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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 effective 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, novel actuators and sensors, and biomedical devices. In this presentation, I will specifically focus on the role of microstructures in the performance of deformable magneto-active composites. We will consider how large magneto-mechanical deformations and elastic instabilities can be used to trigger dramatic pattern transformations, and to control a large variety of functionalities; in particular, the design of switchable acoustic metamaterials will be discussed. Analytical and numerical findings, as well as experimental results of 3D-printed soft composites, will illustrate the ideas.
Prof. Dr. Stephan Rudykh (University of Wisconsin Madison, USA | Mechanics of Soft Materials Lab | Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Professor
Stephan Rudykh has been on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin Madison, the University of Galway, and previously, with the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Technion, which he joined after his postdoctoral training in Mary Boyce Lab at MIT. Stephan Rudykh gained his Ph.D. from 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. <br> 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.