News & Press Releases

This workshop covers how to effectively utilize Microsoft Outlook to schedule meetings. Topics include using the scheduler to choose a time that works with all participants' availability, using recurring meetings, adding a Zoom or Teams link, and more. Previous Microsoft Outlook calendar experience is required. This workshop will take place via Zoom teleconference. The Zoom meeting link will be sent to registered participants via email the morning of the workshop. For more information about this workshop, contact Rich Legault at 508-999-8799 or email rlegault@umassd.edu.

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Please attend one required informational meeting for students who are interested in applying for the RA position for the 2024-2025 academic year. 20 opportunities to attend in November are available. LOCATION: SENG 102 For More information contact Michelle Black at mblack2@umassd.edu

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Please join the College of Arts & Sciences in celebrating the Boivin Center and 25 years of Dr. Mel and Cindy Yoken. RSVP to rleverett@umassd.edu no later than November 7, 2023. Reception will be held at Marketplace.

The Marketplace

Mechanical Engineering (MNE) SEMINAR DATE: December 8, 2023 TIME: 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Location: Science & Engineering (SENG), Room 110 and on Zoom:https://umassd.zoom.us/j/91640406955?pwd=eklBZWVDOXVDa2VwUFMra1kwNWhjdz09 (contact hling1@umassd.edu or scunha@umassd.edu for Passcode) SPEAKER: Dr. Tiantian Li, Postdoctoral Research Associate Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University TOPIC: 3D Keyed Octahedron: A New Family of Auxetic Metamaterials with Enhanced Mechanical Properties ABSTRACT: Mechanical metamaterials are engineering materials with artificial structures, targeting a specific set of mechanical properties. These properties often conflict with each other. (i) For example, engineering materials often achieve high energy dissipation by sacrificing resilience, as limits their performance and applications under cyclic loading. Designing material with both high resilience and high energy dissipation capability is challenging. (ii) Moreover, most existing 2D and 3D mechanical metamaterial with cellular designs can only achieve orthotropy instead of isotropy. Few of them break this trend as small deformation, while most of them show highly anisotropic under large deformation due to the distortion of micro ligaments/cell walls. Therefore, it is another challenge to design 3D mechanical metamaterial with certain isotropic preserved mechanical properties under large deformation. (iii) Furthermore, most existing mechanical metamaterials have a cellular structure which cannot achieve high energy dissipation under dynamic loading, as limits their performance and applications. Therefore, designing 3D mechanical metamaterial with high impact resistance is still challenging. To meet the aforementioned challenges, we propose a new design strategy to create a family of mechanical metamaterials: 3D keyed octahedron metamaterial. This metamaterial shows high resilience while achieving large mechanical hysteresis synergistically under large compressive strain. Especially, this metamaterial exhibits ideal isotropy approaching the theoretical limit of isotropic Poissons ratio, -1, as rarely seen in existing mechanical metamaterials. In addition, the new class of metamaterial provides wide tunability on mechanical properties and behaviors, including an unusual coupled auxeticity and twisting under normal compression. Interestingly, one two-phase design in this family of metamaterial shows a significantly enhanced impact resistance compared with its conventional cellular counterpart. In summary, these remarkable and unusual mechanical behaviors of this new family of 3D mechanical metamaterial can broad many applications in soft robotics, mechanical actuators and dampers, and engineering materials/systems for energy absorption/impact and vibration mitigation. BIO: Dr. Tiantian Li is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Northeastern University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Cambridge. He received his B.E (2010) from Tsinghua University and M.E (2012) from Tsukuba University, both majoring in Material Science. After that, Tiantian Li received his Ph.D. in 2018 from New York State University at Stony Brook, majoring in solid mechanics. The research interests of Dr. Tiantian Li include design of novel architected materials; additive manufacturing; mechanical behavior of materials; micromechanics of deformation and fracture, bio-inspired materials, and mechanical metamaterials. For more information please contact Dr. Hangjian Ling, MNE Seminar Coordinator (hling1@umassd.edu). All are welcome. Students taking MNE-500 are REQUIRED to attend this seminar! All other MNE students are encouraged to attend.

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EAS PhD Dissertation Defense by Shayan Razi Date: December 11, 2023 Time: 9:30am Topic: An Energy-Based Lattice Element Approach to Modeling Linear and Nonlinear Response of Complex Building Systems Location: CSCDR TXT 105 Abstract: Extreme loading conditions due to natural hazards such as windstorms, earthquakes, and floods can lead to the failure of both structural and non-structural elements, and subsequently, damage to the entire structural system. The significant economic repercussions of such events call for the revisiting of engineering approaches to resilience assessment towards the examination of the functional integrity of civil infrastructure. This assessment requires the development of accurate yet computationally efficient frameworks to model the failure of systems comprising structural and non-structural components. To this end, we leverage a Potential-of-Mean-Force (PMF) approach to Lattice Element Method (LEM), a class of discrete methods demonstrated to be particularly advantageous for simulating failure and fracture, to capture the mechanical response of structural systems in both linear and nonlinear regimes. The premise of the proposed framework is to discretize the system into a set of particles that interact with each other through prescribed potential functions, which represent the mechanical properties of different types of members. Lending itself to damage assessment due to its discrete nature, our PMF-based LEM transcends the limitations of continuum mechanics approaches and enables the incorporation of a range of effective interaction potentials, to simulate the linear and nonlinear behavior of structural components. Since the determination of elastic behavior is a precursor to the failure analysis of structural components, harmonic potentials are initially adopted to model the linear response of various structural members, e.g., beams, columns, roofs, and walls. The calibration procedure for such potentials is thus carried out via a handshake with continuum mechanics theories, e.g., the Timoshenko beam theory and Kirchhoff-Love plate theory. This calibration is then carried out for non-harmonic potentials by adopting section properties that encapsulate the nonlinear stress-strain responses of the materials, e.g., nonlinear moment-curvature relations. Upon the calibration of non-harmonic potentials, ductile failure of the structural members is modeled by breaking bonds between particles according to an energy-based failure criterion. Finally, the utility and accuracy of the proposed framework is demonstrated through its application in (i) both quasi-static linear and nonlinear simulations of large-scale buildings under different loading conditions, (ii) the simulation of progressive structural failure due to the propagation of local structural damage. ADVISOR(S): Dr. Mazdak Tootkaboni, Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering (mtootkaboni@umassd.edu) COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Dr. Arghavan Louhghalam, Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering Dr. Yanlai Cheng, Department of Mathematics Dr. Alfa Heryudono, Department of Mathematics NOTE: All EAS Students are ENCOURAGED to attend.

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Please attend one required informational meeting for students who are interested in applying for the RA position for the 2024-2025 academic year. 20 opportunities to attend in November are available. LOCATION: VIA Zoom https://umassd.zoom.us/j/95552332558?pwd=WktucDZGZjEzWkgrbER4WWZGMzVQdz09 For More information contact Michelle Black at mblack2@umassd.edu

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