MechE Seminar Series: Chris Santangelo

Speaker: Chris Santangelo Title: Geometric soft modes and rigidity in frustrated shells Abstract: When subjected to specifi c prestresses, continuum elastic shells can exhibit geometric zero modes: potentially complex motions that require little energy to excite, enabling them to be driven by weak and generic energy inputs. Despite recent interest in these modes, we understand very little about their dynamical properties, or - in fact - when they appear. I will discuss approaches that exploit geometry to produce geometric soft modes from prestresses. Using a combination of analytical theory, computation and experiment, we show that the elastodynamics of these soft modes are generically captured by the dynamics of a damped pendulum. I will end by discussing the prospects for designing even more complex motions. About the Speaker: Prof. Santangelo earned his B.A. in Physics from Cornell (1997) and PhD in physics from UCSB (2004) under Fyl Pincus, and was a postdoc at Penn with Randy Kamien. He started at UMass Amherst in 2007. He moved to Syracuse University in 2019. He is the recipient of several awards including the CAREER award, the DSOFT Young Investigator Award (American Physical Society). He is also a fellow of the APS.