Related papers: Self-Affine Elastic Contacts: Percolation and Leak…
Extra-large deformations in ultra-soft elastic materials are ubiquitous, yet systematic studies and methods to understand the mechanics of such huge strains are lacking. Here we investigate this complex problem systematically with a simple…
Via simulations of flowing foam, we connect the high and intermediate density regimes of complex fluid flows into a consistent microscopic picture of deformation. While at and above the jamming transition, elastic correlations lead to…
Friction in static and sliding contact of rough surfaces is important in numerous physical phenomena. We seek to understand macroscopically observed static and sliding contact behavior as the collective response of a large number of…
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…
Young's law fails on soft solid and liquid substrates where there are substantial deformations near the contact line. On liquid substrates, this is captured by Neumann's classic analysis, which provides a geometrical construction for…
The friction and adhesion between elastic bodies are strongly influenced by the roughness of the surfaces in contact. Here we develop a multiscale molecular dynamics approach to contact mechanics, which can be used also when the surfaces…
On a sufficiently-soft substrate, a resting fluid droplet will cause significant deformation of the substrate. This deformation is driven by a combination of capillary forces at the contact line and the fluid pressure at the solid surface.…
Explicit analytical expressions for the drag and diffusion coefficients of a spherical particle attached to the interface between two immiscible fluids are constructed for the case of a small viscosity ratio between the fluid phases. The…
The diffraction of fast atoms at crystal surfaces is ideal for a detailed investigation of the surface electronic density. However, instead of sharp diffraction spots, most experiments show elongated streaks characteristic of inelastic…
We study the fluid-mediated approach of a deformable axisymmetric object towards a rigid substrate, focusing on how its shape influences contact formation. For low approach velocities and large Stokes numbers, we show that sharper profiles…
We discuss a class of models for particulate gels in which the particle contacts are described by an effective interaction combining a two-body attraction and a three-body angular repulsion. Using molecular dynamics, we show how varying the…
Solid interfaces have intrinsic elasticity. However, in most experiments, this is obscured by bulk stresses. Through microscopic observations of the contact-line geometry of a partially wetting droplet on an anisotropically stretched…
Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…
Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…
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…
The relation between the contact angle of a liquid drop and the morphological parameters of self-affine solid surfaces have been investigated. We show experimentally that the wetting property of a solid surface crucially depends on the…
Soft-walled microchannels arise in many applications, ranging from organ-on-a-chip platforms to soft-robotic actuators. However, despite extensive research on their static and dynamic response, the potential failure of these devices has not…
We present fully analytical solutions for the deformation of a stretched soft substrate due to the static wetting of a large liquid droplet, and compare our solutions to recently published experiments (Xu et al, Soft Matter 2018). Following…
Deformations of conventional solids are described via elasticity, a classical field theory whose form is constrained by translational and rotational symmetries. However, flexible metamaterials often contain an additional approximate…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…