MEchanics GAthering –MEGA- Seminar: No Strain No Gain, Tunable materials through training
Event details
| Date | 08.05.2025 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:00 |
| Speaker | Savannah D. Gowen, (Soft Materials Laboratory), ETHZ |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract: Disordered elastic networks are model materials for disordered systems from jammed sand grains to polymers. It has been shown that metamaterials formed from macroscopic disordered network arrays of bonds and nodes can be trained to exhibit novel elastic functions: for example, unlike most natural materials these networks can be trained to display a negative Poisson’s ratio in which they respond to compression along one axis by contracting along all the others. Another novel elastic property is inspired by protein allostery: the binding of a molecule at one site in a protein triggers the ability of a distant site to bind to another molecule. Likewise, this action-at-a-distance can be implemented mechanically: Applying strain locally to a set of source nodes in the material activates a strain response at a distant set of target nodes. Here we show that novel bulk and local function can be achieved without heavy computation through directed aging in physical materials; a technique in which directed strain triggers material adaptation. We also show how networks made from liquid crystal elastomers can be both trained, reset and retrained, demonstrating a metamaterial with pluripotent function.
Bio: Savannah Gowen is a postdoc in the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich investigating micro mechanics of colloidal gels. She recently finished her PhD in physics at the University of Chicago where she specialized in fluid pattern formation and in tuning the elastic properties of disordered macroscopic network based meta-materials.
Bio: Savannah Gowen is a postdoc in the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich investigating micro mechanics of colloidal gels. She recently finished her PhD in physics at the University of Chicago where she specialized in fluid pattern formation and in tuning the elastic properties of disordered macroscopic network based meta-materials.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- MEGA.Seminar Organizing Committee