MEAM Seminar: “Can Materials From the 1930’s Really Revolutionize Battery Manufacturing?”
Fluorinated polymers offer a plethora of unique and sometimes perplexing properties. One of the most interesting is the ability for specific types of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) to undergo room-temperature, sheer-induced, structural […]
Tedori-Callinan Distinguished Lecture: “Novel Passive and Active Approaches to Fluid Friction Reduction using Polymers & Plastrons”
When a superhydrophobic (SH) textured surface is immersed in water it traps a thin shiny layer of air within the texture that is known as a plastron. Contact line pinning […]
MEAM Seminar: “Engineering Mechanics of Architected Hard-Soft Composites: Experiment, Simulation, and Theory”
Enhancing the resistance of human-made brittle materials to fracture is challenging due to the limited microstructural toughening mechanisms. This seminar makes a case for engineering toughening mechanisms in brittle materials […]
MEAM Seminar: “Powering the Future Through Hydrogen Hubs and International Partnerships for Materials and Engineering System Solutions”
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots Initiative aims to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable and reliable clean energy solutions, to tackle the toughest remaining barriers to addressing the […]
MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Contacts with Dynamically Tunable Adhesion and Friction via Active Materials with Thermally Modulated Stiffness”
Contact interactions, including adhesion and friction, are critical to the design of many engineered systems. Currently, most systems rely on materials with static mechanical properties, requiring careful selection of materials […]
MEAM Seminar: “Propulsive Advantages of Coordinating Multiple Jets by Colonial Marine Organisms”
Salps and siphonophores are widespread marine animals that occur in centimeters to meters-long colonial chains and employ multiple, pulsed swimming jets. We use a combination of approaches including in situ […]
MEAM Seminar: “Natural Structural Materials: Lessons on Toughening Mechanisms, Weight Reduction, and Multifunctionality”
Structural materials that are damage-tolerant, lightweight, multifunctional, and sustainable are highly desirable for many engineering applications. Such combinations of properties are often found in the biological world. Organisms from nature […]
MEAM Ph.D. Thesis Defense: “Controlling Contact Transitions for Dynamic Robots”
Legged robots, robotic manipulators, and their combined embodiment as humanoid robots have received considerable attention across both academia and industry. However, with few notable exceptions, state-of-the-art demonstrations are significantly less […]
MEAM Seminar: “Controlling Adhesion and Friction of Soft Interfaces by Meso-Scale Structures”
Discoveries of unique adhesive and frictional properties in biological attachment systems have, over the past two decades, demonstrated how near-surface architecture at lengths between the molecular (a few nm) and […]
MEAM Seminar: “Elasticity of Fluids in Nanopores: Molecular Modeling and Ultrasonic Experiments”
Fluids confined in nanopores are ubiquitous in nature and technology. In recent years, the interest in confined fluids has grown, driven by research on unconventional hydrocarbon resources — shale gas […]