Related papers: Local structure controls shear and bulk moduli in …
Above a certain density a granular material jams. This property can be controlled by either tuning a global property, such as the packing fraction or by applying shear strain, or at the micro-scale by tuning grain shape, inter-particle…
The local elastic properties of strongly disordered host material are investigated using the theory of correlated random matrices. A significant increase in stiffness is shown in the interfacial region, which thickness depends on the…
Monodisperse suspensions of Brownian colloidal spheres crystallize at high densities, and ordering under shear has been observed at densities below the crystallization threshold. We perform large-scale simulations of a model suspension…
Amorphous grain boundary complexions act as toughening features within a microstructure because they can absorb dislocations more efficiently than traditional grain boundaries. This toughening effect should be a strong function of the local…
The effect of a local shear transformation on plastic deformation of a three-dimensional amorphous solid is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. We consider a spherical inclusion, which is gradually transformed into an ellipsoid of…
In this paper we focus on the mechanical properties of oligomeric glasses (waxes), employing a microscopic model that provides, via numerical simulations, information about the shear modulus of such materials, the failure mechanism via…
We determine the linear viscoelastic response of jammed packings of athermal repulsive viscous spheres, a model for emulsions, wet foams, and soft colloidal suspensions. We numerically measure the complex shear modulus, a fundamental…
We study a mesoscopic elasto-plastic model of amorphous matter with varying dimensionless compression modulus, $K/\mu$, where $K$ and $\mu$ are the compression and shear moduli. We study both cyclic shear with amplitude $\Gamma$ and forward…
We show, through analytical theory and rigorous numerical calculations, that optical binding can organize a collection of particles into stable one-dimensional lattice. This lattice, as well as other optically-bound structures, are shown to…
A two-dimensional lattice model for the formation and evolution of shear bands in granular media is proposed. Each lattice site is assigned a random variable which reflects the local density. At every time step, the strain is localized…
We present a new microscopic model of granular medium to study the role of dynamical correlations and the onset of spatial order induced by the inelasticity of the interactions. In spite of its simplicity, it features several different…
The quasistatic behavior of a simple 2D model of a cohesive powder under isotropic loads is investigated by Discrete Element simulations. The loose packing states, as studied in a previous paper, undergo important structural changes under…
Nonlinear plastic modes (NPMs) are collective displacements that are indicative of imminent plastic instabilities in elastic solids. In this work we formulate the atomistic theory that describes the reversible evolution of NPMs and their…
Phase separation in passive systems leads to uncontrolled droplet growth, limiting structural control in soft materials and cells. We identify a generic mechanism to arrest coarsening based on chemical interconversion between molecular…
Connecting the collective behavior of disordered systems with local structure on the particle scale is an important challenge, for example in granular and glassy systems. Compounding complexity, in many scientific and industrial…
What characterises a solid is its way to respond to external stresses. Ordered solids, such crystals, display an elastic regime followed by a plastic one, both well understood microscopically in terms of lattice distortion and dislocations.…
Modeling liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) at the molecular level is crucial for the predictable design of energy-conversion and stimuli-responsive materials. Here, we develop a self-consistent field theory for LCEs which captures the…
Shear transformations (i.e., localised rearrangements of particles resulting in the shear deformation of a small region of the sample) are the building blocks of mesoscale models for the flow of disordered solids. In order to compute the…
The relation between elasticity and yielding is investigated in a model polymer solid by Molecular-Dynamics simulations. By changing the bending stiffness of the chain and the bond length, semicrystalline and disordered glassy polymers -…
This paper focuses on size effects in periodic mechanical metamaterials driven by reversible pattern transformations due to local elastic buckling instabilities in their microstructure. Two distinct loading cases are studied: compression…