IGPP Seminar Series 2023: Karen Daniels

IGPP is pleased to invite you to join its Winter 2023 Seminar Series presentation featuring North Carolina State University's Karen Daniels. Dr. Daniels's talk, "Rigidity and Failure in Granular Materials" will be available March 14, 2023 in the Revelle conference room and over Zoom: https://ucsd.zoom.us/j/99071452955?pwd=MCtvYVNoRlhHSFJUU0RIeEg0MWF4QT09 Password: igpp

Time: 12:00 pm, Pacific Time
Location: Revelle conference room, and Zoom

Abstract: While earth materials often seem hard and rigid, the deformation of the earth's surface over long (creep) and short (landslides, earthquakes) timescales reveal their softer side. In my talk, I will summarize some frameworks for understanding rigidity that have been developed in the soft condensed matter physics community, and show their likely relevance to earth systems. Broadly speaking, disordered systems often contain both rigid and floppy regions within them, making system-wide averages and continuum modeling approaches unreliable predictors of the system's behavior. I will talk about several frameworks (network science, rigidity percolation, vibrational modes) capable of connecting the internal structure of disordered materials to their rigidity and/or failure under loading, and describe how we are starting to take these out of the lab and into the field.

Bio: Karen Daniels is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at NC State University. She received her BA in Physics from Dartmouth College in 1994, taught school for a few years, and then pursued a Ph.D. in Physics at Cornell University. After receiving her doctorate in 2002, she moved to North Carolina to do research at Duke University and then joined the faculty at NC State in 2005. Her lab at NC State investigates a number of problems in the deformation and failure of materials, from fluid flows, to piles of sand, to fracturing gels. When not working with her students on experiments in the lab, she likes to spend time in the outdoors, which has led her to contemplate the implications of her research for geological and ecological systems. In 2011-2012, she received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship which allowed her to spend the year conducting research in Göttingen, Germany. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Date: 
Mar 14 2023 - 12:00pm