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Animangsu Ghatak, PhD (Lehigh University)

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Category: Chemical Engineering

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Associate Professor

Research Interests: Adhesion and friction on soft interfaces, Fracture of soft thin sheets, Bio-inspired approaches in design of engineering materials
Email: aghatak[AT]iitk.ac.in
Ph: +91-512-259-7146
Website: http://home.iitk.ac.in/~aghatak/

Highly deformable, soft elastic, viscoelastic and poroelastic materials occur in many different applications e.g. soft tissues, artificial organs, therapeutic patches, shock absorbers, dampeners, platforms for micro-fluidic device, novel biomaterials in biology as stems, roots and leaves, sponges, cartilage layers and bones and so on and so forth. In this variety of situations these materials are exposed to many different forms of mechanical loads, e.g. tension, compression, torsion, bending which, due to the large deformability of these materials and their complex rheological character, can generate such responses which are different from that commonly observed with the liner elastic systems. An example of such a response is the kinking instability which occurs in a cylindrical rod of soft hydrogel when it is bent beyond a critical curvature. It is different from the commonly observed wrinkling instability in thin, soft films or blocks. In our laboratory we study these materials and associated phenomena in the context of adhesion, friction, fracture and failure.