MEMS Seminar: "The Wild Complexity Born from a Simple Nonlinearity, and How to Tame It"

The problem of a beam on an elastic foundation has a long history in engineering mechanics. Its deformation and onset of buckling behavior have been employed as a surrogate for understanding an extensive list of technologically important applications, including sun-kinking of railroads, pipeline transportation engineering, and thin films on hard or soft substrates in microelectronic and biological applications. Despite this history, the global bifurcation behavior of the problem has not been fully explored. Indeed, the complexity of the equilibrium solution set will come as a surprise to many practicing and research engineers.

Ryan S. Elliott received his B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Michigan State University, East Lansing. He received a M.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering, a M.S. in Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and Scienti¿c Computing, all from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2004 he was a Research Fellow at The University of Michigan. Elliott was appointed, as an Assistant Professor, in January 2005 to the faculty of the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Department at The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. In 2011 he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure and to Professor in 2018. In 2010 he held the position of Visiting Researcher at the Laboratoire de Me´canique des Solides (LMS) of The ´Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France.

Lunch will be served at 11:30 am.
Hosted by Dr. John Dolbow