Catalin R. Picu
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical, Aerospace & Nuclear Engineering
Education:
B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania, 1989
Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Dartmouth College, 1995
Career Highlights:
After completing his degree at the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Picu became a member of the university's faculty and spent three years working in solid mechanics. In 1992, he left for Dartmouth College, where he worked as a research assistant for the Thayer School of Engineering while completing his doctorate degree in applied mechanics. Picu then became a research associate in the solid mechanics group at Brown University. In 1998 he joined the Rensselaer faculty as an assistant professor in the department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering.
Research Areas:
Picu's research interests involve micro- and nano-mechanics of materials, including physics of material deformation, scale linking, and computer simulations of nanoscale phenomena. Professor Picu also teaches a two-part graduate-level course in mechanical behavior of materials and a graduate level course in mechanics of thin films. The motivation for the research performed in Picu's group comes in part from the continuous miniaturization of manufactured devices, in particular that of electronic devices and MEMS. This decrease in scale implies that the overall performance of the components is determined by processes taking place in smaller and smaller volumes of material that requires a better control of properties of materials at the atomic scale. Another motivation for the research in nano-mechanics is that the macroscopic behavior of materials, described by constitutive laws, is determined by the mechanical behavior of defects at the atomic scale. These issues are approached both experimentally and by simulations.
Selected Publications:
R. C. Picu, "Atomistic-Continuum Simulation of Nano-Indentation in Molybdenum," Journal of Computer-Aided Materials Design, Vol. 7, p. 77-87, 2000.
R. C. Picu, K. S. Kim, and R. J. Clifton, "Lomer Dislocation Core Structure in Silicon," to be submitted to Journal of Mechanics Physics and Solids.
R. C. Picu and K. S. Kim, "Core Dilatation of a Lomer Dislocation in Silicon," to be submitted to Journal of Mechanics Physics and Solids.
R. C. Picu, J. Rankin and A. F. Schwartzman, "Direct Observations of Surface Sublimation and Relaxation in CdTe {111} Films by High Resolution Electron Microscopy," Phil. Mag. Lett., Vol. 79, p. 241-247, 1999.
R. C. Picu, "The Peierls Stress in Non-Local Elasticity," Journal of Mechanics Physics and Solids, in press.
R. C. Picu, "On the Functional Form of Non-local Elasticity Kernels," Journal of Mechanics Physics and Solids, submitted.
M. S. Ozmusul and R. C. Picu, "Elastic Moduli for Particulate Composites with Graded Filler-matrix Interfaces," Polymer Composites, in press.
R. C. Picu and J. H. Weiner, "Stress Relaxation in a Diatomic Fluids," Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 108, p. 4984-4991, 1998.
R. C. Picu, G. Loriot, and J. H. Weiner, "Towards a Unified View of Stress in Small Molecular and Macromolecular Liquids," Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 110, p. 4678-4685, 1999.
R. C. Picu, "The Entropic Character of Atomic Level Stress in Polymeric Melts," Macromolecules, Vol. 34, p. 5023-5029, 2001.
R. C. Picu and M. C. Pavel, "Fast Relaxation Modes in Model Polymeric Systems," Macromolecules, submitted.
Contact Information:
Catalin R. Picu
2048 Jonsson Engineering Center
Tel: (518) 276-2195
picuc@rpi.edu