linst06's blog

My group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University has funded Ph.D. positions starting in Spring/Fall 2023. Domestic applicants with no need to attain visas can also be considered in Fall 2022.

Call article collections on Extreme Mechanics of Soft Active Materials for Soft Robotics

Dear Colleagues,

In collaboration with the Journal “Frontiers in Robotics and AI”, we are bringing together a selected group of international experts to contribute to an open-access article collection on: “Extreme Mechanics of Soft Active Materials for Soft Robotics”

Fatigue-resistant hydrogels: Principles, Experiments, and Applications

Shaoting Lin, Xuanhe Zhao

1.     Introduction

This is our recent work on the design of fatigue-resistant hydrogel adhesion. In this work, we show that fatigue-resistant hydrogel adhesion can be achieved by anchoring ordered nanocrystalline domains at the interface. This method is applicable to glass, ceramic, titanium, aluminum, stainless steel, and even elastomers including PU and PDMS. We also demonstrate its potential applications as endurant hydrogel coatings for versatile engineering materials with complex geometries.

In our recent work, We propose a strategy of mechanical training to achieve the aligned nanofibrillar architectures of skeletal muscles in synthetic hydrogels, resulting in the combinational muscle-like properties for the first time.

Summary (Lin et al., Sci. Adv. 2019; 5: eaau8528) : Designing nano-crystalline domains gives extremely anti-fatigue-fracture hydrogels for artificial cartilages and soft robots. 

Under tension, confined elastic layers can exhibit various modes of mechanical instabilities, including cavitation, fingering and fringe instabilities. While the cavitation has been extensively studied, the fingering and fringe instabilities have not been well understood, and the relations and interactions of these instabilities have not been explored yet. In this paper, we systematically study the formation, transition, interaction and co-existence of mechanical instabilities in confined elastic layers under tension.

Soft elastic layers with top and bottom surfaces adhered to rigid bodies are abundant in biological organisms and engineering applications. As the rigid bodies are pulled apart, the stressed layer can exhibit various modes of mechanical instabilities. In cases where the layer’s thickness is much smaller than its length and width, the dominant modes that have been studied are the cavitation, interfacial and fingering instabilities.

Sungmin Hong, Dalton Sycks, Hon Fai Chan, Shaoting Lin, Gabriel P. Lopez, Farshid Guilak, Kam W. Leong, Xuanhe Zhao, Advanced Materials, 27, 4035-4040, 2015. 

Shaoting Lin, Changyong Cao, Qiming Wang, Mark Gonzalez, John E. Dolbow, Xuanhe Zhao