Organizers:
- Mrityunjay Kothari, University of New Hampshire
- Vikas Srivastava, Brown University
Description:
The mechanics of soft solids is a rapidly advancing field with numerous applications ranging from creating novel multifunctional materials to furthering our fundamental understanding of how biological systems function and everything in between. These applications rely on the ability of soft solids to showcase rich multi-scale (both in time and space) and multi-physics mechanics — from self-assembly at the microstructure level to instabilities at the macro-scale, from viscous fluid-like at large time scales to glassy solid-like at high rate short time scales— thus providing many different ways to harness their power. This symposium aims to bring together a multi-disciplinary group of researchers to discuss recent experimental, theoretical modeling and computational advances in the broad area of mechanics of soft solids and their applications in engineering and biology.
Topics of interest:
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- New constitutive models for soft solids
- Soft materials under extreme environments, such as tissue damage under shock, shock absorbing layers
- Mechanics of soft biological systems, such as growth and self-organization
- Damage, fracture and healing in soft solids
- Novel experimental methods
- Coupled instabilities, such as in electroactive and magnetoactive polymers