Education and Current Position

1999 - 2003 : Physics student at the University of Liège, graduated in june 2003.

2003 - 2007 : PhD thesis / Teaching Assistant at the University of Liège.

2007 - Oct. 2008 : Teaching Assistant at the University of Liège.

Present : F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher.

Address

University of Liege
GRASP, Institut de Physique, B5, room 3/15
allee du 6 Aout, 17
B-4000 Liege 1
Belgium

Research Interests

Keywords

• Static, quasistatic and dynamical properties of granular materials
• Cohesive granular materials
• Effect of a magnetic and electric field on a granular material
• Active materials
• Biomechanics

Resume of my research project for the next years

My research works are focused on experimetal studies of granular materials properties. A granular material is a conglomeration of discrete solid particles. This material can be separated in two categories : cohesive and non-cohesive. Indeed, the humidity, the electrostatic charges and the Van der Waals interactions induce some cohesion between the grains. When the weight of one grain is higher than the cohesive forces, the material is non-cohesive. These materials have been intensively studied during the last decades because of the rich variety of their physical properties. On the other hand, if the cohesive forces are higher than the weight of one grain, these forces will strongly modify the properties of the pile. Among these cohesive granular materials, powders are used in many research domains : chemistry, pharmacy, engineering... Nowadays, the processes used for the manipulation of powders are mainly based on empirical knowledge. However, the complexity of the methods used in these research domains induce the necessity of more rigorous knowledge of these materials. Therefore, a fundamental study of cohesive powders is essential.

The difficulty to quantify and to control cohesion between the grains of a powder makes their experimental study very complex. During our previous research, we have developed a controlled cohesive granular material. In this controlled system, the cohesion between the grains can the tuned easily. This controlled material is made of spherical ferromagnetic beads placed in an adjustable magnetic field. This system have been used during my thesis to study the influence of the cohesion on the volumic fraction of a pile (Picking the Packing, Research Highlights in Nature 450, 588 (2007)).

My present research project is organized along two axis. (i) First, the influence of the cohesion on the properties of a pile is studied with a model cohesive granular material made of ferromagnetic grains placed in a magnetic field. With this magneto-rheological material, we are able to control the parameters of the experiments. (ii) In parallel, I am performing a study of real cohesive granular materials. Among them, we are focusing on powders.

I am involved in the new platform Aptis dedicated to powder characterization. I am working on the development of new measurement apparatus dedicated to the characterization of powder flow properties.

Teaching

Teaching is also a part of my job at the University. Here is a list af my activities:

• Laboratories of general physics
• Laboratories of spectroscopy
• Practical work of programming (JAVA)
• Practical work of microcontroler programming
• Laboratories for Young students "Physiciens en Herbe"

Technical competencies

• Operating system : OSX, Windows, Linux
• Programming : Java, Perl, PHP, C
• uController : AVR Atmel hardware and software (with avc-gcc)
• Images Processing with the ImageJ Java library
• Autocad (formation of 7 days)
• Webmaster of www.lumay.be, www.centrecharlemagne.be and www.crpal.be
• Mechanics : basic operations with a lathe, arc welding

Hobby

Aeromodelism, mechanics, electronics, ... (see the other sections of this website)

Publications