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The Solid Mechanics group at DAMTP is a small but growing group interested in the analytical and computational study of a range of problems in solid mechanics. The group was founded in 2019 by Mungo G. Aitken and Professor I. David Abrahams FRSE in order to strengthen the solid mechanics research community at Cambridge and promote our research to a wider audience, as well as helping to form links with other universities and industry. We have extensive experience in collaborating with industrial partners in order to help them solve problems of practical interest.

Examples of problems studied by group members include metamaterials, fluid–structure interactions, nonlinear elasticity, wave propagation through solid composites, acoustic and optical cloaking, and stochastic diffusion for finite-size particles. We are also particularly interested in the development of new and existing methods such as the Wiener–Hopf method and homogenisation techniques. Our research interests are not limited to solid mechanics: members of our group also conduct research in fields as diverse as mathematical biology, soft matter and fluid mechanics.

Our work has broad applicability to the real world. Recent work has covered optimisation of hulls of underwater vehicles to reduce noise emissions, improving filter efficiency in vacuum cleaners, and design of acoustic metamaterials with possible cloaking applications.

Members of the group have been supported by a number of sources including EPSRC, the Royal Society, Thales UK and Dyson Ltd.

We have strong links with other researchers such as the Waves group at DAMTP, the Department of Engineering at Cambridge, Ed Brambley at Warwick, and the Mathematics of Waves and Materials group at Manchester. We also hosted Elasticity Day 2021 in April 2021 with the support of the Isaac Newton Institute.

For any enquiries, please get in touch with Mungo.