Related papers: Microstructures and Mechanical Properties of Dense…
The shear strength of cohesionless granular materials is generally attributed to the compactness or anisotropy of their microstructure. An open issue is how such compact or anisotropic microstructures, and thus the shear strength, depend on…
We explore structural and dynamical behavior of concentrated colloidal suspensions made up by C-shape particles using Brownian dynamics computer simulations and theory. In particular, we focus on the entanglement process between nearby…
Attractive colloidal particles can form a disordered elastic solid or gel when quenched into a two-phase region, if the volume fraction is sufficiently large. When the interactions are comparable to thermal energies the stress-bearing…
The mechanical properties of a material are intimately related to its microstructure. This is particularly important for predicting mechanical behavior of polycrystalline metals, where microstructural variations dictate the expected…
We present a detailed numerical study of multi-component colloidal gels interacting sterically and obtained by arrested phase separation. Under deformation, we found that the interplay between the different intertwined networks is key.…
We use numerical simulations to show how noninteracting hard particles binding to a deformable elastic shell may self-assemble into a variety of linear patterns. This is a result of the nontrivial elastic response to deformations of shells.…
We simulate a colloidal particle (radius R) in a cholesteric liquid crystal (pitch p) with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The local defect structure evolves from a dipolar pair of surface defects (boojums) at…
We discuss a class of models for particulate gels in which the particle contacts are described by an effective interaction combining a two-body attraction and a three-body angular repulsion. Using molecular dynamics, we show how varying the…
We have investigated the rheology and structure of a gel formed from a mixture of non-Brownian particles and two immiscible liquids. The suspension of particles in a liquid undergoes gelation upon the addition of a small content of second,…
We develop coarse-grained particle approaches for studying the elastic mechanics of vesicles with heterogeneous membranes having phase-separated domains. We perform simulations both of passive shape fluctuations and of active systems where…
We construct a new order parameter from the normal modes of vibration, based on the consideration of energy equipartition, to quantify the structural heterogeneity in disordered solids. The order parameter exhibits strong spatial…
Thermoresponsive microgels find widespread use as colloidal model systems, because their temperature-dependent size allows facile tuning of their volume fraction "in situ". However, an interaction potential unifying their behavior across…
Granular materials often present correlations between particle size and shape due to their geological formation and mechanisms of weathering and fragmentation. It is known that particle shape strongly affects shear strength. However, the…
We investigate the collective behavior of suspended thermoresponsive microgels, that expel solvent and subsequently decrease in size upon heating. Using a binary mixture of differently thermoresponsive microgels, we demonstrate how…
Granular media near jamming exhibit fascinating properties, which can be harnessed to create jammed-granulate metamaterials: materials whose characteristics arise not only from the shape and material properties of the particles at the…
Macroscopic elastic core-shell systems can be generated as toy models to be deformed and haptically studied by hand. On the mesoscale, colloidal core-shell particles and microgels are fabricated and investigated by different types of…
Two dimensional simulations of non-cohesive granular matter in a biaxial shear tester are discussed. The effect of particle elasticity on the mechanical behavior is investigated using two complementary distinct element methods (DEM): Soft…
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has been employed to study the nonequilibrium structure formation of two types of particles in a colloidal suspension, driven by type-dependent forces. We examined the time evolution of structure formation…
We investigate the spatial correlations of microscopic stresses in soft particulate gels, using 2D and 3D numerical simulations. We use a recently developed theoretical framework predicting the analytical form of stress-stress correlations…
The equilibrium amorphous solid state -- formed, e.g., by adequately randomly crosslinking the constituents of a macromolecular fluid -- is a heterogeneous state characterized by a universal distribution of particle localization lengths.…