Biography
Nice to have you here! I am a graduate student @Drexel University as of March 2025. I obtained my B.S. from SUSTech, when I was supervised by Kefu Huang and mentored by Mingwu Li.
My top interests lie in the overlap of the soft materials mechanics and dynamics. I'm also into the soft robotic actuation and control, along with their applications in cyber-physical interactions including VR controller, haptics, handicapped people assistance system, etc. Besides, I have experience with characterizing soft materials, including indentation, compression, tension, aided with deep learning techniques.
Education
- M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Sep. 2023 - June 2025 (Expected) - B.S. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, SUSTech, Shenzhen, China
Sep. 2018 - July 2022
Selected Research Works
- Pneumatic Soft Robots
We built up customized control loops and played with different silicone rubbers. This project ended up with a number of applications ranging from gripper to tactile sensor.
Contact Mechanics for Haptic Sensing
It has been widely recogonized that soft material is going to play an important role in future VR controller. In this project, we harnessed the power of computer vision along with our contact mechanics model to predict both the displacement fields and the pressure distributions on the surface of the substrate material induced by contact.
We believe that this research is going to have impacts on not only the virtual reality engineering, but would also open up a way for the development of very fine tactile sensors, benefitting the handicaped people by recovering their haptic senses.
The calibration device we used are from TA, inc.
Mechanical Characterization of Ti-Based Inorganic Solvogels,
The most fascinating question in hydrogels' study would probably be the topo-property relation, i.e., how does the internal topological configurations affect the averaged, macroscopic mechanical moduli. In this research, our exceptional collaborators synthesized a special hydrogels, from which we set out to perform a bunch of compression tests in order to unveil how the concentration of nano materials would change the Young's modulus and the shear modulus of the gels.
We also observed wrinkling phenomenon and jelly-like behaviour indicating that this gel is really an intermediate matter state between liquid and solid. We're up to delve deeper into it in the near future.
→ Click HERE to check the full research gallery
Publication
S. Wu1, Y. Zheng* (2024), Influence of Pre-Stretch on Planar Indentation of Elastomers: Insights from Experiments and Theory, J. Appl. Mech. DOI: 10.1115/1.4067149 [PDF]
M. Mieles, A. D. Walter, S. Wu3, Y. Zheng, G. R. Schwenk*, M. W. Barsoum*, H.-F. Ji* (2024), Hydronium-Crosslinked Inorganic Hydrogel Comprised of 1D Lepidocrocite Titanate Nanofilaments, Advanced Materials. DOI: 10.1002/adma.202409897
--Legend: 1: first author; *: corresponding author; #: equal contribution
Pedagogical Experience
Introduction to Continuum Mechanics - A, B (2022 Fall) SUSTech
ECE/MEM491 Senior Design (2023 Fall) Drexel University
MEM455 Introduction to Robotics (2023 Fall, 2024 Spring) Drexel University
MEM255 Introduction to Controls (2024 Winter) Drexel University
MEM230 Mechanics of Materials (2024 Fall) Drexel University
Awards & Honors
- Harry Brown, Jr. Fellowship (2024), Drexel University
- Outstanding Dissertation (2022), SUSTech
- Outstanding Undergraduate (2019, 2020, 2021), SUSTech
- Outstanding Freshman (2018), SUSTech