[Young Researchers Only] The Power of Chickpeas: Understanding the Physics Behind Swelling Seeds. || Towards fully programmable inflatable panels​​. - Alexia BEALE - (Post-Doc, MOVE) || Ofir MIRKIN- (PhD, MOVE)​

The Power of Chickpeas: Understanding the Physics Behind Swelling Seeds​.

Alexia BEALE- (Post-Doc, MOVE)

When preparing a meal using chickpeas, the chickpea seeds are typically soaked overnight in water. Have you noticed that these chickpea seeds can swell up to ×2 their original volume? If a chickpea seed is rehydrated in a confined space, it can exert a force of ~6 N on the boundary of its container. In my research, I explore the physical properties and swelling dynamics of seeds, using chickpeas as a model system. When placed underwater, osmotic flow leads to water uptake in the seed, whilst diffusion plays a role in water transport within the seed. This talk will cover the swelling dynamics of individual seeds, an exploration of their structural composition during swelling and will answer the question of why some chickpeas wrinkle during this process. ​

Towards fully programmable inflatable panels​​​.

Ofir MIRKIN- (PhD, MOVE)​

Self-deployable materials are expected to have wide application potential, e.g., in robotics, medicine, and architecture. So far, all responsive materials have limited deformation possibilities, and researchers lack control over the six local degrees of freedom (three for the metric and three for the curvature). Here, we introduce a strategy to address this limitation. ​

We investigate how variations in mesoscale properties influence the deformation of inflatable elastic materials. Our structures feature a triangular network of interconnected cylindrical cavities, and we study how their density, eccentricity, and orientation control the in-plane deformation. Using these results, we solve an inverse problem of approximating target shapes. ​