BIRS workshop : Novel Mathematical Methods in Material Science: Applications to Biomaterials
Mathematics
Banff International Research Station
Audience: | Researchers in the topic |
Conference dates: | 14-Jun-2021 to 18-Jun-2021 |
Curator: | BIRS Programme Coordinator* |
*contact for this listing |
Polymers, biopolymers, textiles, metal wires, liquid crystals and other physical filaments often immersed in a fluid, are present in nature and in our everyday life in many contexts. They all share a common aspect: their mechanical properties are significantly affected by their inherent geometrical/topological constraints or by the geometry/topology of their surrounding space.
The current state of the art of the Mathematical Study of Materials traditionally deals with the fluid-structure interactions (focusing on solving PDEs), often in 2 dimensions, ignoring the topology of the filaments, or focusing on single filaments. Advances in Applied knot theory have made it possible to use topology, an area of traditionally pure mathematics, to study polymer entanglement effects. With this workshop, we bring together Topologists and Applied Mathematicians (PDEs), together with researchers from Physics, Materials Science, Chemistry and Biology to learn from each other with the goal to solve key problems in material science.
We will aim to create new mathematical models of complex fluids that can bridge length and time scales, and study novel ways to model entanglement of polymers and filaments. We stress that the novelty of this workshop consists not only in bringing together an interdisciplinary array of scientists, but bridging the gap between what has been traditionally catalogued as pure and applied mathematics.