So it is again this time of year where you make a few pledges that you soon forget about. I am no exception to this rule, and formed three New Year Resolutions to date.
New Year Resolution #1: make more of my work public
This blog is of course a very nice medium to publicize some of my work. It has lately been, erhhh, dormant… to say the least! That does not mean that I've been idle, but I am currently working on larger projects, that are more akin to open books. There are three of them.
The first open book I am working on is An introduction to Lippmann–Schwinger solvers, that discusses the so-called “FFT-based numerical solvers for homogenization” first introduced by Moulinec and Suquet (1994, 1998). I started to write these notes in September 2021 as a LaTeX document. They are meant to deliver the theoretical background that using my own implementation of these solvers requires (see Scapin.jl – still work in progress!).
In march 2022, my colleagues Matti Schneider, François Willot and I organized a week-long workshop on this topic: Introduction to FFT-based numerical methods for the homogenization of random materials. The slides and videos are available on HAL. I was quite happy with some pedagogical choices I made for this workshop and will start from this notes to update my open book.
I am working very actively on the second open book, Notes on the Lyapunov–Schmidt–Koiter asymptotic method. I have always been intrigued by Koiter's work but never took the time to dig into it. In october 2021, as a side project, I decided I would regularly devote some time to deeply understanding this framework. This turned out to be an extremely enjoyable journey, but also a painful one at times. More than one year later, I have started to develop my own understanding of the LSK framework. Although there are some points that are still unclear to me, I thought I would share these notes.
Finally, I started work on my Lecture notes on the plates and shells theory in august 2017. I have since been working on it actively, although not publicly. This is a very demanding work (1750h so far!) and you will have to be patient, as I will release no preview until I am happy with the whole thing.
Note that since the beginning of this year, I have started to use a great publishing tool called Quarto. It's really well thought, powerful and easy to use. I intend to convert all my open books to the Quarto format.
New Year Resolution #2: publish in overlay journals…
…at least when students (or other collaborators that might be negatively affected by such a choice) are not involved.
The Journal of Theoretical, Computational and Applied Mechanics is a rather new overlay journal (first papers published in 2021). The whole thing is very nicely done: the review process is public, the template is good-looking, and the “JTCAM LaTeX template for preprints” and related “Instructions for Paper Submission” are a model of useful information very nicely put together.
With my colleagues Kaïs Ammar and Samuel Forest, we intend to soon submit a paper to this journal. I can't wait!
New Year Resolution #3: revive this blog!
This one will be difficult to keep. In fact, I was recently contacted by Antonio Rodriguez-Ferran (UPC-BarcelonaTech), who kindly sent these words
I found your blog in a google search for “bulk modulus in two dimensions”. Your three-part post on “Elastic constants of an isotropic material” was extremely helpful: it contains the level of detail I was looking for, and it is remarkably clear. Thanks a lot for making this nice material available to the community!
Antonio also mentioned a couple of typos, which I am grateful for!
Anyway, I took this message as an encouragement to write more. I was actually quite happy with my last (unfinished) series on “What is Homogenization?” and should probably pick it up where I left it a year and a half ago.
Note that I would also like to change this blog into a proper website, were my various series would be gathered into proper pages (rather than span multiple posts). That would probably make them easier to discover. The blog section would be devoted to more informal news (like this post).
Revamping this blog however represents a decent amount of work and I am not sure I can really find the time for that. Also, I would be reluctant to break previously existing links to my posts, since some of them are apparently already indexed by Google (with no permalink, unfortunately). If I decide to take on this challenge, I will of course use this great Quarto tool I already mentioned.
Closing words
Jacques Chirac once said “les promesses n'engagent que ceux qui les reçoivent”… I am sure that even if you do not speak french, you get the spirit!