Related papers: Elasticity of compressed microgel suspensions

The efficiency of soft particles to stabilize emulsions is examined by measuring their desorption free energy, i.e., the mechanical work required to detach the particle from a fluid interface. Here, we consider rubber-like elastic as well…

A self-consistent model is developed to investigate attachment / detachment kinetics of two soft, deformable microspheres with irregular surface and coated with flexible binding ligands. The model highlights how the microscale binding…

Understanding the coupled thermo-mechanical behaviour of compacted granular beds can benefit various industrial applications, such as pebble bed design in fusion reactors. In this study, a thermo-mechanical discrete element method based on…

Elastic properties and internal states of isotropic sphere packings are studied by numerical simulations. Several numerical protocols to assemble dense configurations are compared. One, which imitates experiments with lubricated contacts,…

An analytical theory is presented for the damping of low-frequency adsorbate vibrations via resonant coupling to the substrate phonons. The system is treated classically, with the substrate modeled as a semi-infinite elastic continuum and…

In this third and final paper of a series, elastic properties of numerically simulated isotropic packings of spherical beads assembled by different procedures and subjected to a varying confining pressure P are investigated. In addition P,…

From glycosylated cell surfaces to sterically stabilized liposomes, polymers attached to membranes attract biological and therapeutic interest. Can the scaling laws of polymer "brushes" describe the physical properties of these coats? We…

Microgels are complex macromolecules. These colloid-sized polymer networks possess internal degrees of freedom and, depending on the polymer(s) they are made of, can acquire a responsiveness to variations of the environment (temperature,…

Amorphous solids relax via slow molecular rearrangement induced by thermal fluctuations or applied stress. Although microscopic structural signatures predicting these structural relaxations have long been sought, a physically motivated…

The transport of soft viscoelastic gels through confined geometries underlies critical processes in biomedical, biological, and industrial systems. Here, we examine the translocation of a spherical microgel through a narrow capillary whose…

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…

The nonlinear mechanics of a flexible elastic rod constrained at its edges by a pair of sliding sleeves is analyzed. The planar equilibrium configurations of this variable-length elastica are found to have shape defined only by the…

We evaluate the elasticity of arrested short-ranged attractive colloids by combining an analytically solvable elastic model with a hierarchical arrest scheme into a new approach, which allows to discriminate the microscopic (primary…

Soft composite solids are made of inclusions dispersed within soft matrices. They are ubiquitous in nature and form the basis of many biological tissues. In the field of materials science, synthetic soft composites are promising candidates…

We derive from particle-level dynamics a constitutive model describing the rheology of two-dimensional dense soft suspensions below the jamming transition, in a regime where hydrodynamic interactions between particles are screened. Based on…

In this paper we focus on the mechanical properties of oligomeric glasses (waxes), employing a microscopic model that provides, via numerical simulations, information about the shear modulus of such materials, the failure mechanism via…

Addition of particles to a viscoelastic suspension dramatically alters the properties of the mixture, particularly when it is sheared or otherwise processed. Shear-induced stretching of the polymers results in elastic stress that causes a…

We model the behaviour of a single colloid embedded in a cross-linked polymer gel, immersed in a viscous background fluid. External fields actuate the particle into a periodic motion, which deforms the embedding matrix and creates a local…

Encapsulation of chemicals using polymer membranes enables to control their transport and delivery for applications such as agrochemistry or detergency. To rationalize the design of polymer capsules, it is necessary to understand how the…

Self-mated hydrogel contacts show extremely small friction coefficients at low loads but a distinct velocity dependence. Here we combine mesoscopic simulations and experiments to test the polymer-relaxation hypothesis for this velocity…