Hope you can join us for this Seminar. It will be held in MRGN 129 due to Nanodays at Birck. Panera will be served for lunch. Title: "Topological Elastic Metamaterials: harnessing topological transitions to control the mechanical energy flow in thin-walled structures". Speaker: Prof. Fabio Semperlotti, Mechanical Engineering Abstract: Topological acoustics is a new branch of physical acoustics that has developed in the wake of the research on topological insulators in condensed matter physics. Owing to the similarities between the electromagnetic and the acoustic wave fields, acoustic metamaterials exhibiting topologically non-trivial transport properties were recently theorized and experimentally validated. This talk will present some recent work that focuses on extending the concept of topological design to engineered elastic structures ( the so called metastructures) of interest for lightweight applications. In particular, the concept of Quantum Valley Hall Effect (QVHE) is extended to the design of elastic waveguides with the intent of achieving Lamb guided modes having non-trivial topological properties. A combination of theoretical, numerical, and experimental results will show how the QVHE can be effectively implemented in elastic load-bearing structures hence giving rise to highly robust one-dimensional edge states. Thanks Fabio