Abstract Traditionally, the tendency of polymers and polymer composites to absorb measurable moisture in nearly all environments has been viewed as purely detrimental. While moisture absorption does generally degrade material properties, the nature of its interaction with the material also provides opportunities to better understand the internal structure of the material, including early-stage damage, inclusions, and other flaws. Absorbed moisture exists in multiple states within a polymer depending on the type of physical or chemical interaction, or lack thereof, between…

Biography: Nitin Sharma received the B.E. degree in Industrial Engineering from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, India, in 2004, and the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, in 2008 and 2010 respectively. He was an Alberta Innovates-Health Solutions Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Department of Physiology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. From 2012-2017, he was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and…

Abstract: Periodic structures have drawn much attention within the engineering and physics communities due to their unique wave properties and their numerous applications in passive vibration and noise control. Some periodic arrangements also feature topological properties that lead to wave modes that are localized at the edges of a domain or at the interface between two distinct domains. From the geometric point of view, periodic systems can be considered as particular types of assemblies that belong to a much broader…

Speaker: Dr. Xiaogang Hu   Abstract: An intuitive neural interface is critical for effective communications between humans and assistive robots. We will discuss bi-directional noninvasive neural-machine interfaces that decode user intended movement and provide sensory feedback of the machine state and environment. We perform continuous decoding of intended finger movement based on spinal motoneuron firing activities, extracted from high-density electromyographic signals. It allows intuitive and robust control of individual fingers of a prosthetic hand. We also deliver somatosensory (tactile and…