News

Astronaut conducts Cornell experiment on the space station  – Cornell Cronicle, Dec. 16. 2019.
Orbiting 250 miles above the Earth on the International Space Station, astronaut and station commander Luca Parmitano conducted the experiment „Inertial Spreading and Imbibition of a Liquid Drop Through Porous Surface“ designed by Professor Michel Louge, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell university, on Dec. 11.  MSS collaborated by developing an experimental technique to produce large fluid drops in microgravity and testing the apparatus in drop tower experiments.
A detailed descripton of  the experiment is provided on the project’s web site at Cornell.
For some details on the MSS contribution see Laura Steub, Jonathan Kollmer, Derek Paxson, Achim Sack, Thorsten Pöschel, John Bartlett, Douglas Berman, Yaateh Richardson, and Michel Y. Louge, Microgravity spreading of water spheres on hydrophobic capillary plates,  EPJ Web of Conferences 140, 16001 (2017).

„Inelastic collapse of perfectly inelastic particles“

The FAU has published a press release about one of our most recent papers.

Our recent paper „Systematic Onset of Periodic Patterns in Random Disk Packings” by Nikola Topic, Thorsten Pöschel and Jason Gallas in Physical Reciew Letters 120, 148002 (2018) was featured on the website of the Brazilian Physical Society.

Automatisch periodisch: Zufällige Packungen gleich großer Scheiben zwischen parallelen Wänden bilden stets eine perio­dische Struktur.

Physiker der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) haben nachgewiesen, dass zufällige Packungen gleich großer Scheiben zwischen parallelen Wänden immer eine periodische Struktur bilden – unabhängig von der Breite des Behälters.

Physiker der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) und der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (HHU) haben nachgewiesen, dass sich Systeme entgegengesetzt rotierender makroskopischer Teilchen entmischen und homogene Fraktionen aus entweder rechts- oder links­drehenden Partikeln bilden.

Am 9. März 2018 endete die 31. Parabelflug­kampagne des Deutschen Zentrums für Luft- und Raum­fahrt (DLR) erfolgreich: Zwölf Experimente aus Human­physiologie, Biologie, Physik, Technologie­erprobung und Material­wissenschaften befanden sich an Bord des A310 Zero-G.

Science News channel “IQ-Wissenschaft und Forschung” of Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR2) reports on our recent results on the velocity distribution of active granular particles.

Die kinetische Energie von Teilchen in granularen Gasen, etwa Staub­wolken, kann temporär steigen, obwohl dem System stetig Energie ent­zogen wird. Das konnte jetzt ein inter­natio­nales Forscher­team erst­mals zeigen.

A team of five MSS researchers works currently in Bordeaux to perform parabolic flights. Focus of the experiments are the dissipative properties of granular systems under conditions of microgravity. Further, they perform an educational experiment regaring gyroscopic stabilisation of objects in weightlessness.

Prof. Brilliantov (University Leicester, UK) is one of the most recognized scientists in the field of Kinetic Theory and Statistical Mechanics of granular matter. He will visit MSS for one month to collaborate on phase transitions of systems of active granular particles.

Moderne Verfahren, wie Computertomographie und numerische Simulationen, führen dazu, dass immer mehr Forschungsergebnisse aus dreidimensionalen Datensätzen bestehen. Der Lehrstuhl MSS zeigt in Zusammenarbeit mit der theoretischen Physik und der Nürnberger Firma Cykyria wie sich solche Datenmengen mit Hilfe von virtueller Realität anschaulich darstellen lassen.

Standort: NatFak (Staudtstraße 5/7), Physikum, Foyer

Thorsten Pöschel berichtet im 237. Podcast der Welt der Physik über granulare Materie.

PhD defense by Nikola Topic

PhD defense by Lídia Almazán Torres

PhD defense by Severin Strobl

The cover picture shows an outflowing hourglass and its different regimes. Detailed information can be found in the publication „Weight of an Hourglass – Theory and Experiment in Quantitative Comparison„

The 100th talk in the series of MSS seminars will be given today by Seyed Habibollah Ebrahimnazhad Rahbari, Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS), Seoul.

http://www.mss.cbi.fau.de/events/mss-seminar/

Dr. Mubashir Hussain will work on reaction models for the particle-based simulation of combustion processes including the formation of soot.

‘Condensed Matter Physics’ dedicated a special issue 9/2016 to the 65th birthday of our friend and MSS Humboldt-fellow, Stefan Sokolowski.
Happy birthday, Stefan!‘

Habib Ebrahimnejad Rahbari from the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul, South Korea, will visit the institute for the next 3 months. Habib is an expert in the fields of `wet granular matter’ and `fluctuations in granular systems’.

Matthias Schroeter is Co-Chair of the Gordon Conference on „Particulate Systems in Science and Technology” which takes place July 24-29, 2016 at Stonehill College near Boston. https://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=13053

www.osapublishing.org

Ali Shakeri works in the field of particle-based fluid mechanics.

Matthew Coleman, student from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA), will work at the Institute as a RISE student on „Assessing open-cell foam structures and monoliths for heterogeneous catalysis“.

Dr. Lee will work as researcher at our Institute MSS.. He is an expert on numerical simulation for liquid crystals,

Andreas Schäfer will work as researcher at our Institute MSS. He is working in the field high performance computing and simulation techniques.

MSS alumnus Martin Tupy launches model career, click here.

