Alain Curnier

Biography

Born in 1948, Alain CURNIER held an Engineer Diploma in Mechanics of the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) at Lyon in 1972 and a Philosophy Doctorate in 1978 in Mechanics of Structures of the University of California at Berkeley.

He started his career as a Research Engineer at Engineering System International in Paris, from 1978 till 1981, working on several projects in Structural dynamics and Mechanics of materials. He joined the Laboratory of applied mechanics at EPFL in 1981 where he successively became Lecturer in 1985, Scientific advisor in 1987 and Adjunct Professor in 1998. He retired in 2013 and was nominated Honorary Professor.

His teaching and research activity concerned three fields: Mechanics of solids and rheology of materials, Mechanics of contacts and nonsmooth tribology and finally Biomechanics and biorheology of tissues. His scientific method follows the classical trilogy: experimental observation, theoretical modelling and numerical solution. In particular, he conceived several original constitutive laws in nonlinear elasticity, viscoelasticity and elastoplasticity for anisotropic composite materials and living tissues at large strains, as well as several tribological laws for unilateral contact, lubrication, friction and adhesion. He developed a Solid and contact mechanical analysis software called TACT.

A. Curnier was invited professor in several universities or institutions throughout Europe.

He is the author of fifty publications including a first book on Computational methods in solid mechanics (Méthodes numériques en mécanique des solides) published by PPUR (1993-2000), translated in English and published by Kluwer (1994), a second book entitled Mechanics of deformable solids, vol 1 Kinematics, dynamics, energetics (Mécanique des solides déformables, vol 1 Cinématique, dynamique, énergétique) published by PPUR (2005), vol 2 Elasticity, viscosity, plasticity (Elasticité, viscosité, plasticité) (to appear) and two book chapters on Contact mechanics published by Springer (1999 et 2000).

Official source

https://people.epfl.ch/alain.curnier

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Motivated by applications in orthopaedic and maxillo-facial surgery, the mechanical behaviour of cortical bone in cyclic overloads at physiological strain rates is investigated. To this end, a new one-dimensional rate-independent constitutive model for compact bone is proposed to simulate the damage accumulation occurring during tensile or compressive overloading. We adopted a macroscopic and phenomenological description of the mechanics of cortical bone. The mathematical formulation of the model is established within the framework of generalized standard materials and is based on the definition of three internal state variables: a tensile and a compressive damage variable that represent the microcrack density and a residual strain variable that represents the permanent strain associated with the sliding behaviour of these microcracks. Distinct damage threshold stresses are used in tension and compression. As the macroscopic mechanical behaviour of bovine cortical bone is very similar to that of human cortical bone and of much easier access, we first achieved the validation and identification of the material constants of the constitutive laws in tension using new uniaxial experimental results of bovine compact bone of our own. With adequate original hardening rules, the constitutive model is able to reproduce the main features of cortical bone behaviour under arbitrary cyclic tensile and compressive loadings. The proposed algorithm applies for the first time three distinct projections based on the relationship between the three internal variables and criteria. The predicted stress-strain curves exhibit a damaged reloading which is collinear with the origin as many cyclic overloading experiments on cortical bone have shown. Note that as our model was identified for physiological strain rates, it hardly can be applied in high strain rate situations like the ones involved in impact studies.

2010

Experimentation on adhesion of epoxy

Alain Curnier, Aleksandar Sekulic

In a recent article (Sekulic and Curnier (2007) [1]), an original axisymmetric epoxy-stamp on glass-disc specimen, which exhibits stable debonding, was presented for identifying the adhesive properties between epoxy and glass, namely interface debonding energy omega, adhesion peak stress pi(n) and debonding rupture gap gamma(n).

2010

A three-dimensional elastic plastic damage constitutive law for bone tissue

Alain Curnier, David Garcia

Motivated by mechanical analysis of bones and bone-implant systems, a 3D constitutive law describing the macroscopic mechanical behaviour of both cortical and trabecular bone in cyclic (not fatigue) overloads is developed. The proposed model which mathematical formulation is established within the framework of generalized standard materials accounts for three distinct material evolution modes where elastic, plastic and damage aspects are closely related. The anisotropic elasticity of bone is described by a morphology-based model and distinct damage behaviour in tension and compression by a halfspacewise generalized Hill criterion. The plastic criterion is based on the intact elastic compliance tensor. The algorithm applies three distinct projections based on the relationship between the internal variables and criteria. Their respective consistent tangent operators are presented. Numerical resolutions of several boundary value problems and a biomechanical application are presented to illustrate the potential of the constitutive model and demonstrate the expected quadratic convergence of the algorithm.

Springer Verlag2009