Soft materials are important to a wide range of engineering and biomedical applications. Examples of soft materials include engineering polymers (rubbers, thermoplastics, and thermosets), active polymers (shape memory polymers), polymer composites, and soft tissues (cornea, arteries, skin).  The mechanical behavior of soft materials is complex often exhibiting large deformation, anisotropy, nonlinear inelasticity, and rate-dependent failure. Further complicating matters, the behavior of soft active materials and tissues encompass multiple coupled physical phenomena such as themo-viscoelasticity, stress-driven transport, remodeling, and growth. 

Broadly, we are interested in developing innovative experimental tools to investigate the material microstructure and associated deformation mechanisms; multiphysics constitutive models that incorporate the deformation mechanisms of the underlying microstructure; and computational methods to implement material models for finite element analysis.

Our current research projects include:

1. •Tissue Mechanics
   

2. •Shape Memory Polymers
   

3. •Rate-Dependent Fracture