Kai Huang

My research (primarily experimental) focus on granular materials (i.e. large agglomerations of macroscopic particles) is an interdisciplinary field where physics and engineering meet. Understanding the physics of granular materials builds fundamentals for a wide range of application: From the prediction of natural disasters in such as landslide or debris flow through the enhancement of energy efficiency in industries (e.g. mining, pharmaceutics, waste water treatment) to emerging new technologies such as powder based additive manufacturing (3D printing).

More specifically, I am interested in building two 'bridges':

1. How to link particle-particle interactions to their collective behavior?
2. How to link collective dynamics in systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium to those in equilibrium?

Fellowships, Gifts, and Supported Research

Patchy Granular Matter · November 2015 PI · Awarded by: German Research Foundation The collective behavior of agitated granular particles bound by liquid bridges shall be investigated experimentally. The shape of the particles is designed to tune the maximum coordination number — reminiscent of thermally driven patchy colloids — at a macroscopic scale where thermal energy does not play a crucial role. The focus is on the transitions between solidlike, liquidlike and gaslike states in a quasi-two-dimensional system. The goal is to identify the general role of particle shape in determining the collective behavior of patchy granulates. The motivation arises from the ubiquity of wet granular matter in nature (wet sand) and engineering (multiphase flow). In those situations, the geometry of the particles — with its corresponding coordination number from the building of liquid bridges — plays an important role. Ref. https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/290337193