Spring 2001 Seminar Schedule in Mathematics of Materials

These seminars are expected to be held every so often; the regular date and time aren't set as of 1/30/01.

Unless otherwise noted, all seminars will be in Ewing 436.

These seminars are usually meant to be informal with lots of discussion.

Speakers

Thursday 2/8/01 Time: 9:30am, Special Applied Math Seminar

A. Homayoun Heidari

Department of Mathematics

Sharif University of Technology

(Visiting RPI and UD)

"Nonlinear Diffraction of Water Waves Around Large Offshore Structures: A Perturbation Based, BIE Formulation"

Friday 2/16/01 Time: 12:15pm

Brian Spencer

Department of Mathematics

University of Buffalo (SUNY)

"Stress-driven morphological instabilities during the growth of strained alloy films"

Abstract: Strained solid films are an important component of many semiconductor devices, yet a strained planar layer can be unstable to a morphological instability in which the surface becomes rippled. The instability is driven by the reduction in strain energy which accommodates a rippled surface, with the dynamics set by the rate of diffusional transport along the surface of the film. While our understanding of the stress-driven morphological instability is reasonably well developed for pure materials, our understanding of how it is modified in alloys is less certain. The speaker will present a continuum model for alloy film growth (a free boundary problem in which mass transport occurs by surface diffusion coupled to the state of strain). The stability of alloy film growth in this model will be characterized in terms of some simple limiting cases, highlighting differences in behavior from a pure material and illustrating some novel stability characteristics which occur only for alloys.

Monday 2/26/01 Time: 2:30pm

Amy Novick-Cohen

Department of Mathematics

Technion

"Phase field equations with memory: derivation, analysis, and some limiting motions"

Last modified 1/30/01