Journal Club for March 2021: Kirigami metamaterials as a robotic matter

Ahmad Rafsanjani, Center for Soft Robotics, SDU Biorobotics, University of Southern Denmark

A new Ph.D. position is available for Fall 2021 in the Department of Mechanical
Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The research will involve
computational modeling of complex fluids and soft matters with particular emphasis
on particle-laden multiphase flows.

Preferred Qualifications:

Dear colleagues,

We would like to draw your attention to the 2nd International Workshop on Plasticity, Damage and Fracture of Engineering Materials, which will take place online organized from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey on 18-20 August 2021. 

Dear fellow iMechanicians,

Here is our recent paper published in EML on novel anti-icing materials based on propylene-glycol (PG) gels. This work was performed in collaboration with Xi Yao, Baohong Chen and myself while working in Zhigang Suo's lab at Harvard, and provides new solutions for anti-icing purposes (i.e. throug blankets design) without large and costly release of PG in the environment.

Anti-icing propylene glycol materials

Xi Yao, Baohong Chen, Xavier P. Morelle and Zhigang Suo*

Two postdoctoral positions are available in Israel for one year, with the possibility of renewal for up to three years. The projects will be conducted in AU and BGU, under close collaboration, and will be jointly mentored by Dr. Pavel Trapper (BGU) and Dr. Avshalom Ganz (AU).

Research:

 Research topics include:

On the mechanics of mother of pearl: A key feature in the material hierarchical structure, Barthelat, Tang, Zavattieri, Li, Espinosa, JMPS, 2007

Novelty/impact/significance:

The upside-down water collection system of Syntrichia caninervis, Pan, Pitt, Zhang, Wu, Tao and Truscott, Nature Plants, 2016

Novelty/impact/significance:

It is unveiled that the Syntrichia caninervis (S. caninervis), a most abundant desert moss, collects and transports water by coupling relevant nano- and microscale physical structures with multiscale sources of water (nanoscale nucleation, microscale fog droplet, larger droplets on awn).

Crack engineering for the construction of arbitrary hierarchical architectures, Li, Yu, etc., Wang, Ren, PNAS, 2019

Novelty/impact/significance:

A conventionally detrimental phenomenon, cracking (leads to material failure), is used as a beneficial aspect to develop a powerful replication technique (two curing stages for the elastomer mold) to construct bioinspired complex hierarchical structures for interesting functions and properties, ingenious and effective.

Prof. Vijay Chalivendra is looking for a student who is interested to pursue doctoral studies in his research lab at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, starting fall 2021. The applicant should have either completed Master's degree or is planning to graduate in May 2021 with Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering. The preference will be given for a student who has research experience in experimental solid mechanics and published one or two peer-reviewed journal articles.

Dear colleagues,

We would like to draw your attention to the 2nd International Workshop on Plasticity, Damage and Fracture of Engineering Materials, which will take place online organized from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey on 18-20 August 2021.