The aim of this dissertation is to make sense of nearly a century and a half's worth of observations concerning skin based electroadhesion phenomena. While this is a noble goal in and of itself, further motivation of this work is drawn from fact that the electroadhesive effect is increasingly being...
In this presented study, rolling in micro scale level, termed as microrolling, has been advanced and extended its application to surface texturing and roll bonding. Meanwhile, continuous direct current (DC) is introduced to the processes to establish two new microrolling processes: the Electrically-assisted Roll Bonding (EARB) and the Electrically-assisted Microrolling-based...
The need for low-cost robust meso-scale "smart" robots (manipulators) that have no discrete parts (monolithic), no sensors ("self-sensing") and can be used in space-constrained systems, e.g., in microfactories, biomedical applications, etc., was the motivation for the current research. This study describes the design, fabrication and analysis of such a smart...
We present several multiscale quantum mechanical (QM), molecular mechanical (MM), and continuum mechanical (CM) schemes to study the strength properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene sheets. A bridging domain method based on overlapping domain-decomposition schemes using the Lagrange multipliers field is developed to couple an atomistic domain with a...
The macroscale mechanical and physical properties of materials are inherently linked to the underlying microstructure. Traditional continuum mechanics theories have focused on approximating the heterogeneous microstructure as a continuum, which is conducive to a partial differential equation mathematical description. Although this makes large scale simulation of material much more efficient...
Research on rat whiskers offers knowledge in neuroscience analogous to humans\' sense of touch and inspiration for efficient sensing robotics. The present work investigates the rat whisker system from a mechanical engineering perspective. First, key quasi-static and dynamic properties were quantified in Chapter 2 for individual whiskers in an array,...
Hybrid polymer-peptide conjugates are receiving increasing attention as a promising class of biomaterials. Polymer conjugated coiled-coil peptides are a new addition to these designer macromolecules. Even though a variety of experiments and computational simulations have shown stabilization of helices upon polymer conjugation, there are still many questions regarding the conformations...
Greater interest in self-directed professions, like entrepreneurship, have led to a growth in informal workplace communities and social technologies that support new ways of working. However, we have little understanding of how these socio-technical environments support opportunities for professional skill development. The goal of this dissertation is to understand how...
Mechanisms for sensing fluid flow are well studied in arthropods and in some aquatic mammals, but we know very little about how terrestrial mammals detect and localize airflow (Chapter 1). In this thesis, I will describe a series of studies in rodents that investigate the behavioral, mechanical, and neural basis...