Events Calendar

AME Seminar

Speaker: Ian Tobasco, Univ. Illinois Chicago

Talk Title: Simple Rules for the Wrinkle Patterns of Confined Elastic Shells

Abstract: Dried fruits wrinkle for the same reason that leaves and flowers do -” mechanical instabilities arising from a mismatch in lengths. Can such geometric incompatibilities be used to design and control wrinkle patterns at will? This talk will discuss the possibility of designing wrinkle patterns in the large using a recently derived model for the wrinkles of confined elastic shells. After recalling the basic mechanics and introducing our model, we show how it can be solved by hand in many cases to predict the wrinkled topography. Solving this model produces a few geometric rules, which explain the layout of the wrinkle peaks and troughs across examples. These simple rules reproduce the patterns seen in numerous experiments and simulations, even ones that exhibit a surprising coexistence between orderly wrinkles and a more disordered response. Knowing such rules for wrinkles opens the way towards designer wrinkle patterns, with potential applications from flexible electronics to synthetic skins.

Biography: Ian Tobasco is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, and a B.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan.

His research on the calculus of variations and partial differential equations concerns problems that sit at the interface of mathematics, physics, and engineering, where advances in pure mathematical analysis can lead to scientific breakthroughs in the lab and vice versa. His recent work involves the use of energy minimization to explain and classify the zoo of wrinkling, crumpling, and folding patterns exhibited by thin elastic sheets. Other interests include the design of optimal transport mechanisms in fluid dynamics and their comparison with naturally occurring turbulent transport, as well as the variational analysis of spin glasses.

Host: AME Department

More Info: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97445099108

Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97445099108

Location: Online event

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97445099108

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Tessa Yao

Event Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/97445099108