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The growing need for creating surfaces with specific wetting properties, such as superhyrdophobic behavior, asks for novel methods for their efficient design. In this work, a fast computational method for the evaluation of patterned…
While significant research progress has been made in robot learning for control, unique challenges arise when simultaneously co-optimizing morphology. Existing work has typically been tailored for particular environments or representations.…
Application of soft and compliant joints in grasping mechanisms received an increasing attention during recent years. This article suggests the design and development of a novel bio-inspired compliant finger which is composed of a 3D…
When a liquid droplet is located above a super-hydrophobic surface, it only barely touches the solid portion of the surface, and therefore slides very easily on it. More generally, super-hydrophobic surfaces have been shown to lead to…
Biological structural designs in nature, like hoof walls, horns, and antlers, can be used as inspiration for generating structures with excellent mechanical properties. A common theme in these designs is the small percent porosity in the…
While most insect-inspired robots come with a simple tarsus such as a hemispherical foot tip, insect legs have complex tarsal structures and claws, which enable them to walk on complex terrain. Their sharp claws can smoothly attach and…
The results obtained from molecular dynamics simulations of the friction at an interface between polymer melts and weakly attractive crystalline surfaces are reported. We consider a coarse-grained bead-spring model of linear chains with…
Friction is a ubiquitous phenomenon that greatly affects our everyday lives and is responsible for large amounts of energy loss in industrialised societies. Layered materials such as graphene have interesting frictional properties and are…
For the contact of two finite portions of interacting rigid crystalline surfaces, we compute the dependence of the pinning energy barrier on the misfit angle and contact area. The resulting data are used to investigate the distribution of…
Limbless terrestrial animals exhibit exceptional locomotor versatility and control, currently unmatched by engineered counterparts. Here, we introduce a computational framework that enables soft synthetic snakes to navigate unstructured,…
The tribology of a sliding elastic continuum in contact with a disordered substrate is investigated analytically and numerically via a bead-spring model. The deterministic dynamics of this system exhibits a depinning transition at a finite…
Machine elements and mechanical components have often surfaces with anisotropic roughness, which may result from the machining processes, e.g. grinding, or from wear. Hence, it is important to understand how surface roughness anisotropy…
We study the lubricated contact of sliding soft surfaces that are locally patterned but globally cylindrical, held together under an external normal force. The local patterns represent either naturally occurring surface roughness or…
Multi-layer Ti3C2Tx coatings have demonstrated an outstanding wear performance with excellent durability due to beneficial tribo-layers formed. However, the involved formation processes dependent on the tribological conditions and coating…
Friction between contacting solid surfaces is a dominant force on the micro-scale and a major consideration in the design of MEMS. Non-contact fluid bearings have been investigated as a way to mitigate this issue. Here we discuss a new…
Dimples are small concavities imprinted on a flat surface, known to affect heat transfer and also flow separation and aerodynamic drag on bluff bodies when acting as a standard roughness. Recently, dimples have been proposed as a roughness…
Skinning is a popular way to rig and deform characters for animation, to compute reduced-order simulations, and to define features for geometry processing. Methods built on skinning rely on weight functions that distribute the influence of…
Wrinkling patterns at the metallized surface of thin polymer films are shown to be sensitive to the sticky or slippery character of the polymer/substrate interface (titanium coating, polystyrene film and coated silicon substrate). Selective…
Soft membranes are commonly employed in shape-morphing applications, where the material is programmed to achieve a target shape upon activation by an external trigger, and as coating layers that alter the surface characteristics of bulk…
The capacity to adapt can greatly influence the success of systems that need to compensate for damaged parts, learn how to achieve robust performance in new environments, or exploit novel opportunities that originate from new technological…