Zhigang Suo's blog

I have just volunteered to teach engineering thermodynamics to undergraduates in the Fall semester of 2011.  The students will be from all fields of engineering, primarily mechanical engineering, environmental engineering, and bioengineering.  I have never taught this course before, and would love to hear from you about your experience, either as a student or as a teacher. 

Here is what I have found from the website about the course.

Engineering Science 181 Engineering Thermodynamics

The latest issue of the WW-EAP Newsletter is now available.  I’m pleased that the issue includes my submission on a recently completed review on the Theory of Dielectric Elastomers.  As usual, the Newsletter contains lots of extremely valuable information, such as new books in the field, and new products.

In 2008 I wrote about ResearcherID, a service provided by the publisher of the Web of Science.  The service is now used by many mechanicians.  Here are several examples:

In response to a stimulus, a soft material deforms, and the deformation provides a function. We call such a material a soft active material (SAM). This review focuses on one class of soft active materials: dielectric elastomers. Subject to a voltage, a membrane of a dielectric elastomer reduces thickness and expands area, possibly straining over 100%. The phenomenon is being developed as transducers for broad applications, including soft robots, adaptive optics, Braille displays, and electric generators.

The "Bird Nest Plan" Research Center aiming at recruiting and nurturing young future leaders in emerging interdisciplinary science and technology has recently been launched at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST).

This report will appear in the 2010 Newsletter of the Applied Mechanics Division, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

At the invitation of Yonggang Huang, I’ll give 4-hour lectures at the NSF Summer Institute Course on the Mechanics of Soft Materials.   I attach the slides of the lectures, to be given on Monday, 10 May 2010.  An abstract of the lectures follows.

Professor Wolfgang Knauss, of the California Institute of Technology, is selected to receive the 2010 Timoshenko Medal.