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The origin of rigidity in disordered materials is an outstanding open problem in statistical physics. Previously, a class of 2D cellular models has been shown to undergo a rigidity transition controlled by a mechanical parameter that…
Experimentally measuring the elastic properties of thin biological surfaces is non-trivial, particularly when they are curved. One technique that may be used is the indentation of a thin sheet of material by a rigid indenter, whilst…
Living materials such as membranes, cytoskeletal assemblies, cell collectives and tissues can often be described as active solids -- materials that are energized from within, with elastic response about a well defined reference…
The bistability of embedded elements provides a natural route through which to introduce reprogrammability to elastic meta-materials. One example of this is the soft morphable sheet, in which bistable elements that can be snapped up or…
The design of desired behaviors in mechanical metamaterials has produced remarkable advances but has generally neglected two aspects - the inevitable presence of undesired behaviors and the role of dynamics in avoiding such behaviors.…
Origami morphing, obtained with patches of piecewise smooth isometries separated by straight fold lines, is an exquisite art that has already received considerable attention in the mathematics and mechanics literature. Curved fold lines,…
Snap-fits are versatile mechanical designs in industrial products, which enable the repeated assembling and disassembling of two solid parts. This important property is attributed to a fine balance between geometry, friction, and bending…
Many objects in nature and industry are wrapped in a thin sheet to enhance their chemical, mechanical, or optical properties. There are similarly a variety of methods for wrapping, from pressing a film onto a hard substrate, to using…
Flaps can be detached from a thin film glued on a solid substrate by tearing and peeling. For flat substrates, it has been shown that these flaps spontaneously narrow and collapse in pointy triangular shapes. Here we show that various…
We investigate the morphology and mechanics of a naturally curved elastic arch loaded at its center and frictionally supported at both ends on a flat, rigid substrate. Through systematic numerical simulations, we classify the observed…
In this paper we consider developable surfaces which are isometric to planar domains and which are piecewise differentiable, exhibiting folds along curves. The paper revolves around the longstanding problem of existence of the so-called…
We investigate how thin structures change their shape in response to non-mechanical stimuli that can be interpreted as variations in the structure's natural curvature. Starting from the theory of non-Euclidean plates and shells, we derive…
Structures with artificial mechanical properties, often called mechanical metamaterials, exhibit divergent yet tunable performance. Various types of mechanical metamaterials have been proposed, which harness light or magnetic interactions,…
Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
A novel bilayer is introduced, consisting of a stiff film adhered to a soft substrate with patterned holes beneath the film and substrate interface. To uncover the transition of surface patterns, two dimensional plane strain simulations are…
Fitting two different materials is a versatile methodology in manufacturing complex structures. One of the canonical models for fitting is the snap-fit model, in which flexible materials and rigid structures are assembled by pushing their…
A remarkable property of flexible self-avoiding elastic surfaces (membranes) is that they remain flat at all temperatures, even in the absence of a bending rigidity or in the presence of active fluctuations. Here, we report numerical…
Grip, walk, crawl, and jump. Soft robots are integrated functional structures composed of compliant mechanisms, whose activity spans various industrial applications such as surgery, healthcare, surveillance, and even planetary exploration.…
We investigate the crumpling of a sheet as it is repeatedly crushed onto itself by rolling it into a cylinder and twisting it axially while allowing the end-to-end length to evolve freely. As deduced from its plastic deformations, the sheet…