research

Soft biological tissues often exhibit notable strain stiffening under increasing stretch, and this can have significant effects on tissue growth and morphological development, such as causing symmetry breaking in growing airways and leading to mucosal folding and airway hyperresponsiveness. To investigate the role of strain stiffening and the multifactorial control in growth and remodeling, we consider a growing tubular structure with strain-stiffening effects caused by increased and tightened collagen.

Dear Colleagues,

I invite you to read our recent paper on the orientation dependent plasticity mechanisms that control the dynamic creation of nanostructures and their  behavior under subsequent quasistatic microcompression published in the International Journal of Plasticity: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijplas.2023.103657

Abstract

Dear Colleagues,

I invite you to read our recent paper on the process-structure-property relations in heterogeneous nanostructured metals created through a laser induced projectile impact of single crystal microcubes published in the Extreme Mechanics Letters: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eml.2023.102037

Abstract

Prof. Zdenek Bazant (Northwestern University, USA) sent me a copy of the plenary lecture he delivered at Int. Conf. on Damage Mechanics 4 at LSU on May 15, 2023, to be posted. The lecture is about a critique of the theoretical inconsistencies in the Phase Field and Peridynamics techniques. Remarkably interesting talk that will create a significant discussion about the validity of these methods..

The Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal was established in 2022 by the Applied Mechanics Division and recognizes an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of mechanics through research, practice, teaching and/or outstanding leadership. For details, please go to: Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal

For a given class of materials, universal displacements are those displacements that can be maintained for any member of the class by applying only boundary tractions. In this paper we study universal displacements in compressible anisotropic linear elastic solids reinforced by a family of inextensible fibers. For each symmetry class and for a uniform distribution of straight fibers respecting the corresponding symmetry we characterize the respective universal displacements. A goal of this paper is to investigate how an internal constraint affects the set of universal displacements.

This work deals with the hydrodynamic interaction of two parallel circular cylinders, with identical radii, immersed in a viscous fluid initially at rest. One cylinder is stationary while the other one is imposed a harmonic motion with a moderate amplitude of vibration. The direction of motion is parallel to the line joining the centers of the two cylinders. The two dimensional fluid–structure problem is numerically solved by the Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian method implemented in the open-source CFD code TrioCFD.

Dear Colleagues,

I invite you to read our latest paper published in ACS Nano: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.3c01223

"Order Parameter Engineering for Random Systems" published in High Entropy Alloys and Materials

Abstract:

Two postdoctoral researcher positions and one Ph.D. position are available in the Multiphase Fluid-Structure Interaction Lab in Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School. The postdoc will assist the PI (Prof. Shunxiang Cao) in tasks associated with the high-performance simulations of multiphase fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problems, including bubbly flow modeling, development of efficient fluid-structure coupling algorithms, development of high-performance fluid-structure coupled solver, and reinforcement-learning-based control of FSI. 

In our recent study published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, using a multiscale modeling technique, we investigated how the combination of nanofibrillation and interfacial tuning can have a synergistic effect on the stiffness-toughness balance in rubber-toughened nanocomposites. Check out the link below:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsami.3c04017

In this paper a geometric field theory of dislocation dynamics and finite plasticity in single crystals is formulated. Starting from the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient into elastic and plastic parts, we use Cartan's moving frames to describe the distorted lattice structure via differential 1-forms. In this theory the primary fields are the dislocation fields, defined as a collection of differential 2-forms. The defect content of the lattice structure is then determined by the superposition of the dislocation fields.

I am happy to share with you our recent paper on kinetic phase-field modeling of non-equilibrium crystal growth, which is just published in Acta Materialia, it is open access:

S. Kavousi, V. Ankudinov, P. K. Galenko, M. Asle Zaeem. Atomistic-informed kinetic phase-field modeling of non-equilibrium crystal growth during rapid solidification. Acta Materialia 253 (2023) 118960 (11 pages).

1. Introduction

Because of its overwhelming pervasiveness and high-stakes impact on the mechanical performance of structures made of inorganic and live matter alike (bridges, airplanes, bones, ligaments,...), fracture has attracted the attention of humans, researchers and laymen the same, for centuries.

An elastic cloak hides a hole (or an inhomogeneity) from elastic fields. In this paper, a formulation of the optimal design of elastic cloaks based on the adjoint state method, in which the balance of linear momentum is enforced as a constraint, is presented. The design parameters are the elastic moduli of the cloak, and the objective function is a measure of the distance between the solutions in the physical and in the virtual bodies. Both the elastic medium and the cloak are assumed to be made of isotropic linear elastic materials.

Check out our new work at Advanced Materials Technologies

A postdoctoral research position is available in Dr. Katherine Yanhang Zhang’s Multi-Scale Tissue Biomechanics Lab in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Boston University.