Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Jointed Structures.

The Third International Workshop on Jointed Structures was held from August 16th to 17th, 2012, in Chicago Illinois, following the ASME 2012 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference. Thirty two researchers from both the United States and international locations convened to discuss the recent progress of mechanical joints related research and associated efforts in addition to developing a roadmap for the challenges to be addressed over the next five to ten years. These proceedings from the workshop include the minutes of the discussions and follow up from the 2009 workshop [1], presentations, and outcomes of the workshop. Specifically, twelve challenges were formulated from the discussions at the workshop, which focus on developing a better understanding of uncertainty and variability in jointed structures, incorporating high fidelity models of joints in simulations that are tractable/efficient, motivating a new generation of researchers and funding agents as to the importance of joint mechanics research, and developing new insights into the physical phenomena that give rise to energy dissipation in jointed structures. The ultimate goal of these research efforts is to develop a predictive model of joint mechanics.