Smart material systems and structures

Today, at Smart Talks with UTU, we had Prof. Marcelo A. Savi (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) as invited speaker and he talked about the role of nonlinear dynamics and bioinspiration in smart material systems and structures.

Bioinspiration is a paradigm that extracts design principles from biological and natural systems. Based on this, it is possible to create systems and structures with adaptive behavior according to their environment. Smart materials, in turn, have an essential importance in this idea, being used as sensors and actuators that define the notable characteristics of the system. Furthermore, natural rhythms can inspire new situations and therefore the investigation of nonlinear dynamics, chaos and control is establishing other design paradigms. The use of bioinspired smart systems is now evolving to create origami-inspired systems based on the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Basically, the main idea of origami is to create a three-dimensional structure from a flat source. Adaptive origami has been explored with the aim of producing foldable and adaptive structures that can be applied in different areas of human knowledge.

Taking all these exciting topics into account, Prof. Savi presented an overview of research activities in nonlinear mechanics related to smart bioinspired systems. In his talk, he discussed some applications of smart material systems and their thermomechanical behaviors. System modeling was also addressed, showing interesting behaviors for possible applications. Shape memory alloy systems, origami, vibration-based energy harvesting, chaos and chaos control were some of the topics presented, giving a general idea of the activities of his research group. The rich and complex dynamic response of these systems was of special concern.

Marcelo A. Savi is Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Professor at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COPPE – Mechanical Engineering) being the Head of the Center for Nonlinear Mechanics. He has published over 500 journal and conference papers, 5 books and about 15 book chapters. Awards and distinctions were received including: UFRJ solemn tribute to the most influential researchers in the world (Top 2%) based on PLOS Biology publication; COPPE Award Giulio Massarani of the Academic Merit; CNPq Researcher level 1A; Scientist of Rio de Janeiro. He is actively involved as advisor of graduate and undergraduate students, summing more than 150 works. Scientific exchanges with research centers in Brazil and all over the world should be highlighted. He has administrative experience as head of department, graduate coordinator, and university committees. He is the principal investigator of several research projects sponsored by the main Brazilian agencies (CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ), international agencies (NSF, AFOSR), and industrial partners. He serves as Associate Editor of some journals, where it is important to highlight: International Journal of Mechanical Sciences (2018-present); ASME – Journal of Computational and Nonlinear Dynamics (2019-present); Journal of Vibration and Control (2017-present); Metals (2021-present); Mathematical Problems in Engineering (2018-present); Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2006-2016); Journal of Applied Mathematics (2012-2014); and Open Journal of Acoustics (2007-2013). He is member of academic societies including ASME, ABCM and SBF. Research interests are related to nonlinear mechanics where it should be highlighted smart material and structures; nonlinear dynamics, chaos and control; biomechanics and ecology.

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