Michael Shimizu

Summary: In order to better understand lignin, a sustainable polymer alternative, we utilized molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to characterize its stress-strain response under various conditions. This study evaluates the impact of temperature, strain rate, and oligomer size (N-values) on the material's rigidity. Our findings establish that lignin exhibits significant strain hardening and maintains a Young’s modulus comparable to standard plastics, validating the use of modified CHARMM force fields for accurate biopolymer modeling.

My Contribution: Constructed and executed the HPC molecular dynamics simulations to analyze stress-strain relationships, temperature effects, and oligomer size variations.

Summary: Variational Quantum Eigensolvers (VQE) often lack a reliable metric for convergence when the true ground state energy is unknown. This paper proposes the Hamiltonian-reconstruction distance as a new convergence metric that can be estimated efficiently on quantum hardware. Using simulations and trapped-ion experiments, we demonstrated that this metric provides a distinct signal of convergence, allowing for the distinction between local minima and true ground state solutions.

My Contribution: Developed and executed parallelized density matrix simulations to model hardware noise, generated the primary correlation analysis for Figure 3, and contributed to manuscript drafting.

Summary: This study introduces a novel application of Digital Image Correlation (DIC) to capture the transient deformation of photovoltaic modules during hail impact events. By utilizing high-speed stereoscopic cameras, we quantified the out-of-plane displacement fields and calculated derived strain metrics in real-time. The analysis reveals that impact energy scales with the square root of deformation depth and identifies specific damping behaviors in the module's glass-polymer layered structure.

My Contribution: Developed the interpolation code and visualization pipeline responsible for generating the primary deformation and strain analysis plots (Figs 4–7, 9).

Summary: This conference paper presents a multi-modal analysis of hail damage initiation in PV modules by correlating high-speed mechanical deformation data with Electroluminescence (EL) imaging. The study investigates the threshold at which physical impact results in electrically active cell cracks. By spatially mapping the transient deformation peaks to subsequent EL crack patterns, we provide a clearer understanding of how impact energy translates into internal structural failure in commercial solar panels.

My Contribution: Processed experimental data to visualize the correlation between peak deformation and crack initiation (Fig 4).