Mechanical and acoustical properties as a research area focuses on characterizing and modeling how materials and structures respond to mechanical loads and acoustic waves, including stress–strain behavior, elasticity, viscoelasticity, damping, wave propagation, impedance, and sound absorption or transmission. It integrates solid mechanics, continuum mechanics, and acoustics to understand couplings between structural dynamics and sound fields, often using experimental techniques such as dynamic mechanical analysis, ultrasonic testing, and impedance tube measurements, alongside analytical and numerical methods (e.g., finite element and boundary element modeling). This research underpins the design and optimization of materials and systems for vibration control, noise reduction, ultrasonic devices, and acoustic metamaterials.
Rocket launches are among the most violent ways humans have devised to travel. They generate millions of pounds of thrust and subject passengers to intense g-forces. Humans must undergo serious training to withstand those ...
Space Exploration
2 hours ago
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In their earliest years of development, computers used mechanical gears and levers to store information. Today, researchers are exploring whether a material itself can hold onto information, storing memory in how it bends ...
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London are closer to understanding tendinopathy, a common condition that can cause persistent pain and impaired movement in people and many animals.
Cell & Microbiology
Sep 16, 2026
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Through joint research with the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Tokyo, NIMS for the first time experimentally demonstrated friction completely independent of sliding velocity—an ideal that had never been realized—by ...
General Physics
Sep 16, 2026
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Rice and lentils are a pairing that goes a long way back, whether as khichdi in India or mujaddara in the Middle East. On its own, each is a source of incomplete protein, short on certain essential amino acids—but paired ...
Biotechnology
Sep 15, 2026
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How can we predict the way a real material, such as a polymer, responds mechanically over timescales ranging from the ultrafast motion of atoms to the slow deformations measured in a laboratory? This is a deceptively difficult ...
Life is not always easy for a bee: Not all plants place their pollen outside. Some flowers have to be set to vibrating before the pollen can get out of their tube-like stamens. Certain bee species have developed a special ...
Ecology
Sep 11, 2026
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Mars is a terrible place to build a house. It's bitterly cold, blasted by radiation and a near vacuum. Not to mention that the building materials, even for a modest shelter, could spend months hurtling through space before ...
Space Exploration
Sep 10, 2026
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Material properties such as sound insulation, resistance to extreme heat and thermal expansion originate from how the zillions of microscopic building blocks (nuclei and electrons) interact at equilibrium and respond to perturbations. ...
Condensed Matter
Sep 9, 2026
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From repairing damaged tissues to developing better implants, many medical developments depend on materials that can mimic the complex properties of human tissue. Meta-biomaterials are among the most promising candidates. ...
Cell & Microbiology
Sep 8, 2026
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