Collaborative Research: A Data-Driven Statistical Approach to Aging and Elasticity in Colloidal Glasses

这项资助的研究目的是从统计学和微观的角度了解玻璃材料老化的基本过程。玻璃材料的老化是一个长期存在的问题：玻璃是一种非平衡材料，所以它的机械和电气性能会随着时间的推移而改变，但微观原因仍然未知。了解老化对于延长玻璃材料（包括“普通”玻璃和塑料）制成的产品的使用寿命具有重要意义。该项目涉及玻璃系统的模拟，并将采用新颖的统计技术来重建材料的局部弹性特性。我们将学习这些特性在老化过程中是如何变化的。补充实验将在胶体玻璃上进行，胶体玻璃是一种表征良好的模型系统，具有老化特性。由于实验可以获得的数据数量有限-更根本的是，在系统进入新状态之前可以获得的数据有限-我们将需要扩展生物信息学和计量经济学的统计技术，以便能够从我们的数据中获得相关信息。所开发的统计技术将在老化或材料科学以外的各种应用中发挥作用。同样重要的是了解玻璃系统老化的基本机制，这可能对玻璃材料的生产产生长期影响。参与该项目的学生将获得跨学科的经验，因为该项目融合了物理学和工程学，统计学和软材料，统计力学理论和显微镜实验。推广工作将针对匹兹堡地区人口不足的高中，并将通过“软硬物理”实地考察针对亚特兰大地区的K-12学生。

The research objective of this grant is to understand the fundamental process of aging of glassy materials from a statistical and microscopic point of view. Aging of glassy materials is a long standing problem: a glass is an out-of-equilibrium material, so its mechanical and electrical properties change over time, but the microscopic reasons for this are still unknown. Understanding aging has implications for extending the lifetime of products made from glassy materials (both "regular" glass and plastics). This project involves simulations of glassy systems and will employ novel statistical techniques to reconstruct local elastic properties of the material. We will learn how these properties change during the aging process. Complementary experiments will be conducted on colloidal glasses, a well-characterized model system which exhibits aging. Due to the limited amount of data the experiments can obtain - and more fundamentally, the limited data one can obtain before a system ages into a new state - we will need to extend statistical techniques from bioinformatics and econometrics to be able to the relevant information from our data.The developed statistical techniques will be useful in a variety of applications beyond aging or materials science. Of equal importance is understanding the fundamental mechanisms of aging in glassy systems, which may have a long-term impact on how glassy materials are produced. The students involved in this project will gain interdisciplinary experience, as the project merges physics and engineering, statistics and soft materials, statistical mechanics theory and microscopy experiments. Outreach efforts will target Pittsburgh area high schools with under-represented populations and will target Atlanta area K-12 students via "Squishy Physics" field trips.