Related papers: Helical locomotion in granular media
Understanding swimming in soft yielding media is challenging due to their complex deformation response to the swimmer's motion. We experimentally show that a scallop-inspired swimmer with reciprocally flapping wings generates locomotion in…
Granular intrusions, such as dynamic impact or wheel locomotion, are complex multiphase phenomena where the grains exhibit solid-like and fluid-like characteristics together with an ejected gas-like phase. Despite decades of modeling…
By means of extensive replica-exchange simulations of generic coarse-grained models for helical polymers, we systematically investigate the structural transitions into all possible helical phases for flexible and semiflexible elastic…
Most helix-coil transition theories can be characterized by a set of three parameters: energetic, describing the (free) energy cost of forming a helical state in one repeating unit; entropic, accounting for the decrease of entropy due to…
Controlling the motion of nano and microscale objects in a fluid environment is a key factor in designing optimized tiny machines that perform mechanical tasks such as transport of drugs or genetic material in cells, fluid mixing to…
This paper, in French, describes a series of completely different behaviours of the mechanics of granular matter, which are obtained experimentally using periodic forcing at different amplitude, frequency and orientation. It starts with the…
Transport phenomena in complex and dynamic microscopic environments are fundamentally shaped by hydrodynamic interactions. In particular, microparticle transport in porous media is governed by the delicate interplay between…
The generation of unidirectional motion has been a long-standing challenge in engineering of molecular motors. Here, a mechanism driving the rotation is presented based on electron current through helical orbitals on a $\pi$-bonded carbon…
Voxel-based structures provide a modular, mechanically flexible periodic lattice which can be used as a soft robot through internal deformations. To engage these structures for robotic tasks, we use a finite element method to characterize…
The energy of a dislocation loop in a continuum elastic solid under pressure is considered within the framework of classical mechanics. For a circular loop, this is a function with a maximum at pressures that are well within reach of…
In this paper, we examine the problem of robotic manipulation of granular media. We evaluate multiple predictive models used to infer the dynamics of scooping and dumping actions. These models are evaluated on a task that involves…
We study the effect of a magnetic field on the behaviour of a conducting elastic rod subject to a novel set of boundary conditions that, in the case of a transversely isotropic rod, give rise to exact helical post-buckling solutions. The…
We study the Brownian dynamics and linear response of a particle with inertia moving in a 2-dimensional helical landscape imprinted on a cylindrical surface. In the harmonic well approximation, the deterministic motion separates into free…
We report the experimental observation of novel vortex patterns in a vertically tapped granular media. Depending on the tapping acceleration two behaviors are observed. For high acceleration a convection vortex appears in the whole media…
The numerical simulations of planetary dynamos still operate in a regime very far from the planets. For example, it seems unlikely that viscous forces are at all significant in planetary interiors, yet some of the simulations display a…
We study the rheology of a granular material slowly driven in a confined geometry. The motion is characterized by a steady sliding with a resistance force increasing with the driving velocity and the surrounding relative humidity. For lower…
Confined granular fluids, placed in a shallow box that is vibrated vertically, can achieve homogeneous stationary states thanks to energy injection mechanisms that take place throughout the system. These states can be stable even at high…
Hydrogels hold promise in agriculture as reservoirs of water in dry soil, potentially alleviating the burden of irrigation. However, confinement in soil can markedly reduce the ability of hydrogels to absorb water and swell, limiting their…
Impact dynamics is measured for spherical and cylindrical projectiles of many different densities dropped onto a variety non-cohesive granular media. The results are analyzed in terms of the material-dependent scaling of the inertial and…
A technique by which a spacecraft can interact with flows of ionized gas in space (the solar wind or interstellar medium) to be accelerated to velocities greater than the wind velocity is explored. Inspired by the dynamic soaring maneuvers…