Related papers: Phase Separation in Soft Matter: Concept of Dynami…
Solids deform and fluids flow, but soft glassy materials, such as emulsions, foams, suspensions, and pastes, exhibit an intricate mix of solid and liquid-like behavior. While much progress has been made to understand their elastic (small…
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
Crystalline membranes are one of the rare examples of bidimensional systems in which long-range order can stabilise an ordered phase in the thermodynamic limit. By a careful analysis of the Goldstone modes counting, we propose a symmetry…
Modeling symmetry breaking is essential for understanding the fundamental changes in the behaviors and properties of physical systems, from microscopic particle interactions to macroscopic phenomena like fluid dynamics and cosmic…
Inspired by recent experiments, we present a phase-field model of microphase separation in an elastomer swollen with a solvent. The imbalance between the molecular scale of demixing and the mesoscopic scale beyond which elasticity operates…
One of the most interesting phenomena in the soft-matter realm consists in the spontaneous formation of super-molecular structures (microphases) in condition of thermodynamic equilibrium. A simple mechanism responsible for this…
The existence of heterogeneity in the dynamics of supercooled liquids is believed to be one of the hallmarks of the glass transition. Intense research has been carried out in the past to understand the origin of this heterogeneity in…
We report a new theory of dissipative forces acting between colliding viscoelastic bodies. The impact velocity is assumed not to be large, to avoid plastic deformations and fragmentation at the impact. The bodies may be of an arbitrary…
We study two closely related, nonlinear models of a viscoplastic solid. These models capture essential features of plasticity over a wide range of strain rates and applied stresses. They exhibit inelastic strain relaxation and steady flow…
We investigate the fragmentation process of solid materials with crystalline and amorphous phases using the discrete element method. Damage initiates inside spherical samples above the contact zone in a region where the circumferential…
Amorphous materials of homogeneous structures usually suffer from nonuniform deformation under shear, which can develop into shear localization and eventually destructive shear band. One approach to tackle this issue is to introduce an…
Plasticity refers to thermodynamically irreversible deformation associated with a change of configuration of materials. Friction is a phenomenological law that describes the forces resisting sliding between two solids or across an embedded…
Despite the enormous theoretical and application interests, a fundamental understanding of the glassy dynamics remains elusive. The static properties of glassy and ordinary liquids are similar, but their dynamics are dramatically different.…
Understanding surface mechanics of soft solids, such as soft polymeric gels, is crucial in many engineering processes, such as dynamic wetting and adhesive failure. In these situations, a combination of capillary and elastic forces drives…
We introduce the time glass, a non-periodic analogue of the discrete time crystal that arises in periodically driven dissipative quantum many-body systems. This phase is defined by two key features: (i) spatial long-range order arising from…
A simple model for solid friction is analyzed. It is based on tangential springs representing interlocked asperities of the surfaces in contact. Each spring is given a maximal strain according to a probability distribution. At their maximal…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is key to understanding aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) arising throughout cell biology, medical science, and the pharmaceutical industry. Controlling the detailed morphology of phase-separating compound…
We study the role of elasticity-induced facilitation on the dynamics of glass-forming liquids by a coarse-grained two-dimensional model in which local relaxation events, taking place by thermal activation, can trigger new relaxations by…
This work investigates phase separation of a monodisperse gas of inelastically colliding hard disks confined in a two-dimensional annulus, the inner circle of which represents a "thermal wall". When described by granular hydrodynamic…
The presence of dynamical heterogeneities, i.e. nanometer-scale regions containing molecules rearranging cooperatively at very different rates compared to the bulk, is increasingly being recognized as crucial in our understanding of the…