Related papers: Programming complex shapes in thin nematic elastom…
Self-assembly of colloidal particles due to elastic interactions in nematic liquid crystals promises tunable composite materials and can be guided by exploiting surface functionalization, geometric shape and topology, though these means of…
Elastic models of the glass transition relate the relaxation dynamics and the elastic properties of structural glasses. They are based on the assumption that the relaxation dynamics occurs through activated events in the energy landscape…
The recent discovery of electro-active polymers has shown great promises in the field of soft robotics, and was logically followed by experimental, numerical and theoretical developments. Most of these studies were concerned with systems…
In this paper, we present a 2D numerical model developed to simulate the dynamics of soft, deformable particles. To accommodate significant particle deformations, the particle surface is represented as a narrow shell composed of mass points…
Nanoscale molecular transport plays a crucial role in regulating mass diffusion and responsiveness in condensed matter systems. In soft porous crystals, in particular, adsorption of guest molecules induces host framework deformation and…
Pattern-forming metamaterials feature microstructures specifically designed to change the material's macroscopic properties due to internal instabilities. These can be triggered either by mechanical deformation or, in the case of active…
We study elasticity of spontaneously orientationally-ordered amorphous solids, characterized by a vanishing transverse shear modulus, as realized for example by nematic elastomers and gels. We show that local heterogeneities and elastic…
We study the role of elasticity-induced facilitation on the dynamics of glass-forming liquids by a coarse-grained two-dimensional model in which local relaxation events, taking place by thermal activation, can trigger new relaxations by…
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, polymer solutions and liquid crystals are constituted by mesoscopic entities held together by weak forces. Their mechanical moduli are several orders of magnitude lower than those of atomic…
The nonlinear mechanical response of soft materials and slender structures is purposefully harnessed to program functions by design in soft robotic actuators, such as sequencing, amplified response, fast energy release, etc. However,…
We merge classical origami concepts with active actuation by designing origami patterns whose panels undergo prescribed metric changes. These metric changes render the system non-Euclidean, inducing non-zero Gaussian curvature at the…
Soft interfaces formed by lipid membranes are fundamental to living cells, synthetic cells, and membrane-based soft materials. However, a quantitative framework linking molecular organization with nonlinear interfacial mechanics remains…
Exotic behaviour of mechanical metamaterials often relies on an internal transformation of the underlying microstructure triggered by its local instabilities, rearrangements, and rotations. Depending on the presence and magnitude of such a…
Object manipulation is a fundamental challenge in robotics, where systems must balance trade-offs among manipulation capabilities, system complexity, and throughput. Distributed manipulator systems (DMS) use the coordinated motion of…
The formulation of a new prism finite element is presented for the nonlinear analysis of solid shells subject to large strains and large displacements. The element is based on hierarchical, heterogeneous, and anisotropic shape functions. As…
One of the central appealing properties of magnetic gels and elastomers is that their elastic moduli can reversibly be adjusted from outside by applying magnetic fields. The impact of the internal magnetic particle distribution on this…
Nematic polymer networks (NPNs) are nematic elastomers within which the nematic director is enslaved to the elastic deformation. The elastic free energy of a NPN sheet of thickness $h$ has both stretching and bending components (the former…
We describe size-varying cylindrical particles made from silicone elastomers that can serve as building blocks for robotic granular materials. The particle size variation, which is achieved by inflation, gives rise to changes in stiffness…
We consider a cantilever beam which possesses a possibly non-uniform permanent magnetization, and whose shape is controlled by an applied magnetic field. We model the beam as a plane elastic curve and we suppose that the magnetic field acts…
We start from a variational model for nematic elastomers that involves two energies: mechanical and nematic. The first one consists of a nonlinear elastic energy which is influenced by the orientation of the molecules of the nematic…