Related papers: Failure mechanisms in thin electroactive polymer a…
Active polymers are driven out of equilibrium by internal forces and exhibit conformational properties that differ fundamentally from those of passive chains. Here we study how spatially modulated tangential activity reshapes the…
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…
Electroactive polymer thin films undergo repeated reversible structural change during operation in electrochemical applications. While synchrotron X-ray scattering is powerful for the characterization of stand-alone and ex-situ organic thin…
The aim of this work is understanding the stretching mechanism of stochastic models of turbulence acting on a simple model of dilute polymers. We consider a turbulent model that is white noise in time and activates frequencies in a shell…
Confined geometries offer useful and experimentally amenable mechanical testing arrangements in which to study the molecular and micro-structural processes which govern plastic yield in stress environments dominated by hydrostatic pressure…
The complex conductivity of a superconducting thin film is related to the quasiparticle density, which depends on the physical temperature and can also be modified by external pair breaking with photons and phonons. This relationship forms…
Adhesive peeling of a thin elastic film from a substrate is a classic problem in mechanics. However, many of the investigations on this topic to date have focused on peeling from substrates with flat surfaces. In this paper, we study the…
We study how confinement affects topology and conformations in polymer films of varying thickness $h$. The knotting probability exhibits a maximum at intermediate thicknesses near the bulk radius of gyration $h \approx R_\mathrm{g,bulk}$,…
The surface charge associated with the spontaneous polarization in ferroelectrics is well known to cause a depolarizing field that can be particularly detrimental in the thin-film geometry desirable for microelectronic devices. Incomplete…
We study the force production dynamics of undulating elastic plates as a model for fish-like inertial swimmers. Using a beam model coupled with Lighthill's large-amplitude elongated-body theory, we explore different localised actuations at…
When a volatile droplet is deposited on a floating swellable sheet, it becomes asymmetric, lobed and mobile. We describe and quantify this phenomena that involves nonequilibrium swelling, evaporation and motion, working together to realize…
Acoustic emission (AE) activity data resulting from the fracture processes of brittle materials is valuable real time information regarding the evolving state of damage in the material. Here, through a combined experimental and…
In the field of soft dielectric elastomers, the notion electrostriction indicates the dependency of the permittivity on strain. The present paper is aimed at investigating the effects of electrostriction onto the stability behaviour of…
In order to better understand the interaction between pore-fluid overpressure and failure patterns in rocks we consider a porous elasto-plastic medium in which a laterally localized overpressure line source is imposed at depth below the…
We investigate wrinkling of two-dimensional random and triangular semiflexible polymer networks under shear. Both types of semiflexible networks exhibit wrinkling above a small critical shear angle, which scales with an exponent of the…
In this paper, we study the preferential stiffness and the crack-tip fields for an elastic porous solid of which material properties are dependent upon the density. Such a description is necessary to describe the failure that can be caused…
Using a combination of theory, experiments, and numerical simulations, we investigate the stability of coherent structures in a suspension of strongly aligned active swimmers. We show that a dilute jet of pullers undergoes a pearling…
(Electric) polarization tensors describe part of the leading order term of asymptotic voltage perturbations caused by low volume fraction inhomogeneities of the electrical properties of a medium. They depend on the geometry of the support…
Electroactive polymers are smart materials that can be used as actuators, sensors, or energy harvesters. We focus on a pseudo trilayer based on PEDOT, a semiconductor polymer: the central part consists of two interpenetrating polymers and…
Thin film dynamics and associated instability mechanisms have triggered a wide range of scientific innovations, as attributed to their abilities of creating fascinating patterns over small scales. Here, we demonstrate a new thin film…