research

We recently find that podosomes, very dynamic, self-organized structures, can function as mechanosensors.  For details, see the recent issue of Current Biology.

Metallic glass in bulk form is known to have superb strength and elastic response but very limited plastic deformation ability. Through machining the metaillinc glass into submicometer pillars, experiment found that metallic glass can actually sustain very large plastic doformation (see attached Figure).  The detail of this finding can be found in our most recent publication: Z. W. Shan et al, Plastic flow and failure resistance of metallic glass: Insight from in situ compression of nanopillars, Phys. Rev.

Postdoctoral Research Position – Computational Solid Mechanics Weapons and Materials Research Directorate (WMRD, US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD WMRD has an immediate opening for a postdoctoral research associate to conduct research in high rate damage and failure of ductile and brittle materials. Researcher would be part of a team that includes scientists at WMRD/ARL and faculty and students in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at The Johns Hopkins University under a Cooperative Research Agreement.

We have studied experimentally and theoretically the response of randomly folded hyperelastic and elastoplastic sheets on the uniaxial compression loading and the statistical properties of crumpling networks. The results of these studies reveal that the mechanical behavior of randomly folded sheets in the one-dimensional stress state is governed by the shape dependence of the crumpling network entropy.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/04/biomimetics/tom-mueller-text

Biomimetics