics and critical phenomena, the various chapters cover Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulation methodology, along with a variety of applications. These include the study of coarsening phenomena and diffusion in zeolites.In addition, graphical enumeration techniques are covered in detail with applications to percolation and polymer physics, and methods for optimisation are also discussed. Beginning graduate students and young researchers in the area of statistical physics will find the book useful. In addition, this will also be a valuable general reference for students and researchers in other areas of science and engineering.