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December 5, 2013

"Mathematics of a Popcorn Flake"

"Mathematics of a Popcorn Flake," by Martin Hautefeuille, postdoctoral fellow, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Duke University.

This image shows the discretized geometry of a benchmark problem used to demonstrate the capabilities of a numerical method known as Nitsche's method currently investigated at the Duke Computational Mechanics Laboratory. In this example, Nitsche's method is used to enforce some constraints on the popcorn shape in the cubic domain. The robustness of the method is tested against the complexity of the embedded shape.

The image was awarded honorable mention in the "Envisioning the Invisible" 2010 Mahato memorial event photo contest, organized by the engineering graduate student council at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke. The event, which will be annual, honors Abhijit Mahato, a former Duke engineering graduate student who was tragically murdered in 2008. Further information about the contest and pictures of other winning entries and submissions is available Here. (Date of Image: September 2010)

Credit: Martin Hautefeuille, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Duke University

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