Ph.D. Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France, 1997.
Postdoctoral Position, CIMAT - Chile, 2003-2005.
Assistant Professor, Universidad de Santiago de Chile.
I got my PhD in Physics at the Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, in the Institut Non-Linéaire de Nice, under the supervision of Professor Valentin Krinski. I joined the group of Soft Matter in the Universidad de Santiago during 2007, after having obtained a postdoctoral position in the Center for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research in Materials (CIMAT).
My research consists mainly in the study of bending, stretching, tearing and peeling of thin films and shells at macroscopic scales.
Elements of crumpling.
Climbing and gliding of conical vertices in a cylindrical shell
I am interested in studying the elements of crumpling of a thin elastoplastic film subjected to various types of forcing. Crumpling is characterized by focusing of stress that leads to creases and vertices. We study isolated configurations where vertices are forced to climb, glide or interact with another vertex.
Peeling and tearing.
Peeling and tearing of a thin adhesive film.
Thin adhesive films have become increasingly important in applications involving packaging, coating or for advertising. Once a film is adhered to a substrate, flaps can be detached by tearing and peeling, but they narrow and collapse in pointy shapes. Similar geometries are observed when peeling ultrathin films grown or deposited on a solid substrate, or skinning the natural protective cover of a ripe fruit. We have shown that the detached flaps have perfect triangular shapes with a well-defined vertex angle that encodes the mechanical parameters: bending energy, surface energy of fracture and adhesion. Our research could establish new quantitative assays for the mechanical characterization of thin adhesive films, nanofilms deposited on substrates or fruit skin.
