Congratulations to Shab on her successful PhD defense on Friday! “Wear mechanisms of chemically crosslinked hydrogels under mild abrasion”

Hydrogels are the next “engineering material” that we need new textbooks for, to teach the next generation of engineers to design with them. Shabnam’s work contributes directly to that, and over the past 4 years she has discovered that the material nature of the hydrogel determines how it wears away — sometimes it acts brittle, […]

New paper out: Generalized model linking rheology and soft matter tribology

We describe the resistance to slip of an interface as friction, and the origin of that friction can vary widely: roughness, plasticity, lubrication, temperature, etc. Some of those originating mechanisms can also change with time: asperities flattening, lubricating migration, or other things. The way that people have tried to quantify those changing mechanisms is to […]

New paper from Jiho: strengthening the complex fluid analogy

How does a high-water-content hydrogel surface respond to step changes in speed? Jiho measured the lubrication mechanics of a complex shear interface through tribo-rheometry to try and figure it out. Out of all the possible responses, we find a combined time-dependent and shear-thinning response, just like a complex fluid. Check it out for more details.