Existing and emerging methods in computational mechanics are rarely validated against problems with an unknown outcome. For this reason, Sandia National Laboratories, in partnership with US National Science Foundation and Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division, launched a computational challenge in mid-summer, 2012. Researchers and engineers were invited to predict crack initiation and propagation in a simple but novel geometry fabricated from a common off-the-shelf commercial engineering alloy. The goal of this international Sandia Fracture Challenge was to benchmark the capabilities for the prediction of deformation and damage evolution associated with ductile tearing in structural metals, including physics models, computational methods, and numerical implementations currently available in the computational fracture community. Thirteen teams participated, reporting blind predictions for the outcome of the Challenge. The simulations and experiments were performed independently and kept confidential. The methElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10704-013-9904-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA e-mail: blboyce@sandia.gov ods for fracture prediction taken by the thirteen teams ranged from very simple engineering calculations to complicated multiscale simulations. The wide variation in modeling results showed a striking lack of consistency across research groups in addressing problems of ductile fracture. While some methods were more successful than others, it is clear that the problem of ductile fracture prediction continues to be challenging. Specific areas of deficiency have been identified through this effort. Also, the effort has underscored the need for additional blind prediction-based assessments.

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The material point method (MPM) enhanced with B-spline basis functions, referred to as B-spline MPM (BSMPM), is developed and demonstrated using representative quasi-static and dynamic example problems. Smooth B-spline basis functions could significantly reduce the cell-crossing error as known for the original MPM. A Gauss quadrature scheme is designed and shown to be able to diminish the quadrature error in the BSMPM analysis of largedeformation problems for the improved accuracy and convergence, especially with the quadratic B-splines. Moreover, the increase in the order of the B-spline basis function is also found to be an effective way to reduce the quadrature error and to improve accuracy and convergence. For plate impact examples, it is demonstrated that the BSMPM outperforms the generalized interpolation material point (GIMP) and convected particle domain interpolation (CPDI) methods in term of the accuracy of representing stress waves. Thus, the BSMPM could become a promising alternative to the MPM, GIMP, and CPDI in solving certain types of transient problems. KEYWORDS B-spline basis functions, Gauss quadrature, large deformation, material point method, mesh refinement, transient problems

Ultrafast nonthermal ablation of gold nanofilms is studied using a combined two-temperature model and molecular dynamics method. The results show that for thinner films the tensile stress is directly reversed from the initially generated compressive stress. For thicker films, on the other hand, the tensile stress wave is reflected from the irradiated surface. The key driving force for ultrafast nonthermal material ablation is conventional thermal stress, instead of the hot electron blast force.