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Highly porous alumina-zirconia ceramics were produced by adding space-holder materials during freeze casting. To increase the strength of porous ceramics, different amounts of nanoadditives (silicon carbide-SiC, silica-SiO₂, and multi-wall carbon nanotubes-CNTs) were added. Space-holder materials were removed by preheating, and solid samples were produced by sintering. Up to 68% porosity was achieved when 40% space-holder was added to the solid load of slurry. Wall thicknesses between pores were more uniform and thinner when nanoadditives were added.

Advances in fabrication technologies are enabling the production of architected materials with unprecedented properties. Most such materials are characterized by a fixed geometry, but in the design of some materials it is possible to incorporate internal mechanisms capable of reconfiguring their spatial architecture, and in this way to enable tunable functionality.

A research group at Iowa State University (https://www.aere.iastate.edu/lmxiong/) is looking for research assistants in the field of solid mechanics, computational mechanics, computational materials science and engineering. Research topics will fall into a broad area of modeling and simulation of mechanical and transport behaviors, such as plasticity, fracture, phase transformation, thermal transport, or mass transport, in a variety of engineering materials.

The Mechanics Department at École Polytechnique invites applications for a faculty position at the Assistant Professor level in all areas of mechanics. See details in joint document.