Related papers: Stiffening solids with liquid inclusions
Eshelby's theory of inclusions has wide-reaching implications across the mechanics of materials and structures including the theories of composites, fracture, and plasticity. However, it does not include the effects of surface stress, which…
The importance of surface tension effects is being recognized in the context of soft composite solids, where it is found to significantly affect the mechanical properties, such as the elastic response to an external stress. It has recently…
In the dilute limit Eshelby's inclusion theory captures the behavior of a wide range of systems and properties. However, because Eshelby's approach neglects interfacial stress, it breaks down in soft materials as the inclusion size…
Eshelby's theory is the foundation of composite mechanics, allowing calculation of the effective elastic moduli of composites from a knowledge of their microstructure. However it ignores interfacial stress and only applies to very dilute…
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…
The Eshelby formalism for an inclusion in a solid is of significant theoretical and practical implications in mechanics and other fields of heterogeneous media. Eshelby's finding that a uniform eigenstrain prescribed in a solitary…
The mechanical properties of biological materials are spatially heterogeneous. Typical tissues are made up of a spanning fibrous extracellular matrix in which various inclusions, such as living cells, are embedded. While the influence of…
The elastic properties of a soft matter material can be greatly altered by the presence of solid inclusions whose microscopic properties, such as their size and interactions, can have a dramatic effect. In order to shed light on these…
We report detailed theoretical investigations of the micro-mechanics and bulk elastic properties of composites consisting of randomly distributed stiff fibers embedded in an elastic matrix in two and three dimensions. Recent experiments…
Investigation of inhomogeneities has wide applications in different areas of mechanics including the study of composite materials. Here, we analytically study an arbitrarily-shaped isotropic inhomogeneity embedded in a finite-sized…
When amorphous solids are strained they display elastic deformation at small strain, however, beyond a critical strain they yield and begin to flow plastically. The origin of this plasticity lies in the irreversible rearrangement of…
This paper presents the derivation of the homogenized equations that describe the macroscopic mechanical response of elastomers filled with liquid inclusions in the setting of small quasistatic deformations. The derivation is carried out…
Soft yet tough materials are ubiquitous in nature and everyday life. The ratio between fracture toughness and intrinsic fracture energy of a soft material defines its toughness enhancement. Soft materials' toughness enhancement has been…
We discuss the plastic behavior of an amorphous matrix reinforced by hard particles. A mesoscopic depinning-like model accounting for Eshelby elastic interactions is implemented. Only the effect of a plastic disorder is considered.…
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…
Droplets splash when they impact dry, flat substrates above a critical velocity that depends on parameters such as droplet size, viscosity and air pressure. By imaging ethanol drops impacting silicone gels of different stiffnesses we show…
It is widely appreciated that surface tension can dominate the behavior of liquids at small scales. Solids also have surface stresses of a similar magnitude, but they are usually overlooked. However, recent work has shown that these can…
The two key phenomena occurring in the process of ceramic powder compaction are the progressive gain in cohesion and the increase of elastic stiffness, both related to the development of plastic deformation. The latter effect is an example…
We investigate the shear elastic modulus of soft polymer foams loaded with hard spherical particles and we show that, for constant bubble size and gas volume fraction, strengthening is strongly dependent on the size of those inclusions.…
The yielding of foams, concentrated emulsions, pastes and other soft materials under applied strain is often characterized by measuring the complex shear modulus as a function of strain amplitude at low frequency. Results obtained for…