Related papers: Drying Patterns: Sensitivity to Residual Stresses
We study a theoretical model of mud cracks, that is, the fracture patterns resulting from the contraction with drying in a thin layer of a mixture of granules and water. In this model, we consider the slip on the bottom of this layer and…
We have studied shrinkage crack patterns which form when a thin layer of an alumina/water slurry dries. Both isotropic and directional drying were studied. The dynamics of the pattern formation process and the geometric properties of the…
We investigate the formation of spiral crack patterns during the desiccation of thin layers of precipitates in contact with a substrate. This symmetry-breaking fracturing mode is found to arise naturally not from torsion forces, but from a…
Cracks in thin layers are influenced by what lies beneath them. From buried craters to crocodile skin, crack patterns are found over an enormous range of length scales. Regardless of absolute size, their substrates can dramatically…
Superficial (two dimensional) crack patterns appear when a thin layer of material elastically attached to a substrate contracts. We study numerically the maturation process undergone by these crack patterns when they are allowed to adapt in…
Drying induced cracking of concrete surfaces and repair layers is a common problem. A principal cause for this type of cracking is the moisture and resulting contraction gradient that develops in the cement paste matrix upon drying. This…
A thin circular elastic sheet floating on a drop-like liquid substrate is deformed due to incompatibility between the curved substrate and the planar sheet. We adopt a variational viewpoint by minimizing the non-convex membrane energy…
Shearing stresses can change the volume of a material via a nonlinear effect known as shear dilatancy. We calculate the elastic dilatancy coefficient of soft sphere packings and random spring networks, two canonical models of marginal…
Drying of bacterial suspensions is frequently encountered in a plethora of natural and engineering processes. However, the evaporation-driven mechanical instabilities of dense consolidating bacterial suspensions have not been explored…
Surface roughness emerges naturally during mechanical removal of material, fracture, chemical deposition, plastic deformation, indentation, and other processes. Here, we use continuum simulations to show how roughness which is neither…
We investigate the role of architected thin films in the interfacial failure properties of bi-layer composites. Our results show that, while graded structures can be used to prescribe failure at the interface, they do not offer significant…
Many interesting shapes appearing in the biological world are formed by the onset of mechanical instability. In this work we consider how the build-up of residual stress can cause a solid to buckle. In all past studies a fictitious…
A fascinating class of patterns, often encountered in nature as meandering cracks on rocks, dried-out fields and tectonic plates is produced by the fracture of solids. Here we report the observation and modeling of an unusual type of…
Fractures are a critical process in how materials wear, weaken, and fail whose unpredictable behavior can have dire consequences. While the behavior of smooth cracks in ideal materials is well understood, it is assumed that for real,…
Wrinkling instabilities of thin elastic sheets can be used to generate periodic structures over a wide range of length scales. Viscosity of the thin elastic sheet or its surrounding medium has been shown to be responsible for dynamic…
Substrate wettability alteration induced control over crack formation process in thin colloidal films has been addressed in the present study. Colloidal nanosuspension (53nm, mean particle diameter) droplets have been subjected to natural…
Brittle materials fail catastrophically. In consequence of their limited flaw-tolerance, failure occurs by localized fracture and is typically a dynamic process. Recently, experiments on epithelial cell monolayers have revealed that this…
The drying of a colloidal dispersion can result in a gel phase defined as a porous matrix saturated in solvent. During the drying process, high mechanical stresses are generated. When these stresses exceed the strength of the material, they…
We study the nucleation and development of crack patterns in thin composite fibers under tension in this work. A fiber comprises an elastic core and an outer layer of a weaker brittle material. In recent tensile experiments on such…
We present a molecular dynamics study of force patterns, tensile strength and crack formation in a cohesive granular model where the particles are subjected to swelling or shrinkage gradients. Non-uniform particle size change generates…