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SUMMARY:IMX Colloquium - Defects in cracks and contact: enhancing toughnes
 s and suppressing wetting
DTSTART:20250915T131500
DTEND:20250915T141500
DTSTAMP:20260921T202814Z
UID:00a1d4a1367baebfcde9dda8a7fe923b9e1bd00d59fb8f1274849999
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Dr. John Kolinski\, Engineering Mechanics of Soft lnterfaces\,
  EPFL\nCracks can destroy structures. Contacts drive countless industrial 
 processes. Though these seem very different\, the underlying mechanics are
  surprisingly similar: stress builds up and diverges at a single moving po
 int — the tip of a crack or the edge of a forming contact — driven by 
 external forces. These regions are notoriously hard to study because they
 ’re obscured within the surrounding material. Using high-speed 3D imagin
 g\, we capture these dynamics in real time. Our work reveals that tiny def
 ects and random noise strongly influence both crack growth and contact for
 mation. Two case studies highlight this: how geometry affects toughness in
  brittle hydrogels\, and how defects shape the formation of contacts. Desp
 ite their differences\, both systems show universal behaviors that emerge 
 from these local\, nonlinear dynamics. We’ll conclude with a demonstrati
 on of how these insights can be applied — from boosting material toughne
 ss to precisely manipulating liquid droplets.\n\nBio: Kolinski heads the E
 ngineering Mechanics of Soft Interfaces laboratory in the Institute of Mec
 hanical Engineering in STI at EPFL\, where he currently mentors five PhD s
 tudents. The group’s research activities span the domain of continuum me
 chanics\, with research into liquid-solid wetting\, mechanics of viscoelas
 tic solids and fracture of hydrogels. With colleagues\, Kolinski organized
  two international workshops in 2023 and 2024 on fracture mechanics\, at C
 ECAM in Lausanne and at PCTS in Princeton. The impact of the group’s re
 search can be perceived from publications in leading journals\, internatio
 nal\, interdisciplinary collaborations with leading scholars\, several gra
 nts from Innosuisse and SNSF\, invited lectures and awards to the group’
 s students on the international stage. Prior to starting his group at EPF
 L in 2017\, Kolinski was a Fulbright fellow at the Hebrew University of Je
 rusalem in the Physics department\, where he worked on dynamic fracture in
  hydrogels. Kolinski defended his PhD thesis on the role of air in droplet
  impact on a smooth solid surface at Harvard in 2013\, with support from t
 he NSF GRFP and NDSEG fellowships. 
LOCATION:MXF 1 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==MXF%201
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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