On November 9, 2016,Lu Tianjian, director of the MOE Key Laboratory for Multi-functional Materials and Structures of Xi’an Jiaotong University, director of the Bioinspired Engineering and Biomechanics Center and chief scientist for the “973” Program Professor, attended the 91th session of SUStech Lectures and gave a lecture entitled “Ultralight Cellular Materials: From Engineering Structures to Cell Microenvironments”. In this lecture, he introduced his team’s experience in developing different types of ultralight cellular materials over the past 20 years. Vice Provost Huang Kefu presided over the lecture.
A scene at the lecture
Lu Tianjian’s research is characterized by interdisciplinarity and a strong focus on innovation. He has published over 10 English-language monographs and has published more than 300 papers in international core academic journals. His publications have been cited more than 11,000 times. He is a well-known scientist in the field of mechanics.
Professor Lu Tianjian delivering a lecture
During his lecture, Lu Tianjian said that as a researcher in mechanics, he has been maintaining a foothold in mechanics, but he hasn’t limited himself to the field of mechanics and has been conducting in-depth interdisciplinary research over the years. He argued that the study of materials was a natural medium for the study of mechanics and it was very necessary to learn through the history of the development of materials and from all kinds of cellular materials that permeate the natural world to develop high-quality materials that meet the national production needs.
When talking about his own research trajectory, Lu Tianjian shared the thought process behind his decision to study ultralight cellular materials at Cambridge University. The early 1990s saw the rise of research on metal foams in the West. The hectic race to study metal foams in the academic community made the development of metal foams a subject of great interest to countries such as the United States, Britain, and Japan, with one Japanese company even entertaining the idea of using metal foams in noise reduction for high-speed trains. However, after an in-depth study of metal foams, Lu Tianjian et al. found that the material had many micro-defects, was structurally weak and simply couldn’t be applied directly and achieve noise reduction. Although metal foams couldn’t deliver the expected function, Lu Tianjian found that the material worked well in terms of heat and mass transfer and could be used for energy absorption, For this reason, he decided to continue to explore the field of metal foams and resolutely returned home bringing with him his research experience to contribute his share to the country’s development of lightweight composite structures and materials.
Q&A session
In addition to research in his areas of expertise, Lu Tianjian also shared his valuable experience in learning and research. He gave us pertinent advice through his rich experience studying at home and abroad. He argued that studying abroad was a good thing and one should embrace international communication while engaging in scholarship, but in the end should return to the motherland to serve the motherland. He believed that after decades of development, China’s vast field of research would allow young scientists to scale greater heights.
