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CATEGORIES:Conferences/Seminars/Lectures
DESCRIPTION:Professor Irmgard Bischofberger\n\nWhy is there so much structu
 re\, order and texture to life and nature\, rather than a featureless expan
 se? From microscopic snowflakes to dried mud and large-scale river networks
 \, pattern formation leads to systems of extraordinary intricacy and beauty
 . Understanding how a system spontaneously selects its overall structure re
 mains an ongoing engineering and scientific challenge. In this talk\, I wil
 l briefly outline my lab’s recent successes in identifying the underlying m
 echanisms of pattern selection in a large range of complex fluids\, which h
 as allowed us to developed strategies to control unstable growth. I will th
 en discuss two examples of how intricate structuring emerges. In evaporatin
 g drops of aqueous nanoparticle suspensions\, we report the dynamics of cra
 ck formation and the fracture morphology. We show that in the final stage o
 f drying\, the remaining stresses in the nanoparticle deposit can be releas
 ed in two distinct ways: by bending out of plane or by forming a second gen
 eration of orthoradial cracks. In a second example\, we report the surprisi
 ng emergence of chiral domains in a flowing nematic liquid crystal despite 
 the achiral nature of the material. The chirality results from a periodic d
 ouble-twist deformation of the liquid crystal and leads to striking stripe 
 patterns vertical to the flow direction. Finally\, I will discuss how under
 standing pattern selection allows us to tune the mechanical properties of s
 oft composite materials.
DTEND:20231201T213000Z
DTSTAMP:20260305T111223Z
DTSTART:20231201T203000Z
GEO:42.358938;-71.092405
LOCATION:Building 3\, 270
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:MechE Colloquium 
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_44951346899261
URL:https://calendar.mit.edu/event/meche_colloquium_88
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