You might see stress when you look in the mirror, but in a material that is just flexing a little (elastically), you can’t see the stress. You have to go back to TAM 251 (Solid Mechanics) and ME 330 (Materials) to derive the definitions and apply with confidence. But in ME 472 this week, we’re […]
When you see these images of the beetle peg morphology, doesn’t it make you wonder about the contact mechanics? Us too! In this work by Ophelia and Lihua, we describe how the snap of the click beetle is enabled by the rigid peg. But we also say that the contact mechanics matter. So interesting how […]
If this video doesn’t make you want to visit, watch it again :) https://t.co/onmeJnRYgW
We had a great time at STLE 2018 in Minneapolis. Both Shab and Jiho presented their work in the “Materials Tribology” track, and Chris, Prabhakaran, and Hao presented posters. Congrats to Chris on his poster award! Below you can see some of the nice contact area measurements he has been making over the past few […]
All the graduate students took turns describing to groups of high school students how a record player works. Then the students were challenged to listen to a song from the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack and match up sound signatures with micrographs of the grooves on the record surface. A groovy time was had! A […]
We are happy to be a part of this joint center, with an exciting project building a dual-disk wear tester and studying the origins of steel wear in combined rolling/sliding conditions.
We’ve upgraded so many capabilities: stylus profilometer, in situ confocal microtribometer, thrust washer tribometer, and the list goes on! It’s been a good building year. Come see us in MEL later this year.
The Research page and Meet the Lab pages have been updated. Come see what we’re up to! PS, check out the Twitter feed; we had a great time at STLE in Atlanta.
What happens when you try to slide across a sticky surface? Lots of micro-slips! This week in the lab we measured the stick-slip profiles between glass and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS, or silicone).