Animangsu Ghatak Associate Professor   B.Tech. IIT Kharagpur, 1994 M.Tech, IIT Kanpur, 1998 Ph.D. Lehigh University, PA, USA, 2003 Post-Doctoral Research at Cambridge University, UK and Harvard University, USA, 2003-2004   Phone (office): 0512-2597146 Fax: 0512 - 259010 email: aghatak[AT]iitk.ac.in http://home.iitk.ac.in/~aghatak/

Research Interests

• Adhesion and friction on soft interfaces

• Fracture of soft thin sheets

• Bio-inspired approaches in design of engineering materials

Brief Overview of Research:

Highly deformable, soft elastic, viscoelastic and poroelastic materials occur in many different applications e.g. soft tissues, artificial organs, therapeutic patches, shock absorbers, dampeners, platforms for micro-fluidic device, novel biomaterials in biology as stems, roots and leaves, sponges, cartilage layers and bones and so on and so forth. In this variety of situations these materials are exposed to many different forms of mechanical loads, e.g. tension, compression, torsion, bending which, due to the large deformability of these materials and their complex rheological character, can generate such responses which are different from that commonly observed with the liner elastic systems. An example of such a response is the kinking instability in a cylindrical rod of soft hydrogel, bent beyond a critical curvature. It is different from the commonly observed wrinkling instability. Besides, we have recently developed a microfluidic adhesive by embedding microchannels inside adhesive layers. By filling these channels with liquids we have shown that adhesion strength can be enhanced significantly. Our research on microfluidics has led to the development of a simple technique for generating complex 3D microstructures inside soft polymeric materials which have many potential applications, e.g. we have developed a novel multi-helical microfluidic mixer for rapid mixing of liquids.

Awards and Honours:

• Alan Gent best student paper in Second world congress on Adhesion and related phenomena, 2002.

• Young Engineer Award of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, 2006.

Professional Affiliations:

• The Adhesion Society

Selected Publications:

• Verma, M. K. S., Majumder, A. and Ghatak, A. Embedded Template Assisted Fabrication of Complex Micro-channels in PDMS and Design of a micro-fluidic adhesive. Accepted for publication in Langmuir.

• Ghatak A. Confinement induced instability of thin elastic film. Physical Review E, 2006, 73, pp. 041601-1 041606-6.

• Ghatak A. and Mahadevan, L. Solenoids and plectonemes in stretched and twisted elastomeric filaments. Physical Review Letters, 2005, 95(5), pp. 057801-1 057801-4.

• Ghatak A., Mahadevan, L. and Chaudhury, M. K. Measuring the work of adhesion between a soft confined film and a flexible plate, Langmuir, 2005, 21, pp. 1277-1281.

• Ghatak A, Mahadevan, L., Chaudhury, M. K. and Shenoy, V. Peeling from a biomematically patterned thin elastic film, Accepted for publication in Proceedings of Royal Society, London, Ser. A, 2004, 460, 2725-2735

• Ghatak A and Mahadevan, L. Crack street: the cycloidal wake of a cylinder ripping through a thin solid sheet, Physical review Letters, 2003, 91(21), pp. 215507-1-215507-4. Paper highlighted by Nature Science update and Nature Physics update, December 2003.

• Ghatak A and Chaudhury, M. K., Adhesion induced instability in thin elastic film, Langmuir, 2003, 19(7), pp. 2621-2631

• Namkanisorn, A., Ghatak, A., Chaudhury, M. K. and Berry, D. H., A kinetic approach to study the hydrolytic stability of polymer-metal adhesion. Journal of Adhesion Sci. Tech., 2001, 15(14), pp. 1725-1745.

• Ghatak A., Chaudhury, M. K., Shenoy, V., Sharma, A. Meniscus instability in thin elastic film, Physical Review Letters, 2000, 85(20), pp. 4329-4333

• Ghatak. A., Vorvolakos, K., She, H., Malotky, D. L. and Chaudhury, M. K., Interfacial rate dependent processes in adhesion and friction, Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2000,  Vol. 104(17), pp. 4018-4030.

• Ghatak A., Khanna, R., Sharma, A. Dynamics and morphology of holes in dewetting of thin films, Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 1999, 212, pp. 483-494