Seminar on Morphomechanics of soft films: Curvature, growth and shrinkage
Prof Fan Xu Fudan University, China This seminar will be chaired by Prof Jimmy Hsia. |
| Seminar Abstract |
Many biological structures exhibit intriguing morphological patterns adapted to environmental cues, which contribute to their important biological functions and also inspire material designs. In this talk, we present a variety of morphogenesis of diverse soft films across different length scales. We report some unprecedented wrinkling phenomena in elastically deformed film-substrate systems upon growth/shrinkage or mechanical forces, from planar to curved geometry. All the cases involve highly nonlinear deformations and multiple bifurcations. We develop mathematical models and derive universal scaling laws to understand the underlying morphoelastic mechanism, and more importantly to quantitatively predict multiple symmetry breakings beyond the critical instability threshold. Moreover, we demonstrate bio-inspired applications by harnessing surface instability such as a target adaptive grasper. Our results not only reveal novel instability topographies, providing fundamental insights into surface morphogenesis of deformed soft films that are ubiquitous in the real world, but also provide a platform to design morphology-related functional surfaces. |
| Speaker’s Biography |
Dr. Fan XU is a professor of solid mechanics at Fudan University (China). He received his bachelor's degree in engineering mechanics from Wuhan University (China) in 2009, and his master's degree in solid mechanics from Arts et Métiers ParisTech (France) in 2011. He completed his PhD in solid mechanics at University of Lorraine (France) in 2014, studying mechanical instability of film/substrate systems. He continued to work in LEM3-CNRS as a postdoctoral researcher, and expanded his research interests to mechanics of soft materials and slender structures. His current research interests include morphomechanics and physics of thin films, soft matter, metamaterials and 2D materials. He has published more than 60 papers in international journals such as Phys. Rev. Lett., Nature Comput. Sci., Nature Biomed. Eng., J. Mech. Phys. Solids, Angew. Chem., Adv. Funct. Mater., Int. J. Solids Struct., Int. J. Eng. Sci., Comput. Method. Appl. Mech. Eng., etc. His research was highlighted by Nature, Nature Phys., Nature Comput. Sci., Nature Biomed. Eng., and selected as cover image by Nature Comput. Sci., Phys. Rev. Lett. and Proc. Roy. Soc. A. He received the Excellent Young Scientists Fund of NSFC, ASME Prize (French section), and was selected as “Shanghai Shuguang Scholar” and “2018 Ten Emerging Star Scientists in China”. |