A variety of projects can be done by students as dictated by their interests, given the constraints of facilities and expertese. Projects can be done primarily under my supervision or with the joint supervision and collaboration with other faculty at Brown and elsewhere as appropriate. The non-exhaustive list below gives an idea of some of the projects that are either in advanced or preliminary stages of planning, and they give some idea of possibilities. Friction at Elevated Temperature . We will soon begin a study of the effect of temperature on friction, using a new internal furnace.
Temperature is an important parameter for two reasons.
Second, temperature is a variable that can be used to try to distinguish between possible operative processes responsible for the direct and evolution effects in rate and state friction . Earthquake Prediction . There are some interesting new results from China suggesting that it might be possible to predict earthquakes by comparing the rate of small earthquakes during the loading or unloading part of the cycle of Earth tides. We are considering an independent test of the idea. It is a more viable hypothesis than the one we evaluated concerning stresses from free oscillations, since the tidal stresses are much larger.