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Thursday, March 02, 2023
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Spalding Laboratory 106 (Hartley Memorial Seminar Room)

Chemical Engineering Seminar

Building with fluids: a lazy approach to fabrication
Prof. Pierre-Thomas Brun, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University,

In nature, organized arrays of elements arise spontaneously from the interactions between their component parts, e.g. reaction-diffusion problems, clustering colloidal particles and granular media, wrinkling surfaces, propagating cracks and flowing liquids. In the wake of biomimicry, I will discuss several strategies aiming to harness mechanical instabilities in flowing liquids, e.g. coiling, droplet formation, digitation, drainage, capillary suction, and use the regular shapes and universally self-organized patterns they naturally produce as templates for materials design. These flows are "frozen" as the liquids we use solidify into solids, e.g., through curing, cooling or evaporation. The shapes and patterns they form are universal and transcend the traditional divisions between scientific fields or even between living and inert matter. I will show that these similarities result from the mathematical analogies in the rules that govern pattern formation. In turn, I will demonstrate how to compose with these rules to augment our manufacturing capabilities, e.g. in soft robotics

For more information, please contact Sadie Rubalcava by phone at 6263953654 or by email at [email protected].