Related papers: A cohesive granular material with tunable elastici…
In the presence of a non-adsorbing polymer, monodisperse rod-like particles assemble into colloidal membranes, which are one rod-length thick liquid-like monolayers of aligned rods. Unlike 3D edgeless bilayer vesicles, colloidal monolayer…
We show that mixing a colloidal gel with larger, non-Brownian grains generates novel flow-switched bistability. Using a combination of confocal microscopy and rheology, we find that prolonged moderate shear results in liquefaction by…
The dynamics of elastocapillary thinning in high molecular weight polymer solutions are re-examined using high-speed digital video microscopy. At long times, the evolution of the viscoelastic thread deviates from self-similar exponential…
We use colloidal suspensions encapsulated in emulsion droplets to model confined glass-forming liquids with tunable boundary mobility. We show dynamics in these idealized systems are governed by physical interactions with the boundary.…
Filamentous bio-materials such as fibrin or collagen networks exhibit an enormous stiffening of their elastic moduli upon large deformations. This pronounced nonlinear behavior stems from a significant separation between the stiffnesses…
We design, fabricate and test heterogeneous architected polycrystals, composed of hard plastomers and soft elastomers, which thus show outstanding mechanical resilience and energy dissipation simultaneously. Grain boundaries that separate…
The yielding of foams, concentrated emulsions, pastes and other soft materials under applied strain is often characterized by measuring the complex shear modulus as a function of strain amplitude at low frequency. Results obtained for…
It is widely recognized in particle technology that adhesive powders show a wide range of different bulk behavior due to the peculiarity of the particle interaction. We use Discrete Element simulations to investigate the effect of contact…
Understanding the structural origins of glass formation and mechanical response remains a central challenge in condensed matter physics. Recent studies have identified the local caging potential experienced by a particle due to its nearest…
Particles trapped at a fluid-fluid interface by capillary forces can form a monolayer that jams and buckles when subject to uni-axial compression. Here we investigate experimentally the buckling mechanics of monolayers of millimeter-sized…
Cohesive powders tend to form porous aggregates which can be compacted by applying an external pressure. This process is modelled using the Contact Dynamics method supplemented with a cohesion law and rolling friction. Starting with…
We investigate the gravity driven rapid failure of a granular step composed of non-cohesive steel beads. The step is initially held together with electromagnets, and released when the current is switched off. We visualize the surface and…
We characterize the force state of shear-loaded granular matter by relating the macroscopic stress to statistical properties of the force network. The purely repulsive nature of the interaction between grains naturally provides an upper…
Capillary forces acting at the surface of a liquid drop can be strong enough to deform small objects and recent studies have provided several examples of elastic instabilities induced by surface tension. We present such an example where a…
For nearly a century, introduction of nanoparticles to elastomers has yielded extraordinarily tough nanocomposites that are critical to technologies from actuators to tires. The mechanisms by which this reinforcement occurs have…
The evolution of porous structure and mechanical properties of binary glasses under tensile loading were examined using molecular dynamics simulations. We consider vitreous systems obtained in the process of phase separation after a rapid…
Brittle materials fail catastrophically. In consequence of their limited flaw-tolerance, failure occurs by localized fracture and is typically a dynamic process. Recently, experiments on epithelial cell monolayers have revealed that this…
Precipitation of fine particles into the base material of a metal is a potent strengthening mechanism. This is numerically analyzed within a continuum framework based on a higher order strain gradient plasticity theory and by use of an…
The main result of this work is a homogenization theorem via variational convergence for elastic materials with stiff checkerboard-type heterogeneities under the assumptions of physical growth and non-self-interpenetration. While the…
We describe theoretically and validate experimentally the mechanism of formation of capillary bridges during pulling a beaded chain out from a liquid with a planar surface. There are two types of capillary bridges present in this system,…