Prof. David M Parks

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Primary DLC

Department of Mechanical Engineering

MIT Room: 1-308

Areas of Interest and Expertise

Numerical Methods in Mechanical Behavior of Materials
Micromechanics of Deformation and Fracture
Plasticity
Fracture Mechanics
Mechanical Behavior of Materials
Fibers and Polymers

Research Summary

Mechanical behavior of engineering materials forms a central theme of research interest. Material-specific mechanisms of deformation and failure motivate the development of novel continuum constitutive models that are incorporated within finite-element codes to explore initial boundary-value problems of interest at both macroscopic and microstructural scales. Recent topics of particular interest include ductile failure of high- strength steels under low stress triaxiality, mechanics of hardness in ultrahard ceramic coatings, strain-induced crystallization and melting in natural rubber, and effects of lattice strain on low-temperature phonon-mediated superconductivity.

Recent Work