報告題目：Tunable Functions in Soft Active Materials Through Design of Microstructures and Instabilities

報告人：Stephan Rudykh 教授（美國威斯康星大學麥迪遜分校）

時間：2019年12月31日（周二）上午9:00

地點：明故宮校區A18-526學術報告廳

主辦單位：機械結構力學及控制國家重點實驗、科協、航空學院

報告內容簡介：

Nature actively uses sophisticated designs of microstructures to achieve astonishing material properties and functionalities. Thus, microstructures give rise to the incredible toughness of mother-of-pearl. Another example is an octopus, an amazingly powerful soft machine created by nature. The creature can squeeze its whole body through an extremely narrow space while preserving a large variety of functionalities. The nature created soft machine comprises highly deformable composites that are characterized by different dynamically tunable microstructures and phase properties, depending on the required functionalities. Indeed, such materials are highly desirable for many applications including human-interactive soft robotics, and novel actuators and sensors, and biomedical devices.

In this presentation, I will specifically focus on the role of microstructures in the overall performance of deformable multifunctional composites. We will explore the behavior of soft electroactive composites that gained the name of “artificial muscles.” These materials can undergo large deformations when excited by external electric fields, making them extremely attractive as multifunctional actuators and sensors. Next, we will discuss a different class of soft magnetoactive materials that can be activated remotely.

We will consider how large deformations, electro and magneto-mechanical couplings, and elastic instabilities can be used to trigger dramatic pattern transformations and control a large variety of functionalities. Recently discovered a new type of instability-induced domain formations in soft composites will be presented.

The analytical and numerical findings, as well as the experimental results of 3D-printed composites, will illustrate the ideas.

報告人簡介：

Stephan Rudykh is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Prior to the appointment, he was on the Technion Faculty, which he joined after his postdoctoral training in Mary Boyce Lab at MIT. Stephan Rudykh gained his Ph.D. from the Ben-Gurion University; he was a visiting graduate student at Caltech (with Prof. Kaushik Bhattacharya) and Harvard (with Prof. Katia Bertoldi). Stephan received his MS and BS from Saint-Petersburg Polytechnical University.

Rudykh’s research focuses on the mechanics and physics of soft microstructured materials including soft active materials, bioinspired materials, switchable functional composites, and biological tissues. He uses a combination of analytical and computational approaches, as well as 3D printing and experiments to understand the nonlinear behavior of these materials.