Dear colleagues,
the University of Freiburg (Germany) is currently looking for a new
faculty member in the field of Soft Machines. This is a tenure track
position in the Department of Microsystems Engineering. We are looking
for someone to represent research and teaching in the field of machines
made of soft, deformable materials such as gels, elastomers / liquid
crystalline elastomers (LCEs) and responsive materials.
The full job advertisement can be found here:
https://uni-freiburg.de/university/jobs/00002060/
Please contact me if you have questions about the positions.
Best regards,
Lars Pastewka
The Department of Microsystems Engineering and the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Freiburg are calling for applications for
Two doctoral or postdoctoral researcher positions
We invite applications for two three-year junior scientist positions, to be filled either at a doctoral or a postdoctoral level at the University of Freiburg at the earliest possible start date. The positions are funded in a joint project by PIs Profs. Pastewka (Department of Microsystems Engineering) and Dondl (Department for Applied Mathematics) within SPP 2256 “Variational Methods for Predicting Complex Phenomena in Engineering Structures and Materials”. The project concerns the study of crystal dislocations from both an atomistic and a continuum perspective using computational as well as mathematical analytic tools. We are seeking candidates with a background in mathematics, physics or engineering. Please include any relevant documents in your application.
Candidates for the doctoral researcher position are required have obtained a master's degree (or equivalent) at the start date, candidates for the postdoctoral researcher position need a doctoral degree.
Please contact Patrick Dondl (patrick.dondl@mathematik.uni-freiburg.de) or Lars Pastewka (lars.pastewka@imtek.uni-freiburg.de) for more information about the advertised positions.
The full description, including information on how to apply, can be found here:
http://www.uni-freiburg.de/verwaltung/stellenboerse/00001128
Adhesion and friction involving fluids or viscous matter, such as encountered in adhesives or in lubrication, are processes that determine everyday life, from human interaction with the environment to the function and reliability of machinery. Doctoral positions are available for three archetypal systems that all pose unsolved problems from a multiscale modeling perspective: Pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs) that achieve tack through a soft viscoelastic medium at the interface of the contacting bodies, classical lubrication of hard substrates as employed in mechanical machinery and lubrication of soft substrates often found in biological systems such as synovial joints. In these systems, molecular interactions determine the viscoelastic response of the confined adhesive or lubricant, but the entrainment conditions are determined by long-range elastic deformation. Adhesion and friction at the macroscopic scale is therefore an inherent multi-scale problem.
Predictive models for the deformation and energy dissipation in these systems are presently not available. The complexity of the problem requires a recursive guidance of the sampling at mechanically relevant conditions at one scale by the other. Mesoscopic models capture geometrical properties of interfaces, such as roughness and gradients in substrate elasticity, and provide information on the deformation of interface and solid. The goal of this project is to recursively couple these mesoscale calculations to molecular dynamics models of the adhesive or lubricant, thereby bypassing the need for explicit constitutive equations that are presently used for these types of problems.
The doctoral positions are located at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, and are embedded in a new research training group "Tailored Scale-Bridging Approaches to Computational Nanoscience". More information on the application process can be found here: http://www.compnano.kit.edu/26.php
In this project, you will develop and apply numerical methods to gain insights into the mechanics of triboelectric nanogenerators and metamaterials. For both systems, the mechanical response is essential for the system’s function. In triboelectric generators, rough or patterned surfaces make contact and the mechanics of the interface determines contact area and stiffness and hence the charging efficiency. For metamaterials, the structural design of the individual unit cell determines the constitutive macroscopic response that can be designed in silico. Both problems will be attacked with the help of spectral solvers that allow for efficient solution of the underlying physical problem.
The position is funded by the German Cluster of Excellence Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS) at the University of Freiburg and will be supervised within the Department of Microsystems Engineering.
