buckling

Two post-doctoral positions are available in the lab of Sachin Velankar in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh to conduct experimental research on the biomechanics of surface texturing in cephalopods (octopus or cuttlefish), and to devise reversibly-morphing surfaces.  These animals are famous for their camouflage abilities.  Like many other animals, cephalopods can change their color, but in addition, they can also change the texture of their skin by expressing protuberances or wrinkles.

A post-doctoral position is available in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at the
University of Pittsburgh to conduct experimental research on developing
"morphing surfaces" that change topology by developing features such
as bumps, folds, spikes, etc. The post-doctoral fellow will develop (1)
surfaces that undergo a change in topology in response to applied stimuli, (2)
methods to control the shape and location of the morphing features on the
surface, and (3) quantitative or heuristic models to guide the design of
texture-changing surfaces.

F.Xu, W. Lu and Y. Zhu, ACS Nano, 2011, 5 (1), pp 672–678.

An interview by ACS Nano (Episode 42: January 2011),

http://pubs.acs.org/page/ancac3/audio/index.html

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 are looking for suitable candidates for a PhD research work in Computational Mechanics and numerical simulation, to be carried out at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, Portugal, in one of the following areas:

- development of new finite elements for metal forming applications;

- numerical simulation of metal forming (sheet and bulk forming);

- tubular hydroforming numerical simulation;

- structural stability and buckling analysis of reinforced aircraft panels;

Buckling of thin layers or aligned arrays of stiff materials on elastomeric substrates has many important applications, such as stretchable electronics, precision metrology and flexible optoelectronics.  These systems show one common phenomenon, the stiff thin layers buckle normal to the substrate surface (out-of-surface buckling).  By contrast, we recently reported for the first time that silicon nanowires (SiNWs) on elastomeric substrates buckle only within the substrate surface, i.e. in-surface buckling.  Experimental process to obtain buckled SiNWs is described.