CAI Research Group

Our research is focused on the mechanics and chemistry of soft materials including both synthesized polymers and biological tissues. We try to understand and model large deformation, instabilities, fracture, fatigue, chemo-mechanical coupling, electro-mechanical coupling in diverse soft materials. We also explore novel engineering applications of soft materials, such as artificial muscle, soft robots, soft machines and biomedical devices.

We recently have interests in the following areas:

  • Deformation, fracture , fatigue, and time-dependent mechanical behaviors of polymers

  • Chemo-mechanics, electro-mechanics, thermo-mechanics of soft materials

  • Instabilities of materials and structures

  • Processing of polymers and polymer composites

  • Soft robotics

  • Design, fabrication and mechanical analysis of novel devices

  • Biomechanics

  • Erosion, degradation of polymers

  • Vitrimers

  • Characterizations and modeling of mechanical behaviors of polymers

  • Electrospinning of polymer fibers for diverse applications

Cartilage Mechanics (paper)

Tensegrity Robot (paper)

Large deformation and Instability(paper)

Artificial Muscle (paper)

Tubular actuator (paper)

Eye-controlled robotic lens (paper)

Inflation of a nematic elastomer balloon (paper)