Related papers: The Rigidity of Spherical Frameworks: Swapping Blo…
Rigid particles pack into structures, such as sand dunes on the beach, whose overall stability is determined by the average number of contacts between particles. However, when packing spatially extended objects with flexible shapes,…
Topological Interlocking assemblies are arrangements of blocks kinematically constrained by a fixed frame, such that all rigid body motions of each block are constrained only by its permanent contact with other blocks and the frame. In the…
A method to define the complex structure and separate the conformal mode is proposed for a surface constructed by two-dimensional dynamical triangulation. Applications are made for surfaces coupled to matter fields such as $n$ scalar fields…
Granular packings of non-convex or elongated particles can form free-standing structures like walls or arches. For some particle shapes, such as staples, the rigidity arises from interlocking of pairs of particles, but the origins of…
A $d$-dimensional (bar-and-joint) framework $(G,p)$ consists of a graph $G=(V,E)$ and a realisation $p:V\to \mathbb{R}^d$. It is rigid if every continuous motion of the vertices which preserves the lengths of the edges is induced by an…
We present structures comprised of identical convex polyhedra which are interlocked geometrically. These sets cannot be disassembled by removing individual polyhedra by translations and/or rotations. The shapes that permit interlocking…
A fundamental theorem of Laman characterises when a bar-joint framework realised generically in the Euclidean plane admits a non-trivial continuous deformation of its vertices. This has recently been extended in two ways. Firstly to…
The term "solid-state turbulence" may sound like an oxymoron, but in fact it is not. In this article we demonstrate that solid-state turbulence may emerge owing to a defining property of the solid state: the ability of a solid to retain its…
A hybrid helical structure of equal-sized hard spheres in cylindrical confinement was discovered as a 'by-product' of the recently developed sequential deposition approach [Physical Review E 84, 050302(R) (2011)] for constructing the…
Remarkably persistent mixing and non-mixing regions (islands) are observed to coexist in a three-dimensional dynamical system where randomness is expected. The track of an x-ray opaque particle in a spherical shell half-filled with dry…
A folded disk is bistable, as it can be popped through to an inverted state with elastic energy localized in a small, highly-deformed region on the fold. Cutting out this singularity relaxes the surrounding material and leads to a loss of…
A line of hard spheres confined by a transverse harmonic potential, with hard walls at its ends, exhibits a variety of buckled structures as it is compressed longitudinally. Here we show that these may be conveniently observed in a rotating…
Let $P$ be a set of points and $L$ a set of lines in the (extended) Euclidean plane, and $I \subseteq P\times L$, where $i =(p,l) \in I$ means that point $p$ and line $l$ are incident. The incidences can be interpreted as quadratic…
Via large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, we observe the melting of a topological glass of stiff ring polymers by incorporating flexible ring polymers, along an isobaric path. As more flexible ring polymers are introduced, cluster…
When two chemically passivated solids are brought into contact, interfacial interactions between the solids compete with intrabulk elastic forces. The relative importance of these interactions, which are length-scale dependent, will be…
Persistent homology (PH) was applied to probe the structural changes of glasses under shear. PH associates each local atomistic structure in an atomistic configuration to a geometric object, namely, a hole, and evaluates the robustness of…
The structure of states of the perturbed p-spin spherical spin-glass is analyzed. At low enough free energy metastable states have a supersymmetric structure, while at higher free energies the supersymmetry is broken. The transition between…
Creating materials with structure that is independently controllable at a range of scales requires breaking naturally occurring hierarchies. Breaking these hierarchies can be achieved via the decoupling of building block attributes from…
Matrix stiffness expressions are derived for the particle movements in an assembly of rigid granules having compliant contacts. The derivations include stiffness terms that arise from the particle shapes at their contacts. These geometric…
We develop a rigidity theory for frameworks in $\mathbb{R}^3$ which have two coincident points but are otherwise generic and only infinitesimal motions which are tangential to a family of cylinders induced by the realisation are considered.…