More information on the position can be found here: http://www.uni-freiburg.de/verwaltung/stellenboerse/00000260
More information on livMatS can be found here: http://www.fit.uni-freiburg.de/livMatS-en
Dear Colleague,
we are pleased to announce a four-day CECAM/Psi-k Workshop on
"Emergence of surface and interface structure from friction, fracture and deformation",
that will take place at the EPFL campus in Lausanne from Tuesday 24th July to Friday 27th July 2018.
The workshop will look from different perspectives (both experimental and theoretical) at the emergence of surface/interface structure in materials upon deformation. Examples of thematic areas that will be addressed by the workshop are the roughness of fracture surfaces, the evolution of topography during frictional loading or surface structures (wrinkles, folds) generated by elastic and plastic instabilities.
This workshop will bring together world leading experimentalists and modellers and address length scales that range from the atomic to the geological scale. The main goals are to highlight the most relevant open problems and identify those which can be attacked by combining existing techniques.
More background information about the workshop can be found at https://www.cecam.org/workshop-0-1577.html, where the programme will also be published in due course. A list of confirmed speakers and participants can be found at https://www.cecam.org/workshop-1-1577.html.
There are still some places available for participants. We encourage young researchers to apply and submit an abstract for a poster presentation. Detailed information about the workshop, as well as the application form, can be found at https://www.cecam.org/workshop-0-1577.html. When applying, please provide a very brief outline CV as well as the poster abstract. Since the number of participants is limited due to space reasons, we suggest to apply as soon as possible. A selection process based on poster abstracts will take place after the application deadline (15th April 2018). Note that no registration fees will be charged.
Looking forward to welcoming you in Lausanne,
Alessandro De Vita (King’s College London), James Kermode (University of Warwick), Gianpietro Moras (Fraunhofer IWM), Lars Pastewka (University of Freiburg)
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We would like to strongly encourage you to submit an abstract to Symposium N: Tribology: mechanics, physics and chemistry of solid-solid and solid-liquid interfaces at the 8th International Conference on Multiscale Materials Modeling to held in Dijon, France from October 9-14, 2016.
Tribological phenomena, such as adhesion, friction, lubrication and wear, control our everyday interaction with the environment and determine the function of most mechanical devices. To capture the full complexity of a tribological contact, electronic structure theory describing Ångström-scale chemistry must be coupled to an atomistic description of surface plasticity and liquid or third-body lubrication that feed into continuum models for the contact of rough surfaces over millimeter scales. We therefore strive to bring together researchers working on aspects of electronic structure theory, atomistic models, discrete dislocation dynamics, and continuum models with a focus on processes at and near interfaces and the influence of interface geometry. In this sense, this symposium represents a unique opportunity to present and develop ideas to tackle the multiscale aspects that make it so hard to simulate and predict tribological performance in technical applications.
Topics will include (but not be limited to) Physical chemistry of surfaces under the action of an external load (mechanochemistry), lubrication of interfaces, elastic and elastoplastic contact between rough surfaces, third body formation, microstructural evolution, methods for realistic mechanical and thermal boundary conditions and coupling quantum with atomistic and atomistic with continuum scale models.
For more details on this symposium and abstract submission, visit http://mmm2016.iop.org/Symposia_N
Please feel free to forward this announcement to interested colleagues. We look forward to receiving your contributions!
Yours sincerely,
Guillaume Anciaux
Nicolas Fillot
Clotilde Minfray
Michael Moseler
Lars Pastewka
Izabela Szlufarska
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Together with Tevis Jacobs, Ju Li and Qian Yu, I'd like to invite you to submit an abstract to Symposium CM3: Mechanics and Tribology at the Nanoscale: In situ and In silico Investigations at the Spring MRS meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, from March 28-April 1, 2016.
Mechanical and tribological behavior at the nanoscale are often studied in isolation. Yet, insights into tribology require an understanding of elastic and inelastic deformation of the sub-surface material, while deformation experiments can rarely be carried out without consideration of interfacial phenomena occurring at contacts between components. In this symposium, we bring together experimentalists and theoreticians working on aspects of plasticity, hardness, fracture toughness, and fatigue, as well as contact, friction, adhesion, and wear, to encourage and nucleate interaction between these two fields.
