CAREER: Measurement and Analysis of Osmosis-Mediated, Closed-cell Poroelastic Dynamics

该学院早期职业发展奖将描述在渗透驱动的运动条件下闭孔流体-固体复合材料的物理-化学-流体力学行为。植物王国在没有肌肉组织的帮助下安静而高效地进行着它的生命。尽管缺乏这一点，植物可以利用水作为驱动力产生巨大甚至快速的运动。这些运动使能量收集成为可能。该奖项支持将这种渗透驱动的运动作为灵感的研究努力。在利用植物建筑时，由这些努力产生的合成植物组织类似物将提供无毒、节能和量身定制的反应。同时，这种材料在水中使用时不需要连接到外部电力支架。可以调整这些水工建筑物的预期响应，以提供作为时间和位置的函数的响应变化。这样的反应对许多组织疗法是必不可少的，并将通过在医疗保健和生物力学方面的应用而造福社会。此外，该奖项支持的基本工作将丰富对植物水力响应的理解，这是详细气候模型的必要组成部分。还将与伊利诺伊斯大学的一名英语教授合作，为在体育夏令营向年轻女运动员推广STEM开展教育活动，并将建立关于科学报告的沟通/修辞的课外研讨会。研究小组将以现有的有限变形固体的孔弹性理论为基础，为这类目前未描述的材料开发本构模型。模型将通过合成植物组织类似物的实验获得信息，这些合成植物组织类似物是为浸泡在水环境中时的均匀变形反应而设计的。作为最终模型的验证，动态和/或非均匀变形的架构化复合材料的设计和制造将以亚稳态、分层自组装结构为目标。在成功模拟这些材料的过程中，这项工作将填补在理解植物组织中的“水分关系”方面的一个现有空白。具体地说，通过工程水-固复合材料控制材料和表面特性，这项工作将解决关于细胞间和细胞内水流动途径及其对细胞内渗透和静水压力的依赖的持续争论。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award will describe the physico-chemo-hydromechanical behavior of closed-cell fluid-solid composites under the regime of osmosis-driven motion. The plant kingdom quietly and efficiently goes about its life without the aid of muscle tissue. Despite this lack, plants can produce large and even rapid movements using water as the driving force. These movements enable energy harvesting. This award supports research efforts that use this osmosis-driven motion as inspiration. In leveraging plant architectures, the synthetic plant-tissue-analogs resulting from these efforts will provide a non-toxic, energy efficient, and tailored response. Simultaneously, such materials would require no connection to an external power support when used in water. The anticipated response of these hydraulic structures may be tuned to provide response variation as a function of both time and position. Responses such as these are essential for many tissue therapies and will benefit society via applications in healthcare and biomechanics. Further, the fundamental efforts supported by this award will enrich understanding of the hydraulic response of plants, a necessary component of detailed climate models. Educational activities for STEM outreach to young female athletes at sport camps will also be developed and extracurricular seminars on communication/rhetoric for scientific presentations will be established in collaboration with an English professor at the University of Illinois.The research team will develop a constitutive model for this currently undescribed class of materials by building on existing theories of poroelasticity for solids capable of finite deformation. Models will be informed by experiments on synthetic plant-tissue-analogs architected for a homogeneous deformation response when immersed in an aqueous environment. As validation of the final model, dynamically and/or inhomogeneously-deforming, architected composites will be designed and fabricated with an aim toward metastable, hierarchical self-assembled structures. In successfully modeling these materials, this work will fill an existing gap in the understanding of 'water relations' in plant tissue. Specifically, by controlling material and surface properties via engineered water-solid composites, this work will resolve an ongoing debate regarding inter- and intra-cellular water flow pathways and their dependence on the osmotic and hydrostatic pressure within the cells.