This month's episode focuses on using friction to help us. Yes, that's right, embracing the friction that tribologists try to combat. The focus is of tactile aids that solely rely on physical bumps, lines, and textures are limited in the amount and density of information they can convey due to "tactile clutter" within a small physical space. The lab has found that different surface chemistries alone can create distinct sensations without adding larger scale roughness, and Maryanne's work identifies frictional instabilities as a framework for predicting how different surfaces will feel from each other. This type of analysis and connection between material structure and dynamic friction can help predict how to engineer more advanced materials to expand the types of sensations people can feel, and design more types of tactile aids, such as sensors or medical diagnostics with inherently switchable materials.

Our Guests:

Maryanne Derkaloustian is a third year PhD candidate at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Delaware. She received her BS in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her current research in the Dhong Lab focuses on connecting surface structure and chemistry to frictional phenomena at the length scale of human touch to understand how humans tell surfaces apart and engineer next generation tactile aids. She was the recipient of a 2024 STLE Scholarship Award from the Philadelphia section.

Prof. Charles Dhong is an assistant professor at the University of Delaware in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He received his BS in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in the same at Johns Hopkins University. He then held a postdoc at the University of California, San Diego with Prof. Darren Lipomi in the Department of Nanoengineering. His research is currently funded through multiple grants through the National Institutes of Health, including as PI and coPI of NIH R01s. His students have received awards and recognition in several professional societies, including three students who have received the STLE Scholarship Award.

For more information on textures and friction, check out our past TLT article on "Measuring the Brain's Response to Braille Friction".

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