15 February 2016 – Dr. Satoshi Takada from Kyoto University (Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics) is visiting the institute for 3 weeks. Dr. Satoshi is an expert in Kinetic Theory of cohesive granulate. http://www2.yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~satoshi.takada/

The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports on a MSS students project in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the Cornell University.

More information about this students project can be found under here.

Prof. Dr. Michael Engel will work as Assistant Professor at MSS. His research focuses on understandingg the appearance and role of order in condensed matter. For this aim, Prof. Engel combines scientific knwoledge and engineering prinicples to investigate fundamental processes that drive self-assembly and dynamics on the molecular, nanoscale, and colloidal level.

Prapanch Nair will work as Postdoc at our Institute MSS. He is an expert in Multiphase Flows and Simulation Techniques.

Daniel Nasato will work as Postdoc at MSS. He is an expert in Granular Flows and Granular Packing.

4. – 8. April 2016 Erlangen, Germany

Please visit the spring school website for more information:
http://imaging-particles.de

The FAU Newsletter reports on MSS students project in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the Cornell University.

More information about this students project can be found under here.

Prof. Thorsten Pöschel was honored a 2015 Distinguished Referee by EPJ.

PhD defense by Michael Heckel

PhD defense by Jonathan Kollmer

This week the final experiments at the drop tower facility in Bremen were performed. We have now the first results of the drop tower experiment: Imbibition of a water drop into a porous medium in zero-gravity.

For details please see Drop Your Thesis 2015.

The recording from the presentation of Prof. Pöschel at the „Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften“ is now available online as a web stream:
Unbeschwert forschen – Experimentelle Wege zur Schwerelosigkeit (M4V, HD ready (1280x720p))
You can also find the stream in lower qualities or to download here: Unbeschwert forschen – Experimentelle Wege zur Schwerelosigkeit

There are some more impressions of the „Lange Nacht“ in Media Coverage.

Today three of our colleagues, Jonathan, Laura, and Flo, started for the drop tower facility in Bremen. There they will put the last pieces of the experiment together and perform the last mechanical and security tests. The actual drop of the experiment is scheduled for beginning of next week. We wish them good luck and good data.

You can find more information about the ESA project here: Student Projects 2015

The institute participated at the Science fair “Die Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften Nürnberg-Fürth-Erlangen, Saturday, 24.10.2015″, 6pm to 1am. Prof. Pöschel spoke in front of over 1000 people in the fully occupied Audimax, the biggest lecture hall at the FAU, about realizing microgravity conditions on earth without going to outer space. The lecture was accompanied by several experiments performed by members of the chair.

Baofang Song just published an article about the rise of turbulent flow in „Nature“ magazine.
Please find more details on our publication page: The rise of fully turbulent flow

The Cluster of Excellence EAM granted Patric Müller the „EAM Starting Grant 2015“ for his proposal „Particle-based simulation of reactive flows PARSIVAL“.

Ute Hespelein will take over the secretariat at the institute.
We also want to thank Joanna Gargasz for her long support as secretary since the beginning of the institute and wish her all the best for her future.

Dr. Eric Parteli is appointed as Lecturer in Computational Geosciences at
the University of Cologne. We want to congratulate Eric, who starts on
1. Sept. at the Department of Geosciences. We wish our valued colleague all
the best.

Feuerwehr-Großeinsatz: Hotel in Erlanger Innenstadt in Flammen
In der Erlanger Innenstadt hat in der Nacht auf Mittwoch die Fassade eines Gästehauses an der Ecke Innere Brucker Straße/Westliche Stadtmauerstraße gebrannt. Die Feuerwehr war mehrere Stunden im Großeinsatz.

Hotel in Erlanger city in flames: In the Erlanger city has burned the facade of a guest house on the corner inside Bruckerstraße / Westliche Stadtmauerstraße at night on Wednesday. Firefighters were several hours in large-scale operation.

Lidia Almazan (member of the group) and her soccer team made the second place at the German University Großfeld Championship 2015 for women. They lost against the team of the university Marburg in penalty shootout.

More information can be found here (in german).

Tara will work on the granular swelling effect.

Eric Parteli was appointed to the editorial board of Nature – Scientific Reports.
Launched 2011, Nature – Scientific Reports is a multidisciplinary journal of the Nature Publishing Group (NPG), which covers all areas of the natural sciences – physics, biology, chemistry, earth sciences and the clinical sciences.

In Science Magazine Thorsten Pöschel comments on Ernesto Altshuler, a „guerrilla scientist“ from Cuba, and his great low cost experiments.

Cristian will work on isotropic DSMC.

Matthias Schröter will work as a Privatdozent at MSS. He is an expert on granular media and will intensify the experimental research at the institute.

Two students of the institute, Laura and Fabian, were accepted for the ESA’s drop your thesis (DYT) program. They will have the opportunity to perform microgravity experiments at the ZARM Drop Tower Facility in Bremen, Germany.

(EPJ ST, 223 (13) (2014))
Link: EPJ ST
Corresponding article:
Self-organization of antiperiodic oscillations
Authors: Joana G. Freire, Cecilia Cabeza, Arturo C. Marti, Thorsten Pöschel, and Jason A.C. Gallas

MSS has now a new logo.

Lidia Almazan (member of the group) and her soccer team won the German University Kleinfeld Championship 2014 for women.

More information can be found here (in german).

PhD defense by Patric Müller

by Nina Gunkelmann, Dan Serero, and Thorsten Pöschel

The FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg was entitled as a „Nvidia GPU Research Center“ for parallel computing using CUDA capable GPUs. The institute MSS is part of this research center.