Department: Physics

Areas of expertise:

• Soft materials, complex fluids, glassy dynamics, amorphous systems
• Crumpling, buckling and bending of slender bodies

Feitosa is a physicist who researches soft materials and complex fluids.

Soft matter encompasses a broad set of materials that challenge traditional categorization as liquids and solids. Unlike ordinary matter, soft materials flow as a liquid above a critical applied stress, but respond elastically like a solid to low applied stress. The transition from fluid to solid behavior shows a dramatic slow down of the dynamics with very little change in the configuration of the particles, a phenomenon akin to the glass transition in molecular liquids.

More recently, Dr. Feitosa has expanded his program to include the study of failure modes of slender bodies such as cylindrical shells, aiming to exploit their intrinsic weakness to design smart materials that can spontaneously and predictably fold under precisely applied small loads. Such smart materials have the potential to transform the field of solid-mechanics in the same dramatic way that the transistor revolutionized the field of micro-electronics.

Our main goal is to trace the macroscopic behavior of soft materials to their microscopic interactions and structural changes.

Feitosa received his doctorate and master's degrees at the Univeristy of Massachusettes, Amherst; and his bachelor's degree at Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.

Media contact: Eric Gorton, gortonej@jmu.edu.