folding

Surface instability of compliant film/substrate bilayers has raised considerable interests due to its broad applications such as wrinkle-driven surface renewal and antifouling, shape-morphing for camouflaging skins, and micro/nano-scale surface patterning control. However, it is still a challenge to precisely predict and continuously trace secondary bifurcation transitions in the nonlinear post-buckling region. Here, we develop lattice models to precisely capture the nonlinear morphology evolution with multiple mode transitions that occur in the film/substrate systems.

You can find more details here
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AWI331/phd-studentship-modelling-and-simulatio...

EML Special Issue on 3D Assembly by Cutting, Bending and Folding

When patterned with different materials, gradients or cut-outs, thin structures such as sheets and rods can bend or fold either spontaneously or by actuation in response to a force or stimulus to form a pre-designed three dimensional structure. This special issue addresses the design and mechanics of these structures with a special emphasis on programmability and non-linearity.  

Manuscript Submission:

A post-doctoral position is available in the lab of Sachin Velankar at the University of Pittsburgh to conduct experimental research on buckling of soft tissues in cephalopods (octopus or cuttlefish).

We found that randomly folded thin sheets exhibit unconventional scale invariance, which we termed as an intrinsically anomalous self-similarity, because the self-similarity of the folded configurations and of the set of folded sheets are characterized by different fractal dimensions. Besides, we found that self-avoidance does not affect the scaling properties of folded patterns, because the self-intersections of sheets with finite bending rigidity are restricted by the finite size of crumpling creases, rather than by the condition of self-avoidance.