Ven
30
Mag
Seminari e Convegni
Unlocking Mechanical Instabilities for Intelligent Materials Design | with Eleonora Tubaldi
The seminar intitled "Unlocking Mechanical Instabilities for Intelligent Materials Design" will feature the participation of doctor Eleonora Tubaldi from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park.
The seminar will take place on Friday 30 May 2025 at 11:30 a.m in Aula 2F and is organized by the Department of Applied Science and Technology-DISAT of Politecnico.
Speaker: Eleonora Tubaldi
Biography:
Eleonora Tubaldi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her Ph.D. degree at McGill University in Mechanical
Engineering. Her research interests sit at the interface of nonlinear dynamics, fluid-structure interaction, and soft materials for applications in mechanical metamaterials, soft robotics, and reconfigurable structures. Recently, she has been awarded the 2024 ASME Henry Hess Early Career Publication Award, 2023 NSF CAREER Award, and the 2020 Haythornthwaite Young Investigator Award from the ASME Applied Mechanics Division.
Biological systems exhibit remarkable capabilities for rapid actuation and energy-efficient motion, often leveraging mechanical instabilities such as buckling and snapping. These phenomena allow organisms to perform swift and powerful movements with minimal energy consumption. Examples include trap-jaw ants with mandibles that can snap with incredible speed and force, as well as bacterial flagella which revert their swimming direction thanks to flagellar buckling. Inspired by these evolutionary adaptations, sophisticated tasks such as delicate object manipulation, augmented sensing capabilities, and dynamic shape transformations can be obtained by designing reconfigurable structures with controlled buckling or snapping instabilities. In this talk, will first present two novel instability based metamaterials to (i) control transition wavefronts thanks to geometric frustration, and to (ii) preprogram reversible sudden reconfigurations with a single pressure input, respectively. Finally, rapid actuation and sensing capabilities will be demonstrated in “pac-man” grippers leveraging buckling instability of free thin-shell domes. Both theoretical, numerical, and experimental approaches will be discussed. Applications spanning from fast sequential actuation, flow control, wave manipulation, and tactile sensing will be showcased.
The seminar will take place on Friday 30 May 2025 at 11:30 a.m in Aula 2F and is organized by the Department of Applied Science and Technology-DISAT of Politecnico.
Speaker: Eleonora Tubaldi
Biography:
Eleonora Tubaldi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her Ph.D. degree at McGill University in Mechanical
Engineering. Her research interests sit at the interface of nonlinear dynamics, fluid-structure interaction, and soft materials for applications in mechanical metamaterials, soft robotics, and reconfigurable structures. Recently, she has been awarded the 2024 ASME Henry Hess Early Career Publication Award, 2023 NSF CAREER Award, and the 2020 Haythornthwaite Young Investigator Award from the ASME Applied Mechanics Division.
Biological systems exhibit remarkable capabilities for rapid actuation and energy-efficient motion, often leveraging mechanical instabilities such as buckling and snapping. These phenomena allow organisms to perform swift and powerful movements with minimal energy consumption. Examples include trap-jaw ants with mandibles that can snap with incredible speed and force, as well as bacterial flagella which revert their swimming direction thanks to flagellar buckling. Inspired by these evolutionary adaptations, sophisticated tasks such as delicate object manipulation, augmented sensing capabilities, and dynamic shape transformations can be obtained by designing reconfigurable structures with controlled buckling or snapping instabilities. In this talk, will first present two novel instability based metamaterials to (i) control transition wavefronts thanks to geometric frustration, and to (ii) preprogram reversible sudden reconfigurations with a single pressure input, respectively. Finally, rapid actuation and sensing capabilities will be demonstrated in “pac-man” grippers leveraging buckling instability of free thin-shell domes. Both theoretical, numerical, and experimental approaches will be discussed. Applications spanning from fast sequential actuation, flow control, wave manipulation, and tactile sensing will be showcased.