Matt Harrington
Postdoc
PhD, University of Maryland, 2015
BS, University of Wisconsin, 2010

Office: LRSM 407
Phone: (215) 573-7509
Email: mharrin [at] sas.upenn.edu
Personal Website

Matt

CV

Current research interests: Deformation and failure of granular materials

Material failure and shear-banding occur in a variety of applications that span a wide range of length scales. From amorphous metallic glasses, to colloidal packings, to athermal granular media, shear bands can manifest and give rise to material fracture and flow. At times, the material failure will exhibit distinct characteristics of either ductile failure or brittle fracture. To better understand the microscopic origins of shear bands, as well as these two distinct modes of material failure, we study a 2D granular packing that undergoes quasi-static uniaxial compression. This system allows for simultaneous imaging and tracking of individual grain motion and rearrangement, as well as bulk measurements of the stress and dissipated energy of the system. In particular, we are interested in exploring how the failure of the material is affected by tuning particle-particle and particle-substrate interaction, initial system order, relative hard/soft regions, and other relevant system parameters.