Our Focus:
The Materials as Machines Lab focuses on research and development related to materials science and engineering, with a particular emphasis on designing and creating materials that exhibit machine-like or dynamic properties. We explore integrating materials with mechanical, electrical, or other functional components to develop advanced materials systems.
Our Goals:
- Materials Design: Investigating novel materials or composite structures with tailored properties, such as self-healing, shape memory, or responsive behaviour.
- Materials Characterization: Utilizing various techniques to analyze and understand the structure, composition, and behaviour of materials under different conditions.
- Materials Processing: Developing new manufacturing techniques or processing methods to fabricate materials with specific properties and functionalities.
- Materials Testing: Conducting experiments to evaluate the mechanical, thermal, electrical, or other performance characteristics of materials and their interaction with external stimuli.
- Materials Integration: Exploring ways to integrate materials with other components or systems to create functional devices or machines.
- Modelling: Our expertise is in polymer material systems, which are highly nonlinear and are pronouncedly affected by environmental factors. We have developed the expertise to model these based on the principles of solid mechanics.
- Applications and Prototyping: Collaborating with industry partners or other research groups to apply the developed materials in real-world applications or to create prototypes of innovative devices. At the moment, our lab focuses on the development of smart prosthetics and artificial muscles.
