Description of the thesis topic

Context:
The project draws inspiration from natural morphogenesis, where plants and flowers deform and adapt to their environment. These movements are made possible by the complex and hierarchical architecture of plant tissues, as well as by activity that allows tissue growth. The project aims to replicate these capabilities in synthetic materials for applications in soft robotics, deployable space structures, and minimally invasive surgery.

Shape-Changing Synthetic Materials:
Current synthetic materials capable of shape-changing have limitations, including a strong dependence on the material used and a limited number of local degrees of freedom to control deformation. This thesis proposes using pressurized and architectured elastic structures, whose response depends not on the material but on the internal geometry, thus offering a wide variety of design possibilities.

Objectives:

In-Plane Deformation: The project aims to control in-plane deformation by varying the anisotropy of the internal architecture through the eccentricity of a triangular network of interconnected cavities. Three independent degrees of freedom will be used to control the components of the metric tensor.

Out-of-Plane Deformation: To control the reference curvature tensor, structures consisting of two superimposed layers of unit cells will be considered, generalizing the bilayer effect in two dimensions.

Shape Programming and Frustrated Mechanics: By spatially varying the eccentricities, densities, orientations, and pressures in each layer, six local degrees of freedom will allow full control of the metric and reference curvature at each point of the structure. This will enable the programming of complex shapes and the exploration of the mechanics of geometrically frustrated structures.

Work Context

This thesis offer is part of the ERC Dynamorph project. The thesis will take place at the Inria center of the University Grenoble Alpes and at the Interdisciplinary Physics Laboratory (LIPhy) in Grenoble, under the supervision of Mélina Skouras and Emmanuel Siéfert. The ideal candidate should have strong skills in programming and mathematics, as well as knowledge in physics and numerical simulation.

This project is at the interface between experimental physics and numerical modeling to develop innovative materials with programmable properties. The student will be responsible for all aspects of their project: setting up experiments, measuring and analyzing data, discussion, synthesis, and writing articles. The goal is to make the student fully autonomous and a leader in their research project. To assist the student in this task, a follow-up meeting will be held every week at a regular time. This meeting will discuss the progress of the work during the past week and determine the work program for the following week.

The position is located in a sector under the protection of scientific and technical potential (PPST), and therefore requires, in accordance with the regulations, that your arrival is authorized by the competent authority of the MESR.