Category: MOSS Lab
News – NSF CAREER Award
NSF Engineering:
Class of 2015 Early Career Engineers to Watch
NSF Engineering boosts 146 early-career researchers with awards totaling $73M
@NSF @NSF_ENG Research towards smart needles & autonomous structures begins with a buried elastica #CAREER pic.twitter.com/wt4NLsn63l
— Douglas Holmes (@dpholmes) March 25, 2015
BU College of Engineering News:
Newest ME Faculty Member Receives NSF CAREER Award – by Mark Dwortzan
Bostonia:
Thin Rods Study Wins NSF Grant
NSF CAREER Award
NSF Award #1454153: CAREER: Understanding and Controlling the Deformation of Thin Rods within Soft and Fragile Matter (NSF Award)
CMMI - Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation: Mechanics of Materials and Structures
The lessons learned from this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program grant will provide the framework for the active navigation of thin rods within soft and fragile matter, such as granular materials and tissue. Active materials that can bend and fold on command provide advanced engineering opportunities for deployable structures, smart needles, and soft robotic arms. This award supports fundamental research on the mechanics of thin rods in complex materials, and will provide the knowledge necessary to create advanced, autonomous structures capable of actively navigating around obstacles in various media. To assist in the broader dissemination of mechanics, this award supports the development of an innovative program to improve scientific communication and literacy by utilizing online digital media to showcase mechanics knowledge to the global community by focusing on Digital Inspiration, Communication, and Education (DICE). By placing an emphasis on visual, verbal, and written communication, this program will enhance both the scientific communication of the next generation of scholars and broaden participation of the general public through the creation and curation of open, online mechanics content.
Steering a structure through soft and fragile matter, such as tissues and granular media, requires understanding the mechanics of slender structures, the deformation of stimuli-responsive structures and the forces that arise from the interplay between the deforming structure and its surrounding media. This award will lead to a better understanding of how a slender structure deforms within a complex medium. First, a quantitative experimental relationship will be developed to describe the bending, buckling, and interfacial penetration of a passive elastic strip within various surroundings, including dry, wet, and soft granular matter and hydrogels. For each medium, this will provide an understanding of the magnitude of stimulus required to bend a structure to a specific curvature. Stimuli-responsive microstructures will then be incorporated into the elastic strip, enabling it to bend and curl in response to pneumatic pressure. The experimental results from this work will provide the basis for important theoretical studies that couple poroelasticity, granular jamming, and the mechanics of slender structures while inspiring advanced, stimuli-responsive structures. The results of this award will help predict the deformation and buckling of slender structures within complex media, while providing a general framework for designing structures that can actively and controllably bend within soft and fragile matter.
NSF Award: Snapping Shells
NSF Award #1435607: Snapping Shells: Coupling Geometry, Dynamics, and Materials to Harvest Energy through Instability (NSF Award)
CMMI - Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation: Mechanics of Materials
When a structure snaps to an alternate shape -- like the inversion of an umbrella on a windy day -- its structural and material integrity are often permanently lost. Many soft structures, however, are able to reverse the change between two shapes. This presents a fascinating opportunity to design dynamic and adaptable engineering structures. The rapid leaf closure of the Venus flytrap is an example of how snapping provides functionality in nature. This award supports fundamental research on the mechanics of instabilities in structures. In particular, it considers structures made of advanced and active materials which are capable of converting deformation into energy. Its results will help engineers design systems that use instabilities as a feature rather than a fault, thereby enabling structures that easily and predictably change shape over a short timescale, converting and storing energy in the process. Such structures have applications in U.S. industries with needs for autonomous power sources. Since snapping structures have been employed with great amusement in the `jumping disc' and `popper' toys that jump with an audible pop, this research will help increase public interest in science.
Many soft, slender structures are able to rapidly change between two stable configurations by a snap-through elastic instability. This research will establish the mechanical and geometric criteria for shell bistability. It will determine the effect of shell geometry on the speed of snap-through, the post-snap vibrations, and the rate of asymmetric-to-symmetric shell dissipation. The effect of material properties will be examined to understand the self-actuated snap-back of shells, structures that are temporarily bistable. The research team will prepare shells out of an electrically active material. This will allow the research team to conduct novel measurements of the in-plane strain in shells during instability. These measurements will contribute important experimental insight to the theory of shell structures. Finally, the dielectric elastomeric shells will also offer a natural means for harvesting energy during the snap-through deformation. The research team will further develop BLINK, the innovative program that introduces students to the fast-moving science that our eyes often miss. The program will culminate with students using the mechanics of toy poppers as a way to study Newton's laws of motion. The implementation of this program, and subsequent creation of relevant online video content, will provide opportunities for students and the general public to realize the importance of mechanics research in answering current technological challenges.
MOSS Lab moves to BU
The Soft Mechanical Structures laboratory from Virginia Tech's Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics has relocated to Boston University. The new research lab will focus on the Mechanics of Slender Structures (MOSS), and will be housed in 730 Commonwealth Ave., Room 308. Prospective graduate and undergraduate students interested in the experimental analysis and analytical modeling of thin structures should contact the PI.
