Chelsea Davis

Associate Professor

Education

PhD | Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
MS | Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
BS | Textile Engineering, North Carolina State University
BS | Spanish Language and Literature, North Carolina State University

Executive Summary

Dr. Chelsea Davis’s research focuses on the surface and interfacial mechanics of soft matter. Primarily focused on reversible adhesive contacts, her lab develops characterization tools and approaches to measure the attachment and separation mechanisms of polymeric materials. By taking a mechanics-centric approach, Dr. Davis is furthering our understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms that control adhesion. Her work focuses on normal (meaning perpendicular) contact mechanics problems, peel mechanics, and buried interfaces. Much of the research in Dr. Davis’s lab is performed by combining custom-built micromechanical testing setups with visualization tools like fluorescence microscopy. Applications of her work can be found in medical adhesives, pavement marking tapes, and fiber reinforced composites.

Dr. Davis received a B.S. in Textile Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2005. She then obtained her M.S. and Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2007 and 2012, respectively, supervised by Dr. Alfred Crosby. From 2012-2013, Dr. Davis was a Michelin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the ESPCI ParisTech working with Dr. Costantino Creton and Dr. Anke Lindner. She went on to complete a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Polymers and Complex Fluids Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from 2013 to 2016. In 2017, she established the Illuminating Interfacial Mechanics Lab in the School of Materials Engineering at Purdue University. Dr. Davis joined the University of Delaware in 2023 as an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

RESEARCH AREAS

• Biomechanics
• Composites & Advanced Materials

FACULTY EXPERTISE

• Polymer Mechanics
• Adhesion and Interfaces
• Polymer Matrix Composites
• Fluorescence Microscopy
• Micromechanical Metrology Tools Design