Soft robots are being increasingly developed and deployed for underwater applications such as exploration, monitoring, and rescue owing to their innate compliance, mechanical and chemical stability, and waterproof properties. However, they are still predom ...
The remarkable adaptability observed in marine ecosystems has often inspired researchers when developing new soft materials. The research undertaken in this thesis explores how ion chelator pair interactions influence the mechanical properties of bioinspir ...
Hollow-core 3D printing (HC3DP) proposes a new method for the production of lightweight, material-efficient thermoplastic 3D printed elements. This new fabrication approach promises material savings of 50-80%, while increasing the extrusion rate significan ...
Small scale (1:30-1:40) Reinforced Concrete is useful for centrifuge testing. However, manufacturing the reinforcing cages by hand at this scale is practically difficult. This paper suggests that small scale reinforcement can be manufactured using a metal ...
Nature produces soft materials with fascinating combinations of mechanical properties. For example, the mussel byssus embodies a combination of stiffness and toughness, a feature that is unmatched by synthetic hydrogels. Key to enabling these excellent mec ...
Water is ubiquitous within the pore space of rocks and has been shown to affect their physical and mechanical behaviour. Indeed, water can act on the rock strength via mechanical (i.e., reducing the effective stresses) or chemical effects (e.g., mineral di ...
Recently, single-particle cryo-electron microscopy emerged as a technique capable of determining protein structures at near-atomic resolution and resolving protein dynamics with a temporal resolution ranging from second to milliseconds. This thesis describ ...