Topics will include (but not be limited to) experimental and simulation investigations of deformation mechanisms in nanoscale geometries, elastic and inelastic deformation in nanoscale contact including the origins of friction and wear, and investigations on environmental effects on mechanical properties.
For more details on this symposium visit: http://www.mrs.org/spring-2016-call-for-papers-cm3/
Please submit your abstract at: http://www.mrs.org/spring-2016-abstract-submission/
Deadline for submission of abstracts is October 15.
Yours sincerely,
Lars Pastewka
We are pleased to announce a 4-day CECAM/Psi-k Workshop on
"Chemical and structural transformations in materials under mechanical load",
that will take place at the EPFL campus in Lausanne from Tuesday 1st September to Friday 4th September 2015.
The focus of the workshop will be on materials’ structural and chemical transformations that are caused by external loads and in turn determine the materials macroscopic mechanical response. Particular attention will be devoted to the following thematic areas:
tribochemistry and related microstructural changes;
crack-tip chemistry;
plasticity in glassy and metallic materials.
This workshop will bring together world leading experimentalists and modellers to highlight the most relevant open problems and identify those which can be attacked by combining existing techniques. We are encouraging participation by EU industry representatives who carry out experimental R&D but are not necessarily familiar with the existing state of art modelling tools.
More background information about the workshop can be found athttp://www.cecam.org/workshop-1148.html, where the workshop programme will also be published in due course.
A list of confirmed speakers and participants can be found at http://www.cecam.org/workshop-1-1148.html.
There are still several places available for participants. We encourage young researchers to apply and submit an abstract for a poster presentation. Detailed information about the workshop, as well as the application form, can be found at http://www.cecam.org/workshop-0-1148.html. When applying, please provide a very brief outline CV and give some motivation for your interest in attending the workshop.
Since the number of participants is limited due to space reasons, we suggest to apply as soon as possible. Note that no registration fees will be applied. U.S.-based participants can apply for travel funding through thetravel award (http://mcc.illinois.edu/travel/) program of the Materials Computation Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Looking forward to welcoming you in Lausanne,
Alessandro De Vita (King’s College London),
James Kermode (University of Warwick),
Gianpietro Moras (Fraunhofer IWM, Freiburg),
Lars Pastewka (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology),
Mike Payne (University of Cambridge)
Friction and wear are important processes that determine the function of many mechanical devices, but their underlying microscopic physical principles are complex and often not well understood. Amorphous – or glassy – materials often form on surfaces that have experienced frictional loading. The research will involve large-scale molecular dynamics simulation of the near-surface deformation upon indentation and scratching of network and bulk metallic glasses. The goal is to build a fundamental understanding of energy dissipation channels and plastic deformation processes in these materials, and to identify potential differences in the behavior of ceramic and metallic glass formers. The project will also make connection with higher level meso- and macroscale theories for the description of the plasticity of glasses.
The research will be carried out in the group of Dr. Lars Pastewka in a project funded by the Emmy-Noether program of the German Research Foundation. The group is embedded in the MicroTribology Center (μTC) which bundles tribology-related research activities at KIT-IAM and Fraunhofer IWM. KIT provides excellent infrastructure for computational research, including multiple high-performance computing platforms and large-data storage facilities.
The candidate has an MSc (or equivalent) with a strong focus on Material Science, Mechanics, Physics or Chemistry. Additional knowledge of glasses, numerical methods, atomic-scale simulation, and experience with Python and C/C++ is an asset.
Remuneration occurs on the basis of the wage agreement of the civil service in TV-L. The application deadline is May 31, 2015.
For more information please contact Dr. Lars Pastewka, Email: lars.pastewka@kit.edu. Interested candidates are asked to send a cover letter, curriculum vitae, transcripts and contact information for at least one academic reference to the IAM-CMS front office reachable at office-CMS@iam.kit.edu.
KIT is an equal opportunity employer. Women are especially encouraged to apply. Applicants with disabilities will be preferentially considered if equally qualified.