This is a past event.

A Route to Simulate Billions of Atoms

ME-EM Graduate Seminar Speaker Series

proudly presents:

Dr. Susanta Ghosh
Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics
Michigan Technological University

Abstract: Modern Mechanics of Materials aims at incorporating the effects of microstructure and atomistic physics into continuum models. This has lead to new insights in design of new materials and improvement of material properties. In this talk I will discuss a novel up-scaling- strategy for Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and Multi-Layer Graphenes (MLGs). MWCNTs and MLGs have the potential to greatly contribute to nano-scale devices and nanostructured materials. The full understanding and technological exploitation of these systems require predictive models and simulations. Consequently, predictive simulations have become one of the focal points in current research for these systems. Predictive simulation approaches aim at deductively constructing continuum theories starting from models of the interatomic interactions. This viewpoint has become extremely popular with the quasi-continuum method. Along this line we propose a three-dimensional continuum model for layered crystalline materials made out of weakly interacting two dimensional crystalline sheets. The model is specialized for MLGs, including MWCNTs. We view the material as a foliation, a partitioning of space. In the proposed model the energy density (hyper-elastic potential) is derived from bonded and non-bonded potentials of the foliated continuum. We find that the foliation model is very efficient and accurate. We have exercised the model in large hollow MWCNTs and graphene samples containing billions of atoms. Furthermore, this model helps us to explain the rippling deformation modes characteristic of MWCNTs. The present approach may have a broad range of applications in the analysis and design of MWCNTs and MLGs.

Bio: Susanta Ghosh is currently a Research Assistant Professor and Instructor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics at the Michigan Technological University. Earlier he has worked as an Associate in Research at the Duke University. Prior to that he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and at the Technical University Of Catalunya, Barcelona. He has received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. His research focuses on Computational Mechanics, Inverse Problems for Ultrasound Elastography, Multi-scale Material Modeling, and Phase Field modeling.