News & EventsDepartment Events
Events
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Oct7
EVENT DETAILS
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Biological materials excel at serving mechanical functions, which may be passive as in structural materials, or dynamic, as in cell motility and adhesion components. Impressively, structural biomaterials such as nacre, bone and wood defy “rule of mixtures” relationships by employing high aspect ratio nanoparticles as building blocks in clever molecular designs. Lack of understanding of the physics of interfaces within nanoparticle assemblies makes it challenging to achieve similar mechanical properties with man-made polymeric materials. In this talk, I will present and overview of the state of the art in the bottom-up analysis of nanoparticle assemblies, touching upon new advances in interface design enabled by molecular and multi-scale simulations, machine learning tools, as well as bioinspiration. As a case study, investigations on thin films and nanocomposites made from renewable cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) will be presented. Our theory and simulation-based inquiries into three complementary strategies for improving mechanical properties will be discussed. First, I will present analyses that explain how binary mixtures of nanocrystal lengths, and microstructural features such as a twisted plywood (Bouligand) lay-up of nanocrystals yield all-cellulosic transparent films with strength and toughness comparable to mineralized biomaterials. Second, I will discuss an efficient, molecular simulation informed framework for predicting the mechanical response of polymer conjugated (hairy) CNC nanocomposites, revealing interface designs that yield optimality between stiffness and toughness. Finally, I will conclude with an outlook on dynamic interfaces in nanocomposites, specifically examining how basic allosteric principles of catch bonds in proteins could be reduced to simple mechanical models to create nanoparticle linkages with counterintuitive force-dependent kinetics.
TIME Monday, October 7, 2019 at 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
LOCATION L211, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Jeremy Wells jeremywells@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Mechanical Engineering
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Apr18
EVENT DETAILS
lessAutomated discovery of material models
The talk overviews the recent research on automated discovery of material models carried out by the group of the speaker and collaborators. Overall, this research proposes a shift in paradigm, moving away from the classical calibration of the unknown parameters in an a priori chosen material model, towards the new task of model discovery, i.e. simultaneous selection of the most appropriate model and calibration of its unknown parameters.
The new approach, inspired by advances on automated discovery of governing equations for non-linear dynamical systems, deploys sparse regression from a potentially extremely large library of material models to automatically select the few terms that lead to the best approximation of the experimental data. These data can be available in the form of stressstrain pairs or as full-field displacement, and force data obtained from mechanical testing with digital image correlation. Sparse regression delivers a parsimonious, i.e. simple and interpretable, deterministic model; through the appropriate design of the model library, the discovered model can be guaranteed to satisfy a priori the desired physics constraints. As an alternative to sparse regression, Bayesian learning with sparsity-promoting priors can deliver a few candidate models with quantified uncertainty, as proposed in. Another possible choice is to replace the model library with a neural network, thus trading interpretability against a larger approximation space. The latest advances include deploying formal grammars to generate the language of hyperelastic materials [6], i.e. a very large library of hyperelastic models fulfilling predefined requirements, and the first steps towards experimental validation,, also leveraging X-ray tomography with digital volume correlation and in-situ testing.
LAURA DE LORENZIS received her Engineering degree and her PhD from the University of her hometown Lecce, in southern Italy, where she first stayed as Assistant and later as Associate Professor of Solid and structural mechanics. In 2013 she moved to the TU Braunschweig, Germany, as Professor and Director of the Institute of Applied Mechanics. There she was founding member and Chair (2017-2020) of the Center for Mechanics, Uncertainty and Simulation in Engineering. Since 2020 she is Professor of Computational Mechanics at ETH Zürich. She was visiting scholar in several renowned institutions, including Chalmers University of Technology, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (as Fulbright Fellow), the Leibniz University of Hannover (as Alexander von Humboldt Fellow), the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Cape Town. She is the recipient of several prizes, including the RILEM L’Hermite Medal 2011, the AIMETA Junior Prize 2011, the IIFC Young Investigator Award 2012, two best paper awards and two student teaching prizes at the TU Braunschweig. In 2011 she was awarded a European Research Council Starting Researcher Grant. In 2022 she was elected Solid Mechanics Fellow of the European Mechanics Society (EUROMECH) "in recognition of her outstanding and influential contributions to computational solid mechanics including in particular phase-field approaches to fracture and fatigue, variational collocation methods, and data-driven mechanics". She authored or co-authored more than 140 papers on international journals, delivered over 15 plenary lectures at international conferences and is editorial board member or associate editor of over 15 international journals. Since 2023 she is Editor of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering.
TIME Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION A230, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Jeremy Wells jeremywells@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
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Apr22
EVENT DETAILS
lessGuiding with Touch: Haptic Feedback for Enhancing Human Motor Performance
Recent advances in virtual reality simulation and robotics have changed the way that motor skills are trained, yet the feedback that most trainees receive when working in these environments is still delayed, subjective, and qualitative, which does not provide the maximum support for rapid acquisition of motor skill. In this talk, I will describe our research on identifying objective and quantitative metrics that capture motor skills in a few different tasks, and I will present our methods for employing real-time haptic feedback and guidance. We have shown that different implementations of haptic guidance provided via kinesthetic feedback can have either negative, neutral, or positive effects on motor performance and skill acquisition. More recently, we have shifted to provide cutaneous haptic feedback for guidance or performance feedback. We have shown that low-level properties of movements (e.g., smoothness) made in the performance of several motor tasks—including surgery in both virtual and robotic environments—are highly correlated with high-level performance outcomes. We encode these movement properties as simple haptic cues that are conveyed to the trainee in real-time, and evaluate the effect on skill acquisition. This talk will highlight our progress over the past decade in implementing real-time haptic feedback via wearable devices to train complex motor skills.
Marcia O’Malley’s research addresses issues that arise when humans physically interact with robotic systems, with a focus on wearable robotics and haptics for training and rehabilitation in virtual environments. She has twice received the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University. O’Malley was a recipient of both the ONR Young Investigator award and the NSF CAREER Award. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. At Rice, she has been recognized with Rice’s Presidential Award for Mentoring, the Graduate Student Association Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Award, and the Rice University Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service.
TIME Monday, April 22, 2024 at 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
LOCATION LR3, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Jeremy Wells jeremywells@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
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Apr30
EVENT DETAILS
lessOn the Design and Manufacture of Structures for Flightworthy Gas Turbines
by Apostolos Karafillis
Chief Consulting Engineer
Structures and Additive Design
GE Aerospace
Abstract
The design and manufacture of gas turbine components presents unique technical challenges that highlight the relevance and importance of the disciplines of mechanical and aerospace engineering. In this presentation, we will focus on describing the fundamental technical requirements for parts of flightworthy gas turbines and will then share examples of designs and innovations to meet these requirements. The talk will include the description of typical loading conditions and operating environments, and the description of how these requirements guide the selection of design features, materials, and manufacturing methods. We will discuss three specific examples: The selection of features and architecture of a bearing housing, the design of a turbine frame with a mix of metallic and composite materials, and the development of methods for characterizing the performance of components manufactured with non-traditional methods. Through these examples, it will be shown that successful hardware design requires the combination of robust design methods, rigorous implementation of the principles of mechanics of materials, and the development of design and manufacturing innovation.TIME Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION 1.350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center map it
CONTACT Jeremy Wells jeremywells@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick - Mechanical Engineering (ME)
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May3
EVENT DETAILSmore info
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Speaker: Russ Tedrake, Toyota Professor of EECS, Aero/Astro, ME at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and VP of Research at Toyota Research Institute
Title: Dexterous Manipulation with Diffusion Policies
Date and Time: Friday, May 3 at 11:30 AM CT
Location: Tech ESAM M416 and Zoom
Zoom Link: https://tinyurl.com/CRBSeminar
• NU-authenticated attendees will be automatically admitted. Others, please email amy.nedoss@northwestern.edu to be admitted from the waiting room.
Abstract:
At the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we've been working on behavior cloning for dexterous manipulation. Building on the Diffusion Policy framework that we've recently developed in collaboration with Shuran Song, we now have a very solid pipeline for taking ~50-100 bimanual haptic teleop demonstrations and turning that into a surprisingly effective visuomotor (+tactile) policy. Because there is no explicit state representation required, these skills work equally well manipulating deformable, liquid, or other difficult to model tasks as they do for more traditional rigid-object manipulation. We're actively scaling this up into the multi-task setting and now see a plausible path towards "Large Behavior Models". This behavior cloning pipeline is working incredibly well, and must be understood deeply in the broader context of output-feedback control. Time permitting, I'll also tell you a bit about some new results in optimization-based planning and control, and where they might fit in the age of foundation models.
Bio:
Russ Tedrake is the Toyota Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Aero/Astro, and he is a member of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). He is also the Vice President of Robotics Research at Toyota Research Institute (TRI). He received a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1999, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2004. Dr. Tedrake is the Director of the MIT CSAIL Center for Robotics and was the leader of MIT’s entry in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the MIT Jerome Saltzer Award for undergraduate teaching, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in Mathematics, the 2012 Ruth and Joel Spira Teaching Award, and was named a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellow. His research has been recognized with numerous conference best paper awards, including ICRA, Robotics: Science and Systems, Humanoids, Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, as well as the inaugural best paper award from the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Whole-Body Control.
TIME Friday, May 3, 2024 at 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
LOCATION M416, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Amy Nedoss amy.nedoss@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Center for Robotics and Biosystems (CRB)
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May8
EVENT DETAILSmore info
lessThe Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts is a collaboration between the Art Institute of Chicago and materials science-related departments at Northwestern University to pursue objects-based and objects-inspired scientific research. Materials research benefits ongoing work in conservation, archaeology, art history, and curatorial scholarship.
Learn how the Center uses materials research to care for art objects in sustainable, innovative ways with Maria Kokkori, Northwestern Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Senior Scientist in the Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts. She will be in conversation with Corey Byrnes, Northwestern Associate Professor of Chinese Culture and co-founder/co-director of the Environmental Humanities Workshop in Kaplan Humanities Center.
This event is presented by the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science in conjunction with exhibition Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology.
TIME Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
LOCATION Block Museum of Art, Mary and Leigh map it
CONTACT Block Museum of Art block-museum@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Block Museum of Art
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Jun10
EVENT DETAILSmore info
lessMcCormick School of Engineering PhD Hooding and Master’s Degree Recognition Ceremony
TIME Monday, June 10, 2024 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
LOCATION Welsh-Ryan Arena
CONTACT Amy Pokrass amy.pokrass@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
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Jun10
TIME Monday, June 10, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
LOCATION Welsh-Ryan Arena
CONTACT Amy Pokrass amy.pokrass@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science