Category Physics

The CAROS has been introduced in various media. Credit: Copyright KAIST

The integrity of large structures like bridges, high-rise buildings, wind turbines, and large aircrafts is deeply related with security. Today, due to the aging of large structures and the potential concerns about their collapse, interest in structural health monitoring has risen all over the world. Though there has been a great deal of research on the inspection of inaccessible large structures using mobile robots, since most existing robots require the installation of additional infrastructure or use magnetic-based technology or vacuum adhesion, it is difficult to apply those technologies to structures with diverse surface shapes and materials.

Professor Hyun Myung, KAIST has developed CAROS (Climbing Aerial RObot Sy...

Figure illustrates puddles of localized quasi-condensates found using a quantum Monte Carlo simulation of trapped atoms in a disordered lattice. Individual puddles, consisting of 10-20 particles each, are incoherent relative to each other. The Bose glass is composed of these puddle-like structures. Credit: Ushnish Ray, University of Illinois

Using some of the largest supercomputers available, physics researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have produced one of the largest simulations ever to help explain one of physics most daunting problems. “This result was a fantastic collaboration between theory and experiment,” explained Prof. Brian DeMarco. “One of the grandest and most impactful frontiers of physics is the quantum many-particle problem...

(a) Schematic cross-sectional diagram of the device. In the absence of an electric field, the surfaces are relatively smooth, and light passes through without being scattered or refracted. (b) When connected to a high-voltage source, the nanowires locally compress the elastomer, deforming its surface. Since the nanowires are randomly oriented, the resulting deformation diffuses light passing through the device. (c–f) Changes of opacity at the indicated actuation voltage from 0 to 2.2 kV, demonstrating control over the in-line transmittance using electrical potential. The logo and text are located 15 cm behind the circular film. The black rectangles are electrical contacts to the two sides of nanowire electrodes.

Method turns glass from clear to opaque with the flick of a switch...

Analysis of the possible shapes of the extruded cube unit cell.

Imagine a house that could fit in a backpack or a wall that could become a window with the flick of a switch. Harvard researchers have designed a new type of foldable material that is versatile, tunable and self actuated. It can change size, volume and shape; it can fold flat to withstand the weight of an elephant without breaking, and pop right back up to prepare for the next task.

“We’ve designed a three-dimensional, thin-walled structure that can be used to make foldable and reprogrammable objects of arbitrary architecture, whose shape, volume and stiffness can be dramatically altered and continuously tuned and controlled,” said Johannes T. B. Overvelde, graduate student in Bertoldi’s lab.

The structure is inspired by an or...