Related papers: Emergent Strain-Stiffening in Interlocked Granular…
Packings of macroscopic granular chains capture some of the essential aspects of molecular polymer systems and have been suggested as a paradigm to understand the physics on a molecular scale. However, here we demonstrate that the…
Random packings of granular chains are presented as a model polymer system to investigate the contribution of entanglements to strain-stiffening in the absence of Brownian motion. The chain packings are sheared in triaxial compression…
Stress-strain relations for random packings of entangling chains under triaxial compression can exhibit strain stiffening and sustain stresses several orders-of-magnitude beyond typical granular materials. X-ray tomography reveals the…
We experimentally study the statistics of force-chain evolution in a vertically-tapped two-dimensional granular packing by using photoelastic disks. In this experiment, the tapped granular packing is gradually compacted. During the…
Confined geometries offer useful and experimentally amenable mechanical testing arrangements in which to study the molecular and micro-structural processes which govern plastic yield in stress environments dominated by hydrostatic pressure…
Entangled granular systems exhibit mechanical rigidity and resistance to deformation, reminiscent of cohesive materials, due to their reduced degrees of freedom and contact friction. A quantitative understanding of how classical granular…
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening in polymer glasses. While traditional entropic network models can be fit to the total stress, their underlying assumptions are inconsistent with simulation results.…
We study the bending rigidity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes, for both a single chain and many chains forming a bundle. A theory is developed to account for the interplay between competitive binding of counterions and charge…
Granular materials transmit stress via a network of force chains. Despite the importance of these chains to characterizing the stress state and dynamics of the system, there is no common framework for quantifying their their properties.…
We constrast the dynamics in model unentangled polymer melts of chains of three different stiffnesses: flexible, intermediate, and rodlike. Flexible and rodlike chains, which readily solidify into close-packed crystals (respectively with…
We study the mechanical stiffening behavior in two-dimensional (2D) cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymer filaments under simple shear. Filamental constituents immersed in a fluid undergo thermally excited bending motions.…
Granular systems are not always homogeneous and can be composed of grains with very different mechanical properties. To improve our understanding of the behavior of real granular systems, in this experimental study, we compress 2D…
We investigate the cyclic mechanical behavior in uniaxial tension of three different commercial thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers (TPU) often considered as a sustainable replacement for common filled elastomers. All TPU have similar…
Granular packings of non-convex or elongated particles can form free-standing structures like walls or arches. For some particle shapes, such as staples, the rigidity arises from interlocking of pairs of particles, but the origins of…
We study the elasticity of fibrous materials composed of generalized stiff polymers. It is shown that in contrast to cellular foam-like structures affine strain fields are generically unstable. Instead, a subtle interplay between the…
The dynamical response of a tethered semiflexible polymer with self-attractive interactions and subjected to an external force field is numerically investigated by varying stiffness and self-interaction strength. The chain is confined in…
We present the experimental studies of highly strained soft bidisperse granular systems made of hyperelastic and plastic particles. We explore the behavior of granular matter deep in the jammed state from local field measurement from the…
The mechanical properties of biological materials are spatially heterogeneous. Typical tissues are made up of a spanning fibrous extracellular matrix in which various inclusions, such as living cells, are embedded. While the influence of…
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…
Using a coarse-grained bead-spring model for semi-flexible macromolecules forming a polymer brush, structure and dynamics of the polymers is investigated, varying chain stiffness and grafting density. The anchoring condition for the grafted…