research

Abstract: Brittle materials propagate opening cracks under tension. When stress increases beyond a critical magnitude, then quasistatic crack propagation becomes unstable. In the presence of several precracks, a brittle material always propagates only the weakest crack, leading to catastrophic failure. Here, we show that all these features of brittle fracture are fundamentally modified when the material susceptible to cracking is bonded to a hydrogel, a common situation in biological tissues.

Dear Colleagues,

I want to share with you our work on geometric instabilities in thin films, which was recently accepted in Soft Matter.

A zinc oxide (ZnO)/polyurethane (PU)-based generator composite was fabricated and its piezoelectric performances were examined in the present work. In addition, the influence of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) and copper powder incorporation on the piezoelectric performance of composites was also studied. The performance level of the composites with various ratios of the constituents was compared in terms of piezoelectric responses obtained from three different tests, i.e., foot stamping, vehicle loading, and cyclic wheel loading tests.

In our recent work, we have developed a thermomechanical theory for multiphase flows, wich particular focus on the van der Waals fluid. By invoking Gurtin's microforce theory, the Coleman-Noll approach is generalized to derive constitutive relations in the presence of non-local effects. A new fully discrete numerical scheme for the model problem is designed. The scheme is provably unconditionally stable in entropy and second-order accurate in time. Using these technologies, the liquid-vapor boiling problem is investigated.

Spatial pattern formation in stiff thin films on soft substrates is investigated from a multi-scale point of view based on a technique of slowly varying Fourier coefficients. A general macroscopic modeling framework is developed and then a simplified macroscopic model is derived. The model incorporates Asymptotic Numerical Method (ANM) as a robust path-following technique to trace the post-buckling evolution path and to predict secondary bifurcations.