Hai Dong's blog

The Cardiovascular Tissue Mechanics Lab at Emory University has an immediate opening for a postdoc fellow position. Candidates who have a background in solid mechanics including (but not limited to) cardiovascular biomechanics, soft tissue biomechanics, and/or nonlinear solid mechanics are highly encouraged to apply. The position could have a second affiliate appointment at Georgia Tech.

For application, please send your CV to Dr. Hai Dong at hai.dong@emory.edu with the email subject “Postdoc Application”.

Constitutive models are of fundamental importance to many biomedical problems such as the rupture prediction of aortic aneurysms. Existing structure-based constitutive models such as the widely used Gasser–Ogden–Holzapfel (GOH) model usually need to specify the number of fiber family which may be difficult to identify for many kinds of tissues. In this study, we developed a novel hyperelastic model for biological tissues by considering a fiber distribution as a whole distribution which does not need the information of the number of fiber family.

Biologically-derived and chemically-treated collagenous tissues such as glutaraldehyde-treated bovine pericardium (GLBP) are widely used in many medical applications. The long-term cyclic loading-induced tissue fatigue damage has been identified as one of the primary factors limiting the durability of such medical devices and an in-depth understanding of the fatigue behaviors of biological tissues is critical to increase device durability.

Ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibers have a complex hierarchical structure that at the micron-scale is composed of oriented chain crystals, lamellar crystals, and amorphous domains organized into macrofibrils. We developed a computational micromechanical modeling study of the effects of the morphological structure and constituent material properties on the deformation mechanisms, stiffness and strength of the UHMWPE macrofibrils.