Blog posts

We have several Ph.D. positions available in our group (https://sites.usc.edu/zhaogroup/) in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at University of Southern California for Fall 2022. We are an interdesciplinary group with broad interests in experimental mechanics, advanced materials, and manufacturing. Our focus areas include 3D soft electronics, engineered surfaces/interfaces, and active/smart materials. Candidates interested in these areas are encouraged to submit applications to our Ph.D.

Journal Tittle: Acta Mechanica Sinica

Article Tittle: Soft substrate and decreased cytoskeleton contractility promote coupling and morphology maintenance of pluripotent stem cells

Authors: Meihonh Sun, Jialing Cao, Yuanyuan Zhai, Peng Zhao, Jie Yao, Yan Gong, Jing Du, Yubo Fan

Research Background

Simple exact solutions are known for the indentation problem of a viscoelastic halfspace by a rigid sphere only as long as the contact area is growing. We consider instead a more general cyclic repeated indentation with a pulsating load with a period of zero load. We show that a combination of exact with empirical relaxation solutions coming from simple uniaxial cases is sufficiently accurate to estimate the energy dissipated per cycle, which we report for the standard ”3-elements” solid and periodic half-sine loading for various parameters.

Dear Colleagues,

with this message, I would like to advertise 2 post-doctoral research positions at the intersection of electrochemistry and mechanics of materials in my lab at Northwestern University. The two post-doctoral projects will specifically focus on the influence of electrodepositions on the structure, properties, and behavior of soils (project 1) and concrete (project 2).

The Journal of Engineering Mechanics launches the third installment of special collections on high profile topics in Engineering Mechanics. Guest-edited by Chloe Arson (Georgia Tech), Tal Cohen (MIT) and Nima Rahbar (WPI) it is dedicated to papers dealing with Mechanics of Self-Healing Materials and Structures. Manuscripts are invited and accepted until July 31, 2022. Read more in the attached PDF file.