Related papers: Softly Constrained Films
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
The macroscopic behaviour of active matter arises from nonequilibrium microscopic processes. In soft materials, active stresses typically drive macroscopic shape changes, which in turn alter the geometry constraining the microscopic…
Contact involving soft materials often combines dry adhesion, sliding friction, and large deformations. At the local level, these three aspects are rarely captured simultaneously, but included in the theoretical models by Mergel et al.…
The effect of rigid surfaces on the dynamics of thin liquid films which are amenable to the lubrication approximation is considered. It is shown that the Helfrich energy of the layer gives rise to additional terms in the time-evolution…
Materials science has been intensively developed during the last 30 years. This is due, on the one hand, to an increasing demand of new materials for new applications and, on the other hand, to technological progress which allows for the…
Various adhesion mechanisms that have been understood in the field of synthetic adhesives are described and these are linked with situations relevant to fouling issues. The review mainly deals with mechanical aspects of adhesion phenomena,…
Elasticity of soft materials can be greatly influenced by the presence of air bubbles. Such a capillary effect is expected for a wide range of materials, from polymer gels to concentrated emulsions and colloidal suspensions. Whereas…
Many theories are formulated as constrained systems. We provide a mechanism that explains the origin of physical states of a constrained system by a process of selection of noiseless subsystems when the system is coupled to an external…
The spatial organization of bacteria in dense biofilms is key to their collective behaviour, and understanding it will be important for medical and technological applications. Here we study the morphology of a compact biofilm that undergoes…
This review article examines the complex dynamics of thin-film flows of granular suspensions spreading over rigid solid substrates with free air interfaces. Such systems feature an involved coupling of the free-surface dynamics with the…
Granular packings display a wealth of mechanical features which are of widespread significance. One of these features is creep: the slow deformation under applied stress. Creep is common for many other amorphous materials such as many…
Two-dimensional simulations are used to explore topological transitions that occur during the formation of films grown from grains that are seeded on substrates. This is done for a relatively large range of the initial value $\Phi_s$ of the…
Many biological tissues feature a heterogeneous network of fibers whose tensile and bending rigidity contribute substantially to these tissues' elastic properties. Rigidity percolation has emerged as a important paradigm for relating these…
We construct a homogeneous, nonlinear elastic constitutive law, that models aspects of the mechanical behavior of inhomogeneous fibrin networks. Fibers in such networks buckle when in compression. We model this as a loss of stiffness in…
An important goal of modern condensed matter physics involves the search for states of matter with new emergent properties and desirable functionalities. Although the tools for material design remain relatively limited, notable advances…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
Many organisms exhibit branching morphologies that twist around each other and become entangled. Entanglement occurs when different objects interlock, creating complex and often irreversible configurations. This physical phenomenon is…
Kinetically constrained spin systems play an important role in understanding key properties of the dynamics of slowly relaxing materials, such as glasses. So far kinetic constraints have been introduced in idealised models aiming to capture…
Soft surfaces, spanning vastly different environmental and biomedical settings, are frequently colonised by surface-associated bacteria. Yet, how soft surfaces govern bacterial dynamics and their self-organisation into colonies remains…
The apparently intractable shape of a fold in a compressed elastic film lying on a fluid substrate is found to have an exact solution. Such systems buckle at a nonzero wavevector set by the bending stiffness of the film and the weight of…