Today, the majority of materials used for single-use packaging are petroleum-based synthetic polymers. With increased concern about the environmental protection, efforts have been made to develop alternative biodegradable materials from renewable resources. Starch offers an attractive alternative since it is of low cost and abundant. However, the starch material is brittle without plasticizer a...

Title of Dissertation: SMART FOAM FOR ACTIVE VIBRATION AND NOISE CONTROL Wael Nabil Akl, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Amr M. Baz Department Mechanical Engineering A new class of smart foams is introduced to simultaneously control the vibration and noise radiation from flexible plates coupled with acoustic cavities. The proposed smart foam consists of a passive ...

We present herein a novel method to prepare free-standing Dried Foam Films (DFFs) whereby individual polynuclear manganese complexes cover quantitatively the holes of micro-grids; the fabricated, homogeneous films have a cross-sectional thickness of only ca. 5 nm and are characterised by high mechanical stability.

Foam materials based on metal and several polymers were transformed so that their cellular architectures became re-entrant, ie. with inwardly protruding cell ribs. Foams with re-entrant structures exhibited negative Poisson's ratios as well as greater resilience than conventional foams. Foams with negative Poisson's ratios were prepared using different techniques and materials and their mechani...

Materials with cellular structure occur widely in nature. This seminar discusses the mechanical models of two and three dimensional cellular solids. We introduce the honeycomb-like structure of wood and the foam-like structure of the trabecular bone. The third example of cellular material, glass sponge Euplectella sp., is presented as well.

We look at Maker-Breaker k-clique game played on the edge set of the random graph G(n, p). In this game, two players, Maker and Breaker, alternately claim unclaimed edges of G(n, p), until all the edges are claimed. Maker wins if he claims all the edges of a k-clique; Breaker wins otherwise. We determine that the property that Maker can win this game has a threshold at n− 2 k+1 , for all k > 3....

We study Maker/Breaker games on the edges of sparse graphs. Maker and Breaker take turns in claiming previously unclaimed edges of a given graph H . Maker aims to occupy a given target graph G and Breaker tries to prevent Maker from achieving his goal. We define a function f on the integers and show that for every d-regular graph G on n vertices there is a graph H with at most f(d)n edges such ...