Our papers are the official record of our discoveries. They allow others to build on and apply our work. Each paper is the result of many months of research, so we make a special effort to make them clear, beautiful and inspirational, and publish them in leading journals.
RF
YM Physical Review EOptimal heat exchange networks
Compact heat exchangers can be designed to run at low power if the exchange is concentrated in a crumpled surface fed by a fractal network.
DRYMRF
Physical Review EStructural imperfections
Fractal structures need very little mass to support a load; but for current designs, this makes them vulnerable to manufacturing errors.
RF
Powder TechnologyRandom close packing fractions
Lognormal distributions (and mixtures of same) are a useful model for the size distribution in emulsions and sediments.
DRYMRF
Physics WorldTowers of strength
The Eiffel tower is now a longstanding example of hierarchical design due to its non-trivial internal structure spanning many length scales.
Hierarchical structures
The most efficient load-bearing fractals are designed as big structures under gentle loads ... a situation common in aerospace applications.
Hierarchical space frames
A systematic way to vary the power-law scaling relations between loading parameters and volume of material aids the hierarchical design process.
Ultralight fractal structures
The transition from solid to hollow beams changes the scaling of stability versus loading analogously to increasing the hierarchical order by one.
Ever-shrinking spheres
Techniques from random sphere packing predict the dimension of the Apollonian gasket, a fractal made up of non-overlapping hyperspheres.