BIOINSPIRED DESIGN

Recent years have witnessed intense interest in multifunctional surfaces that can be designed to switch between different functional states with various external stimuli including electric field, light, pH value, and mechanical strain. The present paper is aimed to explore whether and how a surface can be designed to switch between superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity by an applied strain.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) (www.urv.cat) in Tarragona (Spain), is looking for several enthusiastic research students with a strong interest in fluid dynamics. Successful candidates will join a small but very active multidisciplinary team, working in fluid-structure interaction problems. The research will be mainly experimental and focused in the area of fluid structure interaction with application to several engineering problems.