MAE Seminar – Soft Matter Symphony: Microscopic Rhythms Echoing in Macroscale Flow Behavior

Details

MAE Seminar – Soft Matter Symphony: Microscopic Rhythms Echoing in Macroscale Flow Behavior

Tuesday, February 13, 2024, at 12:50pm, Location: MAE-A 303

Dr. Rishabh V. More, Post Doctoral Research Associate, Hatsopoulos Microfluidics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abstract
In the ever-evolving landscape of materials science, a paradigm shift has occurred, leading us into the era of “Soft Materials.” Amidst the diverse array of soft materials like particulate suspensions, colloids, polymers, surfactants, liquid crystals, and living matter, a profound challenge arises – the need to comprehend and control the flow of these materials. This talk delves into the intricate world of particulate soft matter, specifically suspensions or colloids, which have become integral components in a myriad of applications ranging from everyday consumer products to cutting-edge technologies. However, fundamental properties governing the behavior of particulate soft matter often elude naked eye, requiring advanced computational approaches to unravel their mysteries. To this end, I developed an experimentally validated and physics-based computational approach, designed to dissect and comprehend the intricate dynamics of particulate soft matter.

This talk reveals the hidden world of microscale interactions and their profound impact on the macroscale rheology and mesoscale structure of soft materials. These novel insights open doors to design their behavior. This tuning capability becomes crucial in addressing real-world challenges such as improving solar cell efficiency, better handling of battery slurry, and the reinforcing tailings dams. The talk unfolds as a journey through scales showcasing the heterogeneous and hierarchical nature of structural and dynamic complexity in dilute colloidal gels to dense non-Brownian suspensions. As I will demonstrate in my talk, this powerful approach not only improves our fundamental understanding, but also provides guidelines to develop superior materials and optimize their flow behavior for critical energy and environmental challenges.

Biography
Dr. Rishabh V. More is a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Prof. Gareth H. McKinley in the Hatsopoulos Microfluidics Laboratory (HML) in the department of Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his PhD and MS from Purdue University, working with Prof. Arezoo Ardekani, and B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in Mechanical Engineering. He is a recipient of the outstanding graduate research award and prestigious Lambert Fellowship at Purdue University, honorarium at the Soft Matter for All symposium at Princeton University, and several invited talks. In addition, Dr. More holds patent applications, and collaborates extensively with industry, including Merck, Lubrizol, and Pharos Materials. He works in the field of fluid mechanics focusing on complex fluids and soft matter with applications in energy storage technologies, advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, and environmental flows. His research combines scientific computing, modeling, experiments, and machine learning to investigate the mechanics of soft materials across scales, from microscopic to macroscopic, to develop structure-property relationships and continuum models.

MAE Faculty Host: Dr. Nam-Ho Kim