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The aim of the international Summer School on «MEchanics and Physics of STrechable Objects (MEPHiSTO)» is to provide PhD students and researchers with a new wider point of view in research by a series of lectures
given by the best international specialists in the emerging domains at the interface between mechanics and physics: material failure, non-linear mechanics and instabilities, complex and network multi-scale materials.

Together with the recent development of enhanced experimental techniques, with the large strain rheology, with the extreme advances in simulations at both atomistic and continuum lengthscales, the modeling of the properties of soft complex materials by methods of physical mechanics has lead to huge advances in the understanding of the relationship between their microstructures and their complex mechanical properties, as well as in the development of new materials with improved mechanical properties and functionalities, such as tough hydrogels, artificial tissues, soft robots, artificial muscles or transparent ionically conducting materials, metamaterials.

The International Summer School on «MEchanics and Physics of STrechable Objects (MEPHISTO) » aims at the formation of students and researchers with a double culture in physics and mechanics, which are needed in these emerging interdisciplinary fields. An engineer with training in formal mechanics, physico-chemistry of materials and the ability to approach complex problems through a simple formalism may then focus on the key points and
propose innovative solutions.


Main topics

  • Continuum mechanics
  • Statistical physics for disordered materials
  • Numerical methods
  • Experimental methods
  • Fracture and damage mechanics
  • Adhesion and friction
  • Extreme mechanics
  • Slender media and origami
  • Metamaterials
  • Architectured and actuated materials
  • Glasses and non-equilibrium behavior
  • Polymers
  • Applications.


Steering committee

Organizing committe