Mechanics and Materials under Extremes
How do materials and structures respond to large thermo-mechanical fields, short time scales, and multi-physical coupling?
About Me
Welcome! My name is Vignesh Kannan, an assistant professor of Mechanics at the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. I also serve as a visiting scientist in the Mechanics and Materials Lab at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. This website is designed to present to you, an overview of my research (with mentors, colleagues and students over the years), and our pedagogical activities in the areas of continuum solid mechanics and materials. Soon it will expand to the activities of my research team -- to comprise of undergraduate, graduate students, post-doctoral scientists and engineers -- all working towards understanding materials and structures under extreme conditions of stress, strain rate, pressure and electromagnetic fields, at short time scales.
My primary tools of choice to study these problems are experimental. We use mechanical design, electronic and optical instrumentation to push the cutting edge of studying materials and structures down to time scales of nanoseconds, and length scales from the macroscopic down to micro-meters. Experiments allow us to "see" the wondrous complexity of nature, but to comprehend this complexity we need models. I enjoy working with mathematical modelers, and have been harboring a secret desire to become an amateur modeler some day!
I hope you have fun reading about our work, and learn something in the process! If you would like to work with our team, know more about us, or teach us something more, please reach out!