Related papers: Shape transitions in soft spheres regulated by ela…
Liquid migration in active soft solids is a very common phenomenon in Nature at different scales: from cells to leaves. It can be caused by mechanical as well as chemical actions. The work focuses on the migration of liquid provoked by…
To understand how spherical geometry influences the dynamics of gravity-driven subduction of oceanic lithosphere on Earth, we study a simple model of a thin and dense axisymmetric shell of thickness $h$ and viscosity $\eta_1$ sinking in a…
Within the framework of Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals, we study the temperature-induced isotropic-nematic phase transition on a spherical shell. Below a critical temperature, a thin layer of nematic coating a…
Soft membranes are commonly employed in shape-morphing applications, where the material is programmed to achieve a target shape upon activation by an external trigger, and as coating layers that alter the surface characteristics of bulk…
Softer means stickier for solid adhesives, because material compliance facilitates close contact between non-conformal surfaces. Recent discoveries have revealed that soft materials can exhibit a rich array of new physics arising from…
We present a combined theoretical and experimental study of the buckling of a thin film wrapped around a sphere under the action of capillary forces. A rigid sphere is coated with a wetting liquid, and then wrapped by a thin film into an…
Active solids consume energy to allow for actuation, shape change, and wave propagation not possible in equilibrium. Whereas active interfaces have been realized across many experimental systems, control of three-dimensional (3D) bulk…
Soft elastic sheets resting on rigid surfaces develop wrinkles, rucks, and folds due to the combined influence of elasticity, gravity, and contact interactions. Despite their ubiquity, the principles governing their morphology and…
Self-encapsulated droplets floating at an oil--air interface undergo striking shape changes during evaporation, including flattening and localized loss of membrane tension leading to crumpling and wrinkling. Here we combine experiments,…
A thin flat rectangular plate supported on its edges and subjected to in-plane loading exhibits stable post-buckling behaviour. However, the introduction of a nonlinear (softening) elastic foundation may cause the response to become…
Elastic crystalline membranes exhibit a buckling transition from sphere to polyhedron. However, their morphologies are restricted to convex polyhedra and are difficult to externally control. Here, we study morphological changes of closed…
The buckling of a soft elastic sample under growth or swelling has highlighted a new interest in materials science, morphogenesis, and biology or physiology. Indeed, the change of mass or volume is a common fact of any living species, and…
Experiments reveal that structural transitions in thin sheets are mediated by the passage of transient and stable mobile localized elastic excitations. These ``crumples'' or ``d-cones'' nucleate, propagate, interact, annihilate, and escape.…
Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…
The nonequilibrium behaviour of a core-shell nanoparticle has been studied by Monte- Carlo simulation. The core consists of Ising spins of $\sigma=1/2$ and the shell contains Ising spins of $S=1$. The interactions within the core and in the…
We examine the deformation of homogeneous spherical fluid vesicles along their equator by a circular rigid ring. We consider deformations preserving the axial and equatorial mirror symmetries of the vesicles. The configurations of the…
We formulate a phenomenological elasto-plastic theory to describe a solid undergoing a structural transition from a square (p4mm) to an oblique (p2) lattice in two dimensions. Within our theory, the components of the strain may be…
Shapes and energies of icosahedral fullerenes are studied on an atomically detailed level. The numerical results based on the effective binary carbon-carbon potential are related to the theory of elasticity of crystalline membranes with…
We develop an energy-landscape based elasto-plastic model to understand the behaviour of amorphous solids under uniform and cyclic shear. Amorphous solids are modeled as being composed of mesoscopic sub-volumes, each of which may occupy…
From a reanalysis of the published literature, the low-shear viscosity of suspensions of hard spheres is shown to have a dynamic crossover in its concentration dependence, from a stretched exponential at lower concentrations to a power law…