Related papers: Strain fluctuations and elastic moduli in disorder…
Elastic constants of zero-temperature amorphous solids are given as the difference between the Born term, which results from a hypothetical affine deformation of an amorphous solid, and a correction term which originates from the fact that…
We examine the structural and dynamic properties of confined binary hard-sphere mixtures designed to mimic realizable colloidal thin films. Using computer simulations, governed by either Newtonian or overdamped Langevin dynamics, together…
In the recent years, much attention has been devoted to the inhomogeneous nature of the mechanical response at the nano-scale in disordered solids. Clearly, the elastic heterogeneities that have been characterized in this context are…
Amorphous solids tend to present an abundance of soft elastic modes, which diminish their transport properties, generate heterogeneities in their elastic response, and affect non-linear processes like thermal activation of plasticity. This…
The flow of amorphous solids results from a combination of elastic deformation and local structural rearrangements, which induce non-local elastic deformations. These elements are incorporated into a mechanically-consistent mesoscopic model…
There is growing interest in functional, adaptive devices built from colloidal subunits of micron size or smaller. A colloidal material with dynamic mechanical properties could facilitate such microrobotic machines. Here we study via…
Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers have interesting and potentially very useful photonic properties. In an ideal monodomain configuration of these materials, one finds a Bragg-reflection of light in a narrow wavelength range and a…
We study the elasticity of fibrous materials composed of generalized stiff polymers. It is shown that in contrast to cellular foam-like structures affine strain fields are generically unstable. Instead, a subtle interplay between the…
We simulate via a Discrete Element Method the tapping of a narrow column of disk under gravity. For frictionless disks, this system has a simple analytic expression for the density of states in the Edwards volume ensemble. We compare the…
We investigate theoretically and experimentally the optical beam propagation in the nematic liquid crystal with negative dielectric anisotropy, which is aligned homeotropically in a $80\mu m$-thickness planar cell in the presence of an…
We present a fluid-mechanical model of the coalescence of a number of elastic objects due to surface tension. We consider an array of spring-block elements separated by thin liquid films, whose dynamics are modelled using lubrication…
Recent experiments show a strong rotational-diffusion enhancement for self-propelled microrheological probes in colloidal glasses. Here, we provide microscopic understanding using simulations with a frictional probe-medium coupling that…
Dislocation pinning plays a vital role in the plastic behaviour of a crystalline solid. Here we report the first observation of the damped oscillations of a mobile dislocation after it gets pinned at an obstacle in the presence of a…
Rheological measurements of model colloidal gels reveal that large variations in the shear moduli as colloidal volume-fraction changes are not reflected by simple structural parameters such as the coordination number, which remains almost a…
We develop a molecular model of non-uniform deformations within the framework of liquid crystal rubber elasticity. We show that, similarly to the uniform case, the theory is not sensitive to the molecular details of polymer liquid crystal…
Recent step strain experiments in well-entangled polymeric liquids demonstrated a bulk fracture-like phenomenon. We have studied this instability using a modern version of the Doi-Edwards theory for entangled polymers, and we find close…
We investigate the high-frequency behavior of the density of vibrational states in three-dimensional elasticity theory with spatially fluctuating elastic moduli. At frequencies well above the mobility edge, instanton solutions yield an…
Soft elastic composite materials can serve as actuators when they transform changes in external fields into mechanical deformation. Here, we address the corresponding deformational behavior of magnetic gels and elastomers, consisting of…
Elastomers filled with liquid inclusions -- as opposed to conventional solid fillers -- are a recent trend in the soft matter community because of their unique range of mechanical and physical properties. Such properties stem, in part, from…
We perform Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations of granular particles (polystyrene spheres) vibrated inside a cubic container. The study investigates the evolution of the packing fraction with and without rotational friction at…