Mechanical and Civil Engineering Seminar

Natural phenomena such as growth, instability, and failure, can be highly dependent upon stochastic mechanisms at the microscale, which may be activated, for example, by the existence of initial imperfections, the action of molecular motors, or the diffusion of constituents. Yet, at the macroscale, astonishing order is often observed. In this talk, I will discuss our recent attempts to bring a deterministic understanding to explain such processes by focusing on some examples. We will consider the growth of cavities in soft materials and their transition into cracks, and the growth of bodies by chemical reactions of association or dissociation on their boundaries.