Related papers: On the difference between stiff and soft membranes…
Wave propagation on the surface of a material contains information about physical properties beneath its surface. We propose a method for inferring the thickness and stiffness of a structure from just a video of waves on its surface. Our…
The physical mechanism of elasticity of liquid surfaces coated with colloidal particles is proposed. It is suggested that particles are separated by water clearings and the capillary interaction between them is negligible. The case is…
From the perspective of physical properties, the cell membrane is an exotic two-dimensional material that has a dual nature: it exhibits characteristics of fluids, i.e., lipid molecules show lateral diffusion, while also demonstrating…
We consider some basic principles of fluid-induced lubrication at soft interfaces. In particular, we show how the presence of a soft substrate leads to an increase in the physical separation between surfaces sliding past each other. By…
Wave phenomena in vibrofluidized dry and partially wet granular materials confined in a quasi-two-dimensional geometry are investigated with numerical simulations considering individual particles as hard spheres. Short ranged cohesive…
We determine stability boundaries for the wrinkling of highly uni-directionally stretched, finely thin, rectangular elastic sheets. For a given fine thickness and length, a stability boundary here is a curve in the parameter plane, aspect…
A linearized theory of the acoustics of porous elastic formations, such as rocks, saturated with two different viscous fluids is generalized to take into account a pressure discontinuity across the fluid boundaries. The latter can arise due…
Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…
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…
Vesicles self-assembled from amphiphilic diblock copolymers exhibit a wide diversity of behavior upon electroporation, due to competitions between edge, surface and bending energies that drive the system, while different viscous dissipation…
Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…
The static friction between crystalline surfaces separated by a molecularly thin layer of adsorbed molecules is calculated using molecular dynamics simulations. These molecules naturally lead to a finite static friction that is consistent…
Active motions of a biological membrane can be induced by non-thermal fluctuations that occur in the outer environment of the membrane. We discuss the dynamics of a membrane interacting hydrodynamically with an active wall that exerts…
Thin films made of deformable micro- and nano-units, such as biological membranes, polymer interfaces, and particle-laden liquid surfaces, exhibit a complex behavior during drying, with consequences for various applications like wound…
Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by…
We propose a novel variationally consistent membrane wrinkling model for analyzing the mechanical responses of wrinkled thin membranes. The elastic strain energy density is split into tensile and compressive terms via a spectral…
Glassy solids may undergo a fluidization (yielding) transition upon deformation whereby the material starts to flow plastically. It has been a matter of debate whether this process is controlled by a specific time scale, from among…
Living tissues show an extraordinary adaptiveness to strain, which is crucial for their proper biological functioning. The physical origin of this mechanical behaviour has been widely investigated using reconstituted networks of collagen…
Soft lubrication has been shown to drastically affect the mobility of an object immersed in a viscous fluid in the vicinity of a purely elastic wall. In this theoretical study, we develop a minimal model incorporating viscoelasticity,…
A study is made of how active membrane proteins can modify the long wavelength mechanics of fluid membranes. The activity of the proteins is modelled as disturbing the protein surroundings through non-local force distributions of which a…