Shab celebrated her recent publication in Soft Matter by connecting with the community for a day through Paper2Tree. First she worked with a class at Booker T Washington Elementary School to demonstrate a bit about the science of wear. Then she helped plant a tree to recognize that academic publications have used extensive resources, and […]
Insects did it first! Inspired by beetle iridescence and a scientist who has studied them (Ainsley Seago), the ABC Lab, the INHS Insect Collection, and the Materials Tribology Lab teamed up to study the multifunctionality of insect cuticle. Back down the evolutionary tree of beetles, some species developed iridescent cuticle, and others did not. This […]
We all went up to Chicago for the Tribology Frontiers Conference at the Drake Hotel in Chicago – even Helen, our undergraduate! We had a great time hearing about work and making new connections, as well as getting critical feedback on our own work. Prof. Dunn gave an invited talk at the ASME Feature session, […]
Shab gave a nice presentation yesterday on “Wear mechanisms of chemically and physically crosslinked hydrogels under mild abrasions.” Congrats to entering the final phase!
As soft robots are the new normal, polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS, is becoming ubiquitious in labs. You know it as the material that makes “sticky hands” you throw against the wall, and it can be a clear, or slightly cloudy (turbid) soft solid. It can be molded into any shape conceivable, especially shapes with more than […]
Thanks to Angela Pitenis (UCSB) and Hitoshi Washizu (University of Hyogo) for inviting me to be a part of this exciting symposium. We had many countries represented, and I learned a lot about the excellent tribology study going on in Japan. I highly recommend the ITC conference, a joint venture between STLE and JAST. Everyone […]
Shab’s been busy lately, and it shows. Congrats for winning a travel award for IMECE 2019 in Salt Lake City to present her work “Abrasive wear behavior of polyacrylamide hydrogels under a range of loads and sliding speeds.”
Lihua worked hard with the Wissa group and Alleyne group to identify part of the mechanism of the click beetle hinge, and friction effects of diffraction grating features on insect cuticle. Congratulations Lihua!
We have sought the answer to this question for years! In fact, I started working with contact lenses as an undergraduate at Florida in Greg Sawyer’s lab. Our answer at the time was “chemistry.” Our answer through the years shifted to consider structured surface layers, polymer fluctuation, and hydration, among others. But it is just […]
Congratulations to Jiho on his contact measurements to provide some baselines of properties of PDMS to help with Professor Hutchens’ work on soft fracture using cavitation rheology! And if you are new to the word, just imagine inserting a needle into your jello and blowing a hole in it! This paper can help predict the […]