FLEXLAB

Our research focuses on embracing mechanical instabilities of slender structures toward devising, understanding and exploiting novel functional mechanisms, over a wide range of lengthscales.

Research at EPFL’s Flexible Structures Laboratory (the fleXLab) focuses on developing a fundamental understanding of the large deformation of slender structures that emerge in their post-buckling regime. We seek to harvest the underlying mechanical instabilities towards understanding and exploiting novel functional mechanisms, over a wide range of length scales.

Our work is rooted on the basis of recognizing scaled high-precision model experiments as a powerful tool for discovery and exploration in Mechanics, supported by theory and computation, in a vision of science-enabled engineering and engineering-motivated science. The final goal is to develop new classes of functional, flexible structures that can be rationally designed using predictive modeling frameworks.

We are passionate about engineering applications of flexible thin structures across a wide range of length scales, as well as opening up new curiosity-driven fundamental questions (and providing answers!) in this class of geometrically nonlinear mechanical systems.

• 14/04/2021
  Paul Grandgeorge’s paper “Mechanics of two filaments in tight orthogonal contact” is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America [journal link].

• 25/01/2021
  Paul Johanns’s paper “The shapes of physical trefoil knots” is published in Extreme Mechanics Letters [journal link].

• 20/01/2021
  Tian’s paper “A reprogrammable mechanical metamaterial with stable memory” is published in Nature [journal link] (Nature News and Views [html] and EPFL News [html]).

• 09/11/2020
  Changyeob’s paper “Finite element modeling of tight
  elastic knots” is published in the Journal of Applied Mechanics [journal link].

• 04/09/2020
  Postdoc opening at our lab in the area of the mechanics of slender structures! Details [here].

• 25/08/2020
  Matteo’s paper “Deformation of porous flexible strip in low and moderate Reynolds number flows” is published in Physical Review Fluids [journal link].

• 20/03/2020
  Dong’s paper “Buckling of pressurized spherical shells containing a through-thickness defect” is published in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids [journal link].

• 02/10/2019
  Matteo’s paper “A weak form implementation of nonlinear axisymmetric shell equations with examples” is published in the Journal of Applied Mechanics [journal link].

• 16/08/2019
  Elizabeth’s paper “Hydrodynamic loading of perforated disks in creeping flows” is published in Physical Review Fluids [journal link].

• 28/06/2019
  Anna’s paper “Evolution of critical buckling conditions in imperfect bilayer shells through residual swelling” is published in Soft Matter [journal link].

• 29/05/2019
  Mark’s paper “Programmable aerodynamic drag on active dimpled cylinders” is published in Advanced Engineering Materials [journal link] and highlighted in Advanced Science News  [news link].

• 29/03/2019
  New projects open for EPFL students. Check them out [here].

• 7/1/2019
  Samuel Poincloux (from France), Armelle Keiser (from France) and Tian Chen (from Canada) join the fleXLab as Postdocs.

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fleXLab – Flexible Structures Laboratory

EPFL STI IGM FLEXLAB 
MED 0 1726 (Batiment MED) 
Station 9 
CH-1015 Lausanne 

Phone: +41 21 69 35726

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