Wednesday, July 13th, 2022. Time: 12 noon

Hybrid! | Place: O.C. Zienkiewicz Conference Room, C1 Building, UPC Campus Nord, Barcelona | Link for online session: https://meet.google.com/qjo-sttx-dgo

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ABSTRACT

Stimuli-responsive materials, also called smart materials, have drawn a lot of interest due to their biomimetic behaviour and their capability to be programmed to change its physical properties (shape, density, moduli, conductivity, optical properties, etc.). In particular, shape-programmable matter is a class of stimuli-responsive materials whose geometry can be controlled by heat, light, chemicals, electric fields or magnetic fields to potentially achieve desired time-varying shapes. Thus, they have the potential to develop mechanical functionalities superseding those of traditional machines, opening up possibilities for new innovative applications such as smart actuators, sensors, wearable devices and biomedical devices, to name but a few.

In this seminar, a topology optimization framework is presented in the context of nonlinear electro-magneto-mechanics, paving the way from experimental/intuition driven design of active materials into a new computer-aided design paradigm minimising biased human intervention. A series of proof-of-concept examples including (1) Shape-morphing dielectric elastomers, (2) flexoelectric energy harvesters and (3) magneto-active soft actuators are presented in order to illustrate the robustness of the methodology and its potential as a new tool for the design of EAP and MAP-based soft actuators, energy harvesters and new tuneable metamaterials with unexplored homogenised properties.

SPEAKER CV

Rogelio Ortigosa finished his PhD studies at Swansea University, in the Zienkiewicz Centre for Computational Engineering. His PhD thesis, entitled “On a new variational and computational framework for polyconvex nonlinear continuum mechanics and convex multi-variable nonlinear  electro-elasticity” was awarded the following awards: (1) best PhD in the College of Engineering at Swansea University; (2) best PhD in Computational Mechanics in the UK; (3) ECCOMAS award to the best PhD thesis on computational methods in applied sciences and engineering. This work focused on the development of: (1) novel mixed FEM formulations for the numerical and mathematical modelling of smart Electro Active Polymers (EAPs), with applications in the field of soft robotics, as these materials supersede the capabilities of human muscles, having interesting potential biomedical applications; (2) the extension of the concept of polyconvexity to the context of nonlinear-electromechanics; (3) the development of new structure preserving time integrators in multi-physics nonlinear PDEs, etc.  

Currently, he is member of the Computational Mechanics and Scientific Computing research group (MC3) at Technical University of Cartagena. His current research projects include the development of an in-silico laboratory that puts together transversal tools such as Machine Learning and Data Science, topology optimization and advanced multiphysic & multiscale simulation into an open-source virtual environment that aid the design of smart composites and structures based on multifunctional soft metamaterials. 

See Seminar Programme 2022