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Additively manufactured (AM) architected materials have enabled unprecedented control over mechanical properties of engineered materials. While lattice architectures have played a key role in these advances, they suffer from stress…
Thermal fluctuations strongly modify the large length-scale elastic behavior of crosslinked membranes, giving rise to scale-dependent elastic moduli. While thermal effects in flat membranes are well understood, many natural and artificial…
For 3D geometries, we consider stones (modeled as convex polyhedra) subject to weathering with planar slices of random orientation and depth successively removing material, ultimately yielding smooth and round (i.e. spherical) shapes. An…
Lipid bilayers often form high-curvature configurations due to self-assembly conditions or certain biological processes. However, particle-based simulations of lipid membranes are predominantly of flat lipid membranes because planar…
Mechanical stretching of secondary structures is studied through molecular dynamics simulations of a Go-like model. Force vs. displacement curves are studied as a function of the stiffness and velocity of the pulling device. The succession…
Curved structures in soft matter and biological systems commonly emerge as a result of self-assembly processes where building blocks aggregate in a controlled manner, giving rise to specific system structure and properties. Learning how to…
Robotic cloth manipulation faces challenges due to the fabric's complex dynamics and the high dimensionality of configuration spaces. Previous methods have largely focused on isolated smoothing or folding tasks and overly reliant on…
Snap-through occurs in elastic structures when a stable equilibrium configuration becomes unstable, resulting in rapid motion towards a new and distinct stable state. While static analyses of snap-through are well documented, the dynamics…
Soft materials, such as liquids, polymers, foams, gels, colloids, granular materials, and most soft biological materials, play an important role in our daily lives. From a mechanical viewpoint, soft materials can easily achieve large…
Disordered mechanical systems can deform along a network of pathways that branch and recombine at special configurations called bifurcation points. Multiple pathways are accessible from these bifurcation points; consequently, computer-aided…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
We investigate the dissipative mechanisms exhibited by creased material sheets when subjected to mechanical loading, which comes in the form of plasticity and relaxation phenomena within the creases. After demonstrating that plasticity…
We study the snapping instability of a spherical elastic shell induced by a viscous flow, the umbrella flipping problem when life is at low Reynolds numbers. We combine precision desktop-scale experiments, fluid-structure simulations, shell…
Fracture limits the structural stability of macroscopic and microscopic materials, from beams and bones to microtubules and nanotubes. Despite recent progress, fracture control continues to present profound practical and theoretical…
Rigidity transitions in simple models of confluent cells have been a powerful organizing principle in understanding the dynamics and mechanics of dense biological tissue. In this work we explore the interplay between geometry and rigidity…
Understanding and controlling the shape of thin, soft objects has been the focus of significant research efforts among physicists, biologists, and engineers in the last decade. These studies aim to utilize advanced materials in novel,…
The surfaces of growing biological tissues, swelling gels, and compressed rubbers do not remain smooth, but frequently exhibit highly localized inward folds. We reveal the morphology of this surface folding in a novel experimental setup,…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
Self-shaping of curved structures, especially those involving flexible thin layers, has attracted increasing attention because of their broad potential applications in e.g. nanoelectromechanical/micro-electromechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS),…
Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…