The MMM Lab has continued running Reading sessions during the months of building closure due to the C-19 disruption. Not being able to see each other in person has not disrupted our work and we have enjoyed the experience of meeting weekly to present interesting papers each of us are reading and to discuss with the rest of the group.
We also had some visitors, like Milo on 16th July !
One possible manufacturing method for bone scaffolds used in regenerative medicine involves the acoustic irradiation of a reacting polymer foam to generate a graded porosity. Sonication of foams have been our focus of research for many years now as this technology allows the porosity tailoring of cellular materials.
Sonicated foam (energy received from the left) with a marked gradation in porosity
We joined forces with Prof Mulholland’s team (Dr Barlow and Dr Bradley) at Strathclyde University and worked on a mathematical model of a non-reacting process in order to develop theoretical confirmation of the influence of the acoustic signal on the polymer foam.
The model describes single bubble growth in a free rising, nonreacting polymer foam irradiated by an acoustic standing wave and incorporates the effects of inertia. Investigations are carried out to explore the influence of inertia on the bubble volume, fluid pressure and the stress tensors of the foam, and to explore the effect of fluid viscosity and acoustic pressure amplitude on the final bubble volume, and the curing time. A key result is that increasing the applied acoustic pressure is shown to result in a reduced steady state bubble volume, indicating that ultrasonic irradiation has the potential to produce tailored porosity profiles in cellular materials such as bioengineering scaffolds and light-weight structures.
Our work has been compiled as a paper recently published in the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics and can be found here (Open Access).
biomimetics, structure
Fibonacci magic
In Comment on 2020/09/15 at 12:40 pm0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377…
Arthur Benjamin takes us through this inspiring maths class on the wonder of Fibonacci numbers, and how patterns in nature are formed.
When you build a rectangle using the Fibonacci numbers as side length, you obtain this:
And the ratio length over base gives you the Golden Ratio, thought of the guide for aesthetics and emotional design (e.g. Apple products have this their length/base ratio, have you noticed?)