“Granular Matter by Design”
Presented by Professor Heinrich Jaeger
Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor of Physic, University of Chicago
Design is a process that proceeds from a desired overall outcome to the specifications for the individual components that enable the outcome. For materials science, design is a major challenge, because it requires us to invert the typical modeling approach, which starts from microscale components in order to predict macroscale behavior. For granular matter additional complications arise from the fact that these materials are inherently disordered and typically far from equilibrium. This talk will discuss recent progress in tackling this inverse problem and show how concepts from artificial evolution make it possible to identify with high efficiency particle-scale parameters that produce targeted macroscale behavior. In particular, I will show how one can find particle shapes that are optimized for specific desired behavior of a granular material, such as low porosity or adaptive compliance under compression. The discussion will be embedded in the context of emergent applications for designed granular matter, ranging from soft robotics to aleatory architecture.
Heinrich Jaeger is the Sewell Avery Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in physics in 1987 from the University of Minnesota and has been on the faculty at U Chicago since 1991, directing the Chicago Materials Research Center from 2001 – 2006, and the James Franck Institute from 2007-2010. Jaeger’s current research focuses on self-assembled nanoparticle-based structures, on the rheology of concentrated particle suspensions, and on studies of the packing and flow properties of granular materials.