Related papers: Emergent Strain-Stiffening in Interlocked Granular…
Understanding how stick-slip dynamics manifests in diverse physical conditions is a crucial topic in tribology. Although it has been extensively studied in simple frictional configurations, the characterization of stick-slip behavior in…
Recent advances in single macromolecule experiments have sparked interest in the ensemble dependence of force-extension relations. The thermodynamic limit may not be attainable for such systems, that leads to inequivalence of the…
The role of plastic deformation in the high-pressure compaction of granular material is investigated using bonded particle model simulations. Grains are discretized into a set of computational particles connected by pairwise bonds. Bonds…
We investigate the morphology and mechanics of a naturally curved elastic arch loaded at its center and frictionally supported at both ends on a flat, rigid substrate. Through systematic numerical simulations, we classify the observed…
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…
The effects of entanglement and chain orientation on strain hardening in glassy polymers are separated by examining mixtures of chains with different lengths. Simulations show that the orientation of a molecule of a given chain length is…
Indentation experiments on graphene membranes pre-stressed by hydrostatic pressure show an increase in effective elastic modulus from 300 N/m in non pressurized membranes to 700 N/m for pre-strains above 0.5 %. This pronounced dependence of…
Aiming at the mechanical properties of cross-linked biopolymers, we set up and analyze a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains subjected to a tensile force, with regularly spaced inter-chain bonds (cross-links) represented by harmonic…
Model experiments are reported on the build-up of granular piles in two dimensions. These show that as the initial density of falling grains is increased, the resulting pile has decreasing final density and its coordination number…
Entanglement of polymer chains is ubiquitous in elastomers, gels, and biological tissues. While the effects of chain entanglement on elasticity and viscoelasticity of polymer networks have been intensively studied, it remains elusive how…
A confined incompressible elastic film does not deform uniformly when subjected to adhesive interfacial stresses but with undulations which have a characteristic wavelength scaling linearly with the thickness of the film. In the classical…
Granular media near jamming exhibit fascinating properties, which can be harnessed to create jammed-granulate metamaterials: materials whose characteristics arise not only from the shape and material properties of the particles at the…
We show how rigidity emerges in experiments of sheared frictional granular materials by using generalizations of two methods for identifying rigid structures. Both approaches, the force-based dynamical matrix and the topology-based rigidity…
We test the elasticity of granular aggregates using increments of shear and volume strain in a numerical simulation. We find that the increment in volume strain is almost reversible, but the increment in shear strain is not. The strength of…
Gels are an increasingly important class of soft materials with applications ranging from regenerative medicine to commodity materials. A major drawback of gels is their relative mechanical weakness, which worsens further under strain. We…
Chain molecules play important roles in industry and in living cells. Our focus here is on distinct ways of modeling the stiffness inherent in a chain molecule. We consider three types of stiffnesses -- one yielding an energy penalty for…
We report simulation results on melts of entangled linear polymers confined in a free-standing thin film. We study how the geometric constraints imposed by the confinement alter the entanglement state of the system compared to the…
We describe experiments that probe the response to a point force of 2D granular systems under a variety of conditions. Using photoelastic particles to determine forces at the grain scale, we experimentally show that disorder, packing…
Discrete element (DEM) simulations demonstrate that granular materials are non-simple, meaning that the incremental stiffness of a granular assembly depends on the gradients of the strain increment as well as on the strain increment itself.…
Single-chain elasticity is of fundamental importance in polymer physics, as it underlies many of the unique properties of polymer systems. Recently, there has been interest in characterizing the elastic properties of catenanes, molecular…