GALCIT Colloquium

In this seminar, I will address three questions that are relevant to those that are involved in the design of hard and soft materials for a range of applications that include - but are not limited to - orthopaedics and aerospace. 1) How to offer longer life to patients that need their hip replaced? 2) How can a material tolerate temperature changes with no sacrifice in its specific strength and stiffness? 3) How to make a monolithic surface grow in size and retain its final shape when the pull has been removed?

Although diverse, these questions can find answers in materials architected with structural geometries that are less, rather than more, solid. The unified motif that these engineered materials share stands out as patterns of either pores or slits, rationally designed to elicit what is desired by the application. This talk will illustrate the spectrum of exciting activities that has propelled recent efforts in my group on several fronts, including multiscale mechanics and structural optimization, along with prototype fabrication and experimental validation, all geared to find answers to the questions above.