Seminar
Speaker: Harsha Hutridurga, IIT Bombay
Title: Two Materials and One Surprisingly Hard Problem in Optimal Design
Time, day and date: 3:00:00 PM – 4:00:00 PM, Thursday, October 08
Venue: Ramanujan Hall
Abstract: Given fixed amounts of two materials, how should they be arranged for the best performance? Surprisingly, in many natural settings no optimal arrangement exists: better and better designs oscillate on ever finer scales and never converge to a clean shape. Resolving this led to homogenization, relaxation, and the study of which effective properties mixtures can achieve. I will survey this story, from laminates and the Hashin-Shtrikman bounds to modern topology optimization, and walk through one short argument showing how such bounds arise. I will close with open problems, including three-phase conductivity and elasticity, that are easy to state and still await new ideas.