Sunday, January 23, 2011

email alerts!

Some years ago I set up a website and a Blog to 'publicize' and share info about strength activities in glasses.  While there is generally some traffic on the web site, there is little on the Blog.  I have just posted a 'New Year's Greeting' and hope to see some activity result from that.
What I would like to do is to suggest that you each add 'Google reader' to you computers.  This will allow email alerts when a new post appears on the Blog.
I will be sending you each a separate email to tell about this.

Chuck

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Chuck Kurkjian said...

Happy Holidays, etc.

For me 2010 has been a relatively productive year. In addition to general research initiatives and collaborations relating to strength, indentation behavior and stresses in glasses, activities with GMIC have been productive.

The 'UGSC' is in the process of setting up! This is the 'Usable Glass Strength Consortium'. For more information about this, please go to: gmic.org and more specifically to: http://www.gmic.org/Strength%20In%20Glass.html.
I would encourage all of you to become involved with this. Although it was started by the GMIC in the U.S, it is clearly meant to be an international effort. Have a look and see what part you can play!!!

In research terms, the setting up of the Abrio stress birefringence instrument with Prof. Satoshi Yoshida (in Shiga, Japan) and his student Sohtaro Iwata has been a landmark. Already very important results on ball indentations have been obtained. It is hoped that these studies will be extended to include the effects of coatings and surface stresses and surface condition on ball indentation stresses.

The more general activities of the year are indicated on my web site: glass-fracture.org.

Additional collaborations with Prof.S. Chandrasekar and Dr. Narayan Sundaram at Purdue University related to contact stress calculations as well as other experimental studies related to surface damage have been initiated this year and are being actively pursued.

I encourage all of you to take an active part in the building of this blog into a useful 'information exchange' medium.

Happy New Year.

Chuck