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Spring 2022

Zongyu Wang

Poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and its copolymers received increasing attention due to their electroactive properties and lower processing cost in comparison to the conventional piezoelectric ceramic materials, which are widely used in electronics, energy harvesting, biochemistry, and sensor...

Fall 2015

Chen, Huanchen

Drop transfer from one solid surface to another through stretching liquid bridges between them is important for many industrial applications. Due to the different dominate forces, three possible regimes exist: Quasi-static Regime, where the transfer process is only dominated by surface forces;...

Spring 2019

Paul, Rajorshi

A bacterial colony constitutes a complex microcosm which is equipped with a wide range of defensive adaptations that allow the colony to survive adverse environmental conditions and predation. The extreme resilience of bacteria in colonies has been a subject of continued research for nearly two...

Spring 2024

Shaw, Pragati

Nanotechnology has advanced in recent years to the extent that custom-tailored structures of high regularity can now be synthesized with high precision. Single-digit nanochannels (SDNs), referring to nanochannels with a diameter or conduit width of less than 10 nanometers, present unique...

Spring 2021

Nademi, Yousef

Cell entry of polynucleotide-based therapeutic agents can be promoted by nanoparticle (NP) mediated delivery. This dissertation investigates membrane penetration of polynucleotide NPs, using mainly computational approaches, accompanied by some experiments. Major emphasis was placed on...

Fall 2021

Sun, Wenyuan

In this dissertation, all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were performed to study the mechanisms of clay-polymer interactions and the effects of solution chemistry in the treatment of mature fine tailings (MFT). The fine solids in MFT were mainly clay particles such as montmorillonite...

Spring 2021

Sun, Xiaoyu

Asphaltenes are the heaviest and most polar group of molecules in crude oil. Colloidal behaviors of asphaltenes, including the aggregation and interfacial behaviors, have impacts on many petroleum production processes. For example, the aggregation of asphaltenes can lead to problems such as...

Fall 2015

Liu, Wanru

Recent studies show that particle tracking together with moving least-square (MLS) method is capable to interpolate displacement field and to determine strain and stress fields from discrete displacement measurements in soft materials. The goal of this study is to evaluate of the numerical...

Fall 2018

Shawn Ryan Lavoie

Inelastic material behavior is known to be able to enhance the fracture toughness of elastomers. However, how to optimally exploit this toughening mechanism is still being investigated. In this thesis a series of continuum models are developed to describe such inelastic behaviors, with the goal...

Fall 2013

Sohail, Touqeer

Recently there has been great research interest in small soft particles because of their significance in both biology and industry. The term ‘particle’ here is defined as a deformable object with size in the range of nano- to micrometers. Many experimental efforts have been spent on investigating...