About

Maria Comninou is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. Her academic background includes a Diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens obtained in 1970, a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1973, and a J.D. from the University of Michigan in 1997. Her research interests encompass elasticity, elastodynamics, fracture mechanics, dislocations, and fatigue. She has made significant contributions to the theoretical and applied mechanics fields, focusing on the behavior of materials and structural integrity under various conditions. Her extensive experience and scholarly work have established her as a distinguished figure in her area of expertise.

Research topics

• Psychoanalysis
• Psychology

Selected publications

• 5 Speech, Pornography, and Hunting

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Psychoanalysis
  PublisherDOI

• The Penny-Shaped Interface Crack With Heat Flow

  2009-01-01 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The penny-shaped crack with heat flux is investigated for the case in which the heat flux is into the material with the lower distortivity. A harmonic potential function representation is used to reduce the problem to a boundary value problem which is solved by an integral equation method. If a sufficiently high tensile traction is applied, a solution is obtained involving a central circle of separation and surrounding annuli of and perfect thermal contact. For lower tractions, or higher heat fluxes, the crack closes completely and a closed-form solution is obtained in which the division of the crack face into and perfect regions is unaffected by further changes in heat flux or traction. Multiple solutions are obtained in an intermediate range. Introductions In a previous paper [1], a solution was given for the thermal stress field due to the obstruction of a uniform heat flux by a penny-shaped crack at the interface between two dissimilar half spaces. The half spaces were simultaneously subjected to tractions tending to open the crack. The treatment was restricted to the case where the heat flows into the material of higher distortivity, for which an annular region is developed at the crack tip surrounding a circular region of separation. The extent of the region depends on the relative magnitude of mechanical and thermal effects and the behavior is qualitatively affected by the sign of the product 07 where j3 is a Dundurs constant and 7 is a constant describing the mismatch of distortivities. In this paper, we will consider the same system for the opposite direction of heat flow. The difficulties that arise when heat flows across a unilateral interface into the material of lower distortivity have been extensively discussed in previous publications [2-5]. Briefly, under certain conditions, all steady-state solutions with the conventional boundary conditions violate the unilateral inequalities (contact tractions nontensile and no interpenetration). The difficulty can be avoided by making the physically more realistic assumption of a pressure or gap-dependent interface thermal resistance and a limiting case of this is the state of imperfect thermal contact defined in [4]. The boundary conditions involving have been used to sovle a number of

  Publisher

• Speech, Pornography, and Hunting

  1995-11-14

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Speech, Pornography, and Hunting

  1995-01-01 · 5 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Spring Trials

  Between the Species An Online Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals · 1992-10-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A mild winter was followed by an unseasonable cold spell, and spring was late in coming in this northern part of the midwest.Underneath a layer of mushy clay the ground was still frozen hard.Seeing it like this, it was difficult to imagine that any life could eventually spring out of it.It was already April when crocuses started to come up reticently, only to be cropped back to the ground by rabbits having their early breakfast.Herds ofdeer, sometimes as many as seventeen, could be seen among the tall, still naked, oak trees, searching for the first new leaves.They refrained from eating the daffodils, but showed a hearty partiality for the bright red tulips.Effortlessly, they leaped over the fence, designed to keep our dogs in, and grazed a few yards from the house, right in front of the bay windows.Our smallest and noisiest dog gave the alann with a deep growl, and a Pandemonium of barking, howling and crying followed from window to window to door.The days lengthened and brightened, and our walks in the woods were transformed with the fragrance of new vegetation and the sights of tiny, pink and white, nameless wild flowers, almost as plentiful as the blades of grass.Occasionally a flash of white would mark the trajectory ofa cottontail fleeing dogs and humans alike.The exuberance of new life and beauty was somewhat tempered by the appearance of a myriad of sticky white tents, occupying the branching points of the wild cherry trees.Tiny caterpillars, growing a little every day, could be seen wiggling under the thick, semitransparent substance of the tent.This year, for humane and ecological reasons, I had persuaded my husband not to spray them.In the beginning, he was glad to be rid of a time-consuming and unpleasant job.However, as the caterpillars grew and started eating every single wild-cherry leaf, leaving behind a trail of their sticky shrouds, he started having second thoughts."They are killing the trees," he said."In my book cherry trees are higher up the ladder than tent caterpillars."Interminable arguments would follow, in which each side tried to weigh the effects of poisoning the environment or killing with ecological but equally inhumane means versus doing nothing.In the end my husband admitted that these trees would die anyway under the shadow of the oaks, and that his real reasons were purely aesthetic.The caterpillars were now fully grown and were clinging in grape-like fashion one on top of the other in a writhing, black mass.Although each one had a dark green hue and a delicate, hairy body, the overall effect was somewhat gross.There were so many, you could hear the continuous hum made by the sound of their droppings falling on last year's oak leaves.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Stress concentration due to an array or hemispherical cavities at the surface of an elastic half-space

  Journal of Elasticity · 1992-07-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Origin of Hysteresis Observed During Fatigue of Ceramic‐Matrix Composites

  Journal of the American Ceramic Society · 1990-07-01 · 104 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Possible mechanisms for the hysteresis in stress‐strain response observed during fatigue of fiber‐reinforced ceramics are examined analytically. In the model developed, the microstructure of a unidirectional composite is divided into adjacent cells, each containing a single fiber. The compliance of each cell is modeled by a series of springs, with frictional sliding of fibers represented by sliding blocks. Fatigue damage is modeled by allowing fibers to debond and fracture on a random cycle‐by‐cycle basis. The magnitude of the interfacial shear between the fibers and matrix is shown to play a significant role in determining the extent of hysteresis observed during fatigue loading of unidirectional composites. Practical considerations, such as the influence of fiber volume fraction on macroscopic fatigue behavior, are also discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An overview of interface cracks

  Engineering Fracture Mechanics · 1990-01-01 · 139 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The equivalent elastic compliances of an elastic solid with interface cracks

  International Journal of Mechanical Sciences · 1990-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• To Rectify an Amoral Design

  Between the Species An Online Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals · 1989-07-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The OriJPnal

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• J. Dundurs

  Northwestern University

  48 shared

• J. R. Barber

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  17 shared

• David Schmueser

  Clemson University

  7 shared

• J. D. Achenbach

  4 shared

• Xiaoping Lu

  Henan Polytechnic University

  3 shared

• Fu‐Kuo Chang

  Stanford University

  3 shared

• Eugene L. Chez

  Northwestern University

  3 shared

• John W. Holmes

  Australian National University

  2 shared