Related papers: Morphometric analysis of polygonal cracking patter…
When pollen grains become exposed to the environment, they rapidly desiccate. To protect themselves until rehydration, the grains undergo characteristic infolding with the help of special structures in the grain wall---apertures---where the…
The movement and deformation of mineral grains in rocks control the failure behavior of rocks. However, at high resolution, the physical and mechanical behavior of three-dimensional microstructures in rocks under uniaxial compression has…
The morphology of a growing crystal surface is studied in the case of an unstable two-dimensional step flow. Competition between bunching and meandering of steps leads to a variety of patterns characterized by their respective instability…
Shear cracks propagation is a basic dynamical process that mediates interfacial failure. We develop a general weakly nonlinear elastic theory of shear cracks and show that these experience tensile-mode crack tip deformation, including…
The fabric of porous and fractured media contains solid regions (grains) and voids. The space conducting fluids is a system of connected voids with variable geometries. Relative to the grain sizes, the voids can be voluminous with three…
Size bidisperse granular materials in a spherical tumbler segregate into two different patterns of three bands with either small particles at the equator and large particles at the poles or vice versa, depending upon the fill level in the…
We report the mechanism of cleavage crack deviation at grain boundaries. A fracture mechanics based model has been developed to combine the effect of tilt and twist angles between cleavage planes on the reduction in normalized energy…
Crumpled thin sheets are complex fractal structures whose physical properties are influenced by a hierarchy of ridges. In this Letter, we report experiments that measure the stress-strain relation and show the coexistence of phases in the…
In this work we derive conditions that predict the existence of two-phase periodic-pattern grain boundary structures that are stable against coarsening. While previous research has established that elastic effects can lead to phase pattern…
Ripples or corrugations are common phenomena observed in unpaved roads in less developed countries or regions. They cause several damages in vehicles leading to increased maintenance and product costs. In this paper, we present a…
We study the rheology of cornstarch suspensions, a dense system of non-Brownian particles that exhibits shear thickening, i.e. a viscosity that increases with increasing shear rate. Using MRI velocimetry we show that the suspension has a…
Crystallization of dense matter in neutron star crusts and white dwarf cores may be similar to epitaxial crystal growth in terrestrial laboratories. However in stellar crystals, the spacing between horizontal planes has to gradually…
Brittle fracturing of materials is common in natural and industrial processes over a variety of length scales. Knowledge of individual particle dynamics is vital to obtain deeper insight into the atomistic processes governing crack…
Columnar joints are three-dimensional fracture networks that form in cooling basalt and several other media. The network organizes itself into ordered, mostly hexagonal columns. The same pattern can be observed on a smaller scale in…
Granular material exposed to shear shows a variety of unique phenomena: Reynolds dilatancy, positional order and orientational order effects may compete in the shear zone. We study granular packings consisting of macroscopic prolate, oblate…
It is well known that jammed soft materials will flow if sheared above their yield stress - think mayonnaise spread on bread - but a complete microscopic description of this seemingly sim- ple process has yet to emerge. What remains elusive…
We study the rheology of cornstarch suspensions, a non-Brownian particle system that exhibits discontinuous shear thickening. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the local properties of the flow are obtained by the determination of…
While cracks in isotropic homogeneous materials propagate straight, perpendicularly to the tensile axis, cracks in natural and synthetic composites deflect from a straight path, often increasing the toughness of the material. Here we…
From fairy circles to patterned ground and columnar joints, natural patterns spontaneously appear in many complex geophysical settings. Here, we investigate the origins of polygonally patterned crusts of salt playa and salt pans. These…
Leaves and flowers frequently have a characteristic rippling pattern at their edges. Recent experiments found similar patterns in torn plastic. These patterns can be reproduced by imposing metrics upon thin sheets. The goal of this paper